Suppressing Unwanted Autobiographical Memories Reduces Their Automatic Influences: Evidence from Electrophysiology and an Implicit Autobiographical Memory Test

The present study investigated the extent to which people can suppress unwanted autobiographical memories in a mock crime memory detection context. Participants encoded sensorimotor-rich memories by enacting a lab crime (stealing a ring) and received direct suppression instructions so as to evade guilt detection in a brainwave-based concealed information test. Aftereffects of suppression on automatic memory processes were measured in an autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT). Results showed that suppression attenuated brainwave activity (P300) that is associated with crime-relevant memory retrieval, rendering innocent and guilty/suppression participants indistinguishable. However, guilty/suppression and innocent participants could nevertheless be discriminated via the late posterior negative slow wave, which may reflect the need to monitor response conflict arising between voluntary suppression and automatic recognition processes. Lastly, extending recent findings that suppression can impair implicit memory processes; we provide novel evidence that suppression reduces automatic cognitive biases that are otherwise associated with actual autobiographical memories

Racial assumptions color the mental representation of social class

We investigated the racial content of perceivers’ mental images of different socioeconomic categories. We selected participants who were either high or low in prejudice toward the poor. These participants saw 400 pairs of visually noisy face images. Depending on condition, participants chose the face that looked like a poor person, a middle income person, or a rich person. We averaged the faces selected to create composite images of each social class. A second group of participants rated the stereotypical Blackness of these images. They also rated the face images on a variety of psychological traits. Participants high in economic prejudice produced strongly class-differentiated mental images. They imagined the poor to be Blacker than middle income and wealthy people. They also imagined them to have less positive psychological characteristics. Participants low in economic prejudice also possessed images of the wealthy that were relatively White, but they represented poor and middle class people in a less racially differentiated way. We discuss implications for understanding the intersections of race and class in social perception

The Continuing Use of Problematic Sexual Stereotypes in Judicial Decision-Making

This article examines the continuing use of problematic sexual stereotypes at appellate level in the English and Welsh legal system. Using five cases as illustrations, it argues that, notwithstanding professional training and guidance on sexual equality matters, certain senior judges in this jurisdiction still at least sometimes openly employ crude and problematic sexual stereotypes in their judgments or fail to deal appropriately with the use of these stereotypes by trial judges. The central point is that there is still a significant problem with the open use of crude sexual stereotypes in legal reasoning at a senior level in this jurisdiction, despite the pressure on all members of the legal system to appear to be ‘politically correct’

Effects of Social Stereotypes on Evidence Processing: The Cognitive Basis of Discrimination in Juridic Decision Making

150 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987.Subjects in two experiments judged the culpability of a defendant accused of criminal assault. In some cases the defendant was a member of a stereotyped minority group, and in others he was not. Experiment 1 revealed that stereotypes affected judgments of the defendant's guilt when they were activated before other case evidence but not when they were activated afterward. The effects of stereotypes on guilt judgments were contingent upon the nature of other available information about the defendant's character. When no other information was available, stereotyped defendants were judged more harshly than nondescript ones. When the defendant was described as aggressive, no differences were observed as a function of whether or not a stereotype had been activated. When the defendant was described as nonaggressive, the activation of a stereotype resulted in more lenient judgments. Recall data suggested that when the stereotype and the explicit character information were introduced before the other evidence, subjects used the implications of this more general person information as a guide in processing the subsequently encountered evidence. Specifically, they remembered more of the evidence that was consistent with the implications of the person information (and less of the inconsistent evidence) than did subjects who were given no general person information. These results support the hypothesis that the discriminatory effects of stereotypes arise because they lead subjects to selectively process the other evidence, paying more attention to stereotype-consistent evidence. The alternative possibilities that stereotypic inferences serve as independent information in the judgment process and that stereotypes affect the interpretation given to specific pieces of evidence were not supported. Experiment 2 provided further evidence of selective processing and revealed that the presentation of judgment-irrelevant character information did not reduce the effect of stereotypes, even when it contradicted stereotypic expectations. It was concluded that individuation of minority defendants is not easily accomplished and that stereotypes may prevent such defendants from being evaluated independently of potentially erroneous generalizations about their social group.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD