Preprint: When Does Group Information Influence the Automatic and Deliberate Judgment of Individual Group Members?

According to some impression formation theories, when people perceive an individual member of a social group, the information about the group is activated more spontaneously and easily than information specific to the individual. Therefore, the judgment of individual group members might be more sensitive to group information (relatively to individuating information) the more automatic (fast, unintentional, and effortless) the judgment is. We tested this premise with a minimalistic impression formation paradigm that provided evaluative information about eight individuals and assigned them to two novel groups. In one group, three members behaved positively, and one member behaved negatively. In the other group, three members behaved negatively and one positively. In seven main experiments and 12 auxiliary experiments, we examined whether people’s automatic (but not deliberate) judgment of the atypical group members would be determined by the valence of the typical behavior in the group (group information) or the valence of the typical behaviors of that person (individuating information). Individuating information had a larger effect on automatic and deliberate evaluation than group information. The relative effect of group information (vs. individuating information) was slightly stronger on automatic than on deliberate judgment. This discrepancy increased when we increased the salience of group membership upon judgment, or when participants belonged to one of the groups. Our findings suggest that, inherently, automatic judgment of individuals is only slightly more biased than deliberate judgment by group information. Yet, under circumstances that are common in everyday life, that bias increases in automatic but not in deliberate judgment.