Control Over Stereotype Activation by Preconscious and Temporary Goals

成见和偏见仍然是现代社会的主要社会问题。2001年9月11日的袭击事件从各种方面说明了这一点，从寻求破坏西方生活方式的恐怖分子的偏见，到美国人对“看起来像阿拉伯人”的人使用暴力的反应。这些现象为理解刻板印象的性质及其对偏见和歧视的后果提出了一个重要问题：个人如何防止他们的刻板印象影响判断和行为？最近的两阶段刻板印象模型表明，人们可以通过两种不同的方式做到这一点：(1)通过防止刻板印象知识出现在脑海中，使其与判断无关；(2)通过在刻板印象被激活后从一个人的反应中消除刻板印象。通过更全面地考虑目标如何决定对刻板印象群体成员的反应，这两种方法都可以得到更好的理解。这项研究特别关注如何控制刻板印象的激活，考察产生这种控制的机制。人们认为刻板印象的激活是通过潜意识激活的目标来控制的，一系列实验验证了这一假设。长期目标是更好地理解社会陈规定型观念和偏见的动态。

Stereotyping and prejudice continue to be predominant social problems in modern society. The attacks of September 11, 2001 illustrate this in a variety of ways, from the prejudice of terrorists seeking to destroy the Western way of life, to the reactions of Americans who turned violent against "Arab-appearing" individuals in the United States. These phenomena raise an important question for understanding the nature of stereotyping and its consequences for prejudice and discrimination: How do individuals keep their stereotypes from influencing judgment and behavior? Recent two-stage models of stereotyping suggest that people can do this in two distinct ways: (1) By preventing stereotypic knowledge from coming to mind so it is never relevant to judgment; or (2) by removing the stereotype from one's responses after the stereotype has been activated. Both approaches can be better understood by a more general consideration of how goals determine reactions to members of a stereotyped group. This research focuses specifically on how stereotype activation can be controlled, examining the mechanisms that produce such control. It is posited that stereotype activation is controllable through preconsciously activated goals, and a series of experiments examine this hypothesis. The long-term goal is to better understand the dynamics of social stereotypes and prejudice.