The Effect Of Economic Status Taking On The Stereotype

Economic status is an objective social class index. Recently, researches about scarcity theory prove that low economic status may affect the cognitive process caused by cognitive load, thus affecting behavior in series of tasks. Stereotypes act as a schema that conserves cognitive load and plays an important role in social cognitive processes. In this paper, we conducted three studies. The role of scarcity theory is taken into account in the study of stereotyped factors. On the one hand, we study whether the economic status can cause differences in cognitive load, and explore the condition of the loss (pre-study).On the other hand, we study the influence of economic status on the activation and application of stereotype,and explore the regulatory role of cognitive resources in which to play (study 1 and study 2).In the pre-study, using the scenario start method to verify the impact of the consumption scenario on the cognitive load, and at the same time, examine whether the consumption scenario is a necessary condition for the economic status to influence the stereotype. Two-Way ANOVA show that the participants with poor consumption scenarios have generated a higher level of cognitive load,while participants with reading the daily consumption scenario have lower levels of cognitive load, indicating that the scene material can start cognitive load; in addition, the simple effect analysis found that in the high economic status group, participants who read the poor scene material and read the daily scene material had significant cognitive load differences, while in the low economic status group there was no such difference, This shows that the impact of economic status on cognitive resources is regulated by the consumption scenario, proving the hypothesis in the scarcity theory.In the study 1, using of scenario initiation method and lexical decision task (LDT),combined with the two-stage model of stereotype, to exploreIn under different economic status and consumption scenarios, whether the sex stereotype of the participants can be activated by indifference. The results show that, Regardless of economic status, after experiencing different levels of cognitive resource consumption, the activation of gender stereotypes have no difference. This study demonstrates the mechanics of stereotyped activation and laid the foundation for the next study.In the study 2, using the scenario startup method and the variants of sharing attribution percentage method. On the basis of the study 1, we discuss whether the different economic status will affect the difference of the application of the stereotyped impression, and the role of cognitive resources in the process. The results show that the results show that in the high economic status group, the high cognitive load participants have a higher degree of stereotype,while the low cognitive load participants have less stereotyped application; in the low economic status group, there is no such difference.This shows that the impact of cognitive load on stereotypes may occur at the application stage. In addition, the study 2 also provides evidence for the two-stage separation of activation and application.From the above three studies, we can draw the following conclusions:(1) Consumer scenarios can affect cognitive resources, different consumer scenarios will vary the degrees of cognitive load. Thinking about the poor consumption scenario will lead to the consumption of cognitive resources, but daily consumption scenarios will not make the participants consume cognitive resources.(2) There is no difference in the activation of stereotypes, no matter facing what kind of consumer scenarios,in what economic status. Participants will form the same level of stereotype activation.(3) The interaction between economic status and cognitive resources on stereotyped applications is significant. Under the condition of high cognitive load, participants with high economic status have lower cognitive load, while participants with low economic status produce higher cognitive load. But in the daily consumption scenario, regardless of economic status, test will produce a lower cognitive load.