Critically discuss the cognitive miser model of stereotype activation and use
... One of the reasons that ‘we’ as a society think in terms of groups rather than in terms of individuals can be explained through the “cognitive miser” model. This essay analytically examines the “cognitive miser” model and shows how such a model can activate stereotypes and the use of them. Fiske and Taylor (1984) famously characterized the social perceiver as a ‘cognitive miser’. ... So, we might instead use a simple rule of thumb such as looking at the number of cars in the car park of the restaurant. Another rule of thumb that we use to determine if a decision, choice or viewpoint is correct is to get consensus from others. ... The use of heuristics can result in accurate judgments or can result in biases and errors in our judgment. ... “We have neither the cognitive capacity nor the time to deal with all the interpersonal information we have available to us. Given our limited cognitive resources, it is both simpler (requires less effort) and more efficient (requires less time) for a perceiver to use stereotyped information to make inferences about individuals belonging to a group than it is to analyse each person on an individual basis. ... Support for Fiske and Neuberg’s (1990) argument on the notion that stereotypes save time and energy has been shown by such statements, as “a stereotype is a sluggard’s best friend. ... We can do so best if we can fit them rapidly into a satisfactory category and use this category as a means of prejudging the solution…” (Allport, 1954, p. ... According to Fiske and Neuberg (1990), this is argued to be necessary, because we have a limited cognitive capacity and the stereotypes that occur are an unfortunate necessity. ... In this model, person-based processing is a pure, unbiased way of looking at the world, i. ... stereotyping, is not as an end in itself, but is a by-product, as they suggest, “… social categorization is a necessary, if unfortunate, by-product of our cognitive makeup. ... In simple terms the “cognitive miser” model of stereotyping can be explained as a sequence of stages. ... According to such researchers as Fiske and Neuberg (1990) one of the central concepts of the “cognitive miser” model of stereotypes is that of the level of cognitive activation. ... This level of activation can vary and once it attains a certain threshold or limit then the stereotype is used. One of the earliest studies on stereotype activation was conducted by Dovidio, Evans and Tyler (1986), in which they used a priming method to investigate the consequences of stereotypic association and affective reactions on people’s information processing about blacks and whites. ... Critics of Dovidio et al (1986), such Bargh (1994) claim that it is not possible to state that category activation is an unconditional automatic process because in the experiment the participants are explicitly asked to evaluate how applicable such prime-target relationships are. ... Subsequent research into stereotype activation and use took note of the problems involved in Dovidio et al’s (1986) procedure and used different semantic priming techniques which endeavoured to hide the relationship between the experimental stimuli. ... Further research studies subsequent to that of Dovidio et al (1986) were based on the concept that stereotype activation was an unconditional automatic mental process, based on the logic that perceivers were incapable of avoiding category activation when the prompting stimuli lay outside conscious awareness or appeared to be unrelated to the task in question. ... Such results suggest a common inclination for in-group stereotypes to be comparatively more positive than out-groups, regardless of the precise stereotype content. However as the “cognitive miser” model suggests that stereotypes can be automatically and unconsciously activated, it is supported with evidence from a research study carried out by Devine (1989) who proposed that racial stereotypes were certainly triggered off involuntarily upon discovering an individual’s group membership. ... In Devine’s (1989) study forty White participants were asked to list, no matter what their personal beliefs were, components of the cultural stereotype of Blacks. ... From the results of the study Devine (1989) found that participants who had been presented with the larger percentage of Black related words perceived ‘Donald’ as being more aggressive, thus suggesting that the stereotype for Black people had been subliminally activated. What was also found was that for both participants who were grouped in the high-prejudice condition as well as those participants from the low-prejudice condition showed this effect of stereotype activation. Therefore Devine (1989) demonstrated that the preconscious presentation of racial stimuli was adequate to induce the activation of stereotypic perceptions. ... In a more recent research study by Macrae, Milne and Bodenhausen (1994) further support is given for the “cognitive miser” model of stereotype activation and its application. ... They argued that stereotype application, i. ... using stereotypes, would simplify processing and save valuable cognitive resources, which would therefore be displayed in the perceivers’ performance on a simultaneous mental task.