In our daily-life, we encounter people and objects that are complex and multifaceted. A stimulus is likely to possess multiple attributes, and our evaluations of the stimulus may depend on which of these attributes we focus on when we make decisions. People are probably the most complex stimuli we encounter, probably because they simultaneously belong to multiple social categories (sex, ethnicity and age groups). The competing categorizations can come to dominate our evaluations of others. However, two decades ago there were not many studies that address the question of how targets are categorized when multiple categorizations are available. Researchers have preferred to present participants with written category labels and assess the consequences of these forced categorizations on a range of reactions. However, this doesn’t tell us how perceivers deal with a target when competing categorizations are available. Views of human cognition have characterized the social perceiver as a cognitive miser and they have linked the tendency to engage in social stereotyping to those conditions in which perceivers need to economize mental effort. Stereotypes have to ability to simplify and structure social perceptions. When we encounter multiply categorizable targets, our mental systems form simplified impressions on the basis of a single dominant social category. This way, the economic function of stereotyping will be preserved and the basis for forming expectations and evaluations of the target is also made.

Literature has shown that several factors can be identified that determine which of the possible competing categories will come to dominate social impressions. In this list the relative accessibility or salience of a particular categorization, perceivers’ current processing objectives and perceivers’ levels of prejudice toward particular social groups belong. These factors and some others determine when one category rather than another assumes dominance in mental life.

Inhibitory mechanisms

In our everyday life, we encounter many stimuli that allow multiple constructions. A functional necessity of selectivity in all forms of information processing is needed. Much research has focused on processes through which certain stimuli gain sufficient activation to enter awareness, but it is also important to know the processes through which other stimuli are denied access to awareness or higher cognitive processing. Are these stimuli passively neglected or are they actively inhibited? Models have placed emphasis on the role of inhibitory processes in mental life. There are also excitatory components that enable target items to enter focal attention. Through the active inhibition of distracting mental representations, people are better able to disentangle signal from noise. The writers think that when somebody encounters a target, say a Chinese woman, than both applicable categories (woman and Chinese) are activated in parallel and a competition for mental dominance ensues. There are different factors that can give an activational advantage to a category, like accessibility, goal relevance and category salience. Once a categorization achieves sufficient activation, the question concerns what happens to the loser during the struggle for mental dominance. Older views of selective attention state that the losing category is ignored. Inhibition-based models claim differently. They propose that the losing category is not simply neglected, but actively dampened through a spreading inhibition process. In this article, the extent to which inhibitory mechanisms in selective attention may contribute to the understanding of the process of stereotype activation are explored.

Study 1

This study consisted out of three parts. In the study, participants were either primed with the category woman, Chinese or no prime. They were then asked to check the edit quality of a videotape in which a Chinese woman was reading a book. The writers predicted that the prior priming experience would influence categorizations of the target during the task. In the third part, the accessibility of applicable stereotypes about the target was tested. So after the prime task and the presentation of the videotape, participants were asked to look at a computer screen and they were shown different letter strings in the centre of the screen. They had to indicate, by pressing a key, whether it was a word or a non-word. Half of the words were real words and the other half were non-words. Of the real words, 8 were filler words (countries of the world), 4 were traits that are stereotypic with respect to women, but stereotype irrelevant with respect to Chinese (thoughtful, emotional, romantic and friendly). The other four were traits that are stereotypic with respect to the Chinese, but stereotype-irrelevant with respect to women (considerate, gracious, trustworthy and calm). The writers assumed that the time taken to make a response in the lexical decision task would reflect the relative accessibility of the stereotype under investigation. Participants in the control condition were obviously not primed and they watched a videotape about a wildlife show.

The results show that participants primed with the category woman responded more quickly to traits associated with women than with the Chinese (and vice versa). The results also show an inhibitory mechanism. The dual-process model seems to be right and the not-primed category is actively suppressed (instead of passively ignored).

Study 2

This study looked like the first study. Participants first received a priming task (woman, Chinese or neutral). They then watched a videotape. This time, however, every person saw a short extract from a wildlife show. In the third part of the study, the writers measured the accessibility of the stereotypes associated with the primed and un-primed categories in the same way as in the first study. The dependent measure in this study was the mean time taken by participants to classify the letter combinations as words.

The results showed again that people primed with the category Chinese responded more quickly to traits associated with the Chinese than with women (and vice versa). Response in the Chinese-priming condition to Chinese traits were facilitated. Response times in that condition were significantly faster than in either of the two other conditions. The response times to control traits and woman traits did not differ from one another and this reveals that there is no evidence for the inhibition of the un-primed category. The same results were found in the woman-priming condition. These results show that the effects observed in study 1 were not simply the consequence of participants’ priming experiences. Being primed, but not being shown that target (the Chinese woman on the videotape in study 1, but no Chinese woman in study 2) leads to different results. When people are confronted with a multiply categorizable target, the outcome of the categorization process is determined by the interplay of both excitatory and inhibitory attentional processes.

Study 3

There are many factors that may determine the nature of a category dominance effects when these multiple categorizations are available. In study 1 and 2, category selection was driven by participants’ previous priming experiences. There are also other factors that may influence the process of category selection. If you have recently or frequently interacted with Asians, if you’re prejudiced against the group as a whole or if you’re looking for someone to run a Chinese restaurant, the category Chinese is most likely to assume a position of priority in your classification of the target. These things increase the accessibility of the category Chinese in memory and it increases (in that way) the probability that it will be applied when a fitting target is encountered. This third study tried to establish the generality of the effects observed in the first study by manipulating category dominance in a more naturalistic manner.

Participants first had to watch a videotape in which they checked the edit quality of a short tape. The tape showed a Chinese woman either eating noodles from a bowl with a pair of chopsticks or putting on makeup by a mirror. The writers thought that the stereotypic congruence would influence the inhibitory dynamics. The chopsticks would prime Chinese and inhibit woman and the makeup tape would prime woman and inhibit Chinese. The participants then received a word-identification task with which the accessibility of applicable stereotypes about the target was tested.

The results showed that people who watched the videotape of the target eating with chopsticks responded more quickly to traits associated with Chinese than with women, and vice versa for the category of woman.

When people see a target, they identify several competing superordinate categories to which the target belongs. Repeated exposure to these categories will result in the process being automatized. The inhibitory mechanisms may also operate in a largely automatic manner in the categorization process. Inhibitory processes gate selective attention and they therefore don’t have to be under the control of a resource-demanding central executive. Inhibitory processes help us select relevant rather than irrelevant objects from a series of stimuli. They may also help us categorize people.