Mieth Laura, Bell Raoul, Buchner Axel
a Department of Experimental Psychology , Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf , Germany.
Memory. 2016;24(5):629-39. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2015.1034139. Epub 2015 Apr 27.
The present study was stimulated by previous findings showing that people preferentially remember person descriptions that violate appearance-based first impressions. Given that until now all studies used faces as stimuli, these findings can be explained by referring to a content-specific module for social information processing that facilitates social orientation within groups via stereotyping and counter-stereotyping. The present study tests whether the same results can be obtained with fitness-relevant stimuli from another domain--pictures of disgusting-looking or tasty-looking food, paired with tasty and disgusting descriptions. A multinomial model was used to disentangle item memory, guessing and source memory. There was an old-new recognition advantage for disgusting-looking food. People had a strong tendency towards guessing that disgusting-looking food had been previously associated with a disgusting description. Source memory was enhanced for descriptions that disconfirmed these negative, appearance-based impressions. These findings parallel the results from the social domain. Heuristic processing of stimuli based on visual appearance may be complemented by intensified processing of incongruent information that invalidates these first impressions.
先前的研究发现人们会优先记住那些与基于外貌的第一印象相悖的人物描述，本研究由此受到启发。鉴于迄今为止所有研究都使用面孔作为刺激物，这些发现可以通过提及一个用于社会信息处理的特定内容模块来解释，该模块通过刻板印象和反刻板印象促进群体内的社会定向。本研究测试了对于来自另一个领域的与健康相关的刺激物——看起来令人作呕或美味的食物图片，并配以美味和令人作呕的描述——是否能得到相同的结果。使用多项式模型来区分项目记忆、猜测和来源记忆。对于看起来令人作呕的食物存在新旧识别优势。人们强烈倾向于猜测看起来令人作呕的食物之前与令人作呕的描述相关联。对于那些与这些基于外貌的负面印象不符的描述，来源记忆得到增强。这些发现与社会领域的结果相似。基于视觉外貌的启发式刺激处理可能会因对那些使这些第一印象无效的不一致信息的强化处理而得到补充。
