My primary research interests lie in two main areas: stereotyping and prejudice and the effect of factors such as status and attitudes on person memory. My research in both areas is generally approached from a social cognitive perspective. As an example of the first research interest, suppose you learn that an individual “skips class regularly” and you judge this person to be lazy. Under what conditions will your judgment on this occasion make it more likely that similar behaviors performed in the future by the same or a different person will be judged as lazy? How might judgment processes differ for individuals from different ethnic groups observed performing the same behavior? How might judgment processes differ for perceivers who are high versus low in prejudice? My colleagues and I have investigated these questions using a variety of paradigms. We recently introduced a new measure designed to examine whether stereotyping occurs spontaneously for all perceivers, regardless of their level of prejudice (Stewart, Weeks, & Lupfer, 2003).

I have become increasingly interested in exploring factors that might contribute to stereotype change and prejudice reduction and recently had the opportunity to conduct a program evaluation of a well-known, controversial technique for reducing stereotyping and prejudice: Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” diversity training exercise (Stewart, LaDuke, Bracht, Sweet, & Gamarel, 2003). I am also developing my own prejudice reduction training technique -- attribution training -- designed to encourage individuals to consider potential situational causes of people’s actions when observing actions that might otherwise automatically be labeled as reflecting stereotypic traits. Additionally, my research focuses on identifying situations in which guilt and anger about one’s stereotypic thoughts can be channeled into productive prejudice reduction versus leading to an increase in prejudice (e.g., Dovidio, ten Vergert, Stewart, Gaertner, Johnson, Esses, Riek, & Pearson, in press).

The second of my primary research areas concerns the examination of factors that influence memory for information about members of various social groups, particularly gender and ethnic groups. Initial research in this area revealed that outgroup homogeneity (the tendency to perceive members of outgroups as more homogeneous than ingroup members) tends to be a relatively strong effect for male participants, who confused previously described female targets with one another on the memory test more so than they confused the male targets with one another. In contrast, female participants exhibited a tendency toward homogenization of their own gender group, making more errors for female targets than for male targets. The resulting tendency for participants of both sexes to homogenize female targets was interpreted as a response to men's perceived greater status and power in U. S. society. Similarly, male targets associated with higher status occupations were individuated to a greater degree than were male targets with lower status occupation cues. However, female targets were individuated equally regardless of their occupational status cues. The minimal impact of occupation cues on memory for female targets was attributed to the perceived overall lower status of the superordinate female gender group (Stewart & Vassar, 2000).

Having established that men’s perceived higher societal status can prompt both men and women to individuate men more than women, my colleagues and I next attempted to identify a group of individuals who would individuate women and men equally or women more than men despite men’s higher perceived status. As predicted, both male and female participants with a traditional attitude toward women’s roles showed the familiar status-driven pattern of better memory for male targets, whereas male and female participants with more progressive views of women tended to remember the female targets better than the male targets (Stewart, Vassar, Sanchez, & David, 2000). My colleagues and I are presently studying the processes mediating the individual differences in memory for men and women observed in previous studies.