Person stereotypes and memory for people.

Tested the proposal by M. Snyder and S. W. Uranowitz (see record 1980-05464-001) that there exists a memory-priming mechanism by which information about a person that is normally unavailable in episodic memory is made available by the activation of a person stereotype that subsumes that information. In 2 experiments 128 college students read a biography of Betty K, who was later labeled as either a heterosexual or a lesbian before Ss took a recognition memory test. A signal-detection model was used to assess the effects of labeling on response bias as well as on the amount of information available in memory. The memory availability hypothesis predicted that Ss primed with a lesbian label for Betty K would have more availability in memory of lesbian information, and Ss primed with a heterosexual label would remember more heterosexual material. Neither experiment produced any improved recognition memory for biographic information due to activation of a sexual stereotype. Both experiments found a response bias (guessing) acting in the direction of the label S received. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)