The Influence And Mechanism Of No Trust On The Activation And Application Of Gender Stereotype

Stereotype is a cognitive structure about a social group associated with certain characteristics. Studies have shown that when we met with someone, he or she is categorized as a member of some stereotyped group in our mind after two different phrases of psychological process:stereotype activation and stereotype application. Stereotype activation refers to the accessibility of knowledge about social groups in one’s mind and stereotype application refers to the use of this knowledge in perception and judgment for members of these social groups. Stereotype application and activation are influenced by several individual differences and situational factors.Distrust refers to individuals’expectation of the target object regarding his or her defect in ability, lack of good will, irresponsiveness and efforts to protect himself from harm. Individuals in the state of distrust will improve their cognitive flexibility and creativity, use some unconventional strategies to process information, and can inhibit the connections between consistent cognition and activate the connections between inconsistent cognition. Most importantly, distrust may affect the accessibility of information consistent or inconsistent with stereotype and the strategy individuals use in social judgment.Three experiments were conducted in present research to examine the influence of distrust on gender stereotype activation and application.Experiment 1 examined the influence of distrust on gender stereotype activation. In this experiment,69 college students completed a lexical decision task to prime distrust or trust and determined whether the target words were true or false. Then they evaluated the credibility of unfamiliar faces to test the effectiveness of the priming and reported their emotions to control.Experiment 2 examined the influence of distrust on gender stereotype activation and application at the same time. In this experiment,96 college students completed a scrambled-sentences priming task to prime distrust or trust, and this experiment set the neutral group. Then they reported their emotions and completed lexical decision task. Next they evaluated the characteristics of targets, finally they evaluated the credibility of unfamiliar faces.Experiment 3, on the basis of experiment 2, measured participants’ motivation to avoid prejudice and its effect on the relationship between distrust and gender stereotype activation and application. In this experiment,65 college students completed a scrambled-sentences priming task, a lexical decision task and a traits evaluation task, finally completed Non-prejudicial Motivation Scale.Results showed that the response times of gender stereotype and those of counterstereotype had no significant differences in distrust group, but the response time of gender stereotype was significantly less than the response time of gender counterstereotype in trust group; distrust participants’score for the traits related to gender stereotype was significantly lower than trust participants, but the scores for the traits unrelated to gender stereotype were not significantly different between two groups; Motivation to avoid prejudice couldn’t affect the influence of distrust on the response times of gender stereotype and counterstereotype. But external regulation of motivation to avoid prejudice could affect the influence of distrust on the scores for traits related to gender stereotype.Research conclusions:Distrust eliminated the difference between the level of gender stereotype activation and the level of gender counterstereotype activation; distrust reduced the level of gender stereotypes application; external regulation of motivation to avoid prejudice could moderated the influence of distrust on gender stereotype application.