Social categorization, focus of attention and judgements of group opinions

Social categorization was hypothesized to affect memory for attitude statements from social groups in such a way that recall would be better for arguments congruent with prior expectations about source group opinions. As a consequence, perceptions of group opinions based on this biased recall of arguments (memory‐based judgements) were expected to be more expectancy‐congruent than judgements of group opinions that were formed during argument exposure (on‐line judgements). To test these predictions, two experiments were conducted in which subjects were exposed to an equal number of supporting and opposing arguments concerning entrance exams. In Expt 1 it was suggested that the arguments originated from a group which subjects expected to be opposed to entrance exams, whereas in Expt 2 in half of the conditions it was suggested that the arguments originated from a group which subjects expected to be supporting entrance exams. Before argument exposure, subjects received processing instructions (judgemental focus) that would either prevent subjects from forming on‐line judgements of group opinions or induce them to form such on‐line opinion judgements. In addition to the manipulation of judgemental focus, the delay between argument exposure and judgement assessment was varied for exploratory purposes. Results showed that argument recall was affected by both prior expectations and own attitudes, although the former effect was moderated by the induced judgemental focus. As predicted, group opinion judgements were more expectancy‐congruent when they could be assumed to be memory‐based than when they were reached on‐line. Implications for the study of social group perceptions and stereotypes are discussed.