The Impact of Outcome Biases on Counterstereotypic Inferences about Groups

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Abstract
Two experiments explored the possibility that the occurrence of inferences biased by different outcomes might produce the perception that a target social group had changed, even in a counter-stereotypic direction. In Experiment 1, subjects made inferences about the conservatism of a political group based on whether the group passed a liberal measure or not. The decision rule in operation at the time of the vote on the issue was manipulated experimentally, so that the measure either passed or failed, even though the same number of group members supported the measure in each vote. When ever the measure passed, subjects saw the group as more liberal than when the measure failed, even if this change was counterstereotypic. In Experiment 2, subjects read about a sequence of performance outcomes that were either consistent or inconsistent with subjects' stereotypes of Black and Asian college students. The magnitude of the impact of outcome biases was as great for the stereotype-inconsistent inferences as for the sterotype-consistent inferences.

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