STEREOTYPICAL PROCESSING: THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

Previous research examining stereotype dilution had illustrated the importance of task instructions (Neuberg & Fiske, 1987), outcome dependence (Erber & Fiske, 1984; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987), and information about the target individual (Krueger & Rothbart, 1988; Macrae et al., 1992). This paper presents two studies investigating the stability of an occupational stereotype under different environmental conditions. Specifically it examines the maintenance and dilution of stereotypical judgements about licensees (pub managers) amongst undergraduate students. The results of the first study provide evidence for a context-free stereotype about public house licenses. However, results from the second study suggest that this stereotype is influenced by environmental conditions. That is, subjects do not simply continue to stereotype regardless of context, rather, under certain environmental conditions they individuate and reduce the impact of their stereotypical judgements. Implications for stereotype research and the role of environmental variables are made.     

AN EXPANSION OF ROGER BARKER'S BEHAVIOR SETTING SURVEY FOR AN ETHNO-ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PERSON–ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS

Roger Barker's Behavior Setting Survey is generally recognized as the first major effort to bring physical and social contexts into psychological methodologies for studying human behavior. Since Barker's day, advances in social theory, speech act philosophy, pragmatics and other disciplines within the human sciences have converged with Barker's concerns in various ways, making it possible to sharpen and enrich a number of his formulations. The methodological school of critical qualitative research in many ways occupies the vanguard of approaches synthesizing advances in social theory for methodological application. Critical qualitative research, however, has yet to take advantage of Barker's work on behavior settings. Thus both Barker's work and the work of critical ethnographers can be enriched through a synthesis of their theoretical constructs and procedures. This pilot study explores the advantages of synthesizing behavior setting survey and critical qualitative methodology. A university department was studied through a truncated version of the Behavior Setting Survey (BSS) and also with Carspecken's five-stage model for critical social research. Results are significant on both substantive and analytical levels. It was found that departmental behavior patterns discovered through the BSS are only explicable when their cultural conditions are reconstructed via critical qualitative data analysis. This was true particularly with respect to the ‘circuitry’ discovered by the BSS but explained through cultural reconstructions.