Reducing the Impact of Stereotypical Knowledge during Reading

Four experiments were designed to assess the presence and impact of stereotypical knowledge through an implicit measure of reading comprehension. In Experiments 1 and 3, participants read passages about protagonists in scenarios in which stereotypical knowledge was likely to become activated in memory. Following the descriptions, reading times for target sentences were slowed when they were inconsistent with stereotypical knowledge. In Experiments 2 and 4, a qualification sentence that served to explain why the protagonist would behave in a stereotypically inconsistent manner was added. With this additional information, the slowdown demonstrated in Experiments 1 and 3 for stereotypically inconsistent target sentences was eliminated. Prior research has shown it is very difficult to override activated stereotypical knowledge. The present results are important because this is the first demonstration that an appropriate qualification can at least eliminate any disruption in reading caused by stereotypical knowledge.