A Study On Stereotype Characteristics Of Individuals With Different Cognitive Styles

Cognitive style refers to an individual's preferred and habitual approach in the information processing,organization and representation,which is regarded as a fundamental individual difference.Numerous studies have indicated that individuals with different cognitive styles act differently in social contexts,yet we know littile about how it functions.According to previous studies,we purport that the difference may be due to the way they organizing and representing social information.Thus,in the present study,we focused on stereotype,which is generally regarded as the cognitive device to economically represent people's information,in order to examine the impact of cognitive styles on social information organization and representation.Serial reproduction,Macrae et al.'s stereotyped memory paradigm and free association test were deployed respectively to investigate the different aspects of the question.This study consists of three experiments.Experiment 1 and experiment 2 employed serial reproduction and Macrae et al.'s stereotyped memory paradigm to explore the impact of cognitive style on the organization and representation of stereotyped information,especially focusing on the role of the presentation of stereotype labels and interpersonal diffusion.Experiment 3 used free association test to exclude the possibility that the different performance found between individuals of different cognitive styles might come from their naturally associated stereotypic attributes corresponding to the labels.The results indicated that cognitive style affects the organization and representation of social information in terms of stereotype.Specifically,when organizing and representing stereotyped information,the Wholists are more sensitive to stereotype-consistent information,and are more inclined to produce and enlarge stereotypes.Furthermore,this phenomenon is more obvious during interpersonal diffusion.As for the Analytics,they are more sensitive to stereotype labels.When a stereotype label is presented,they are inclined to form a more comprehensive and thus less stereotypical impression of the targeted person.