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Number 2/2006
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A story and a stereotype: Two frames for person perception
erzy Trzebiński
Faculty of Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Psychology
Ewa Antczak
Faculty of Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Psychology
Abstract |
One of the ways people understand the world is by creating stories. Making stories
is a powerful and early acquired way an individual interprets social events, own
identity and other persons. (Bruner, 1986, 1991; Sarbin, 1986). Within a narrative
framework a person is understood as a character of a specified history: past,
ongoing, future, possible or imagined. A story context of person perception should
differ from a stereotypical framework. Data from our experiments support the above
assumptions. The narrative mode of person data processing was activated by a priming
procedure. It was contrasted with non-narrative priming and no priming condition.
After the priming, the subjects were provided with data on a stimulus person. It
appeared, that after narrative priming, in comparison to other priming conditions,
(a) traits attribution to a stimulus person are less stereotypical and (b) motive
and emotion categories became more accentuated. Also, after the narrative priming,
the RT of attributions made for the stimuli person is faster for non-stereotypical
categories and slower for stereotypical one, in comparison to contrasting priming
conditions. The same result occurs when stimulus person was presented within
a story vs. trait-list frame: a story context reduces stereotype. The RT data
confirms that the narrative effect occurs also in processes, which are not
consciously controlled.
Key words: social cognition, narratives, narrative understanding, empathy, stereotype
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