The Impact of Stereotypes on Person Judgement

The research concentrates on the process of information integration in the case of incongruent person descriptions. Social Psychologists have approached this question either from research in the field of stereotyping, or research in the field of impression formation.

In this research the emphasis has however been changed from one of observation to quantification of how stereotypes influence person judgement. The outcome of the research has been to identify some of the rules governing this process. The results indicate that person judgement is not a random process, but governed by definable, predictable rules.