Conjunction fallacy tasks can indirectly measure implicit group stereotyping

Evidence

Richard is 31 years old. On his way to work one day, he accidentally backed his car into a parked van. Because pedestrians were watching, he got out of his car. He pretended to write down his insurance information. He then tucked the blank note into the van’s window before getting back into his car and driving away. Later the same day, Richard found a wallet on the sidewalk. Nobody was looking, so he took all of the money out of the wallet. He then threw the wallet in a trash can. … Next, participants chose whether it is more probable that Richard is (1) a teacher or (2) a teacher who is also an atheist. In this task, the proportion of participants who succumbed to the intuitive pull of the second option provides an indirect and subtle measure of stereotyping of atheists as criminally untrustworthy. For other participants, atheist was replaced with another comparison group, such as gay, feminist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and so on. The question was, would believers make more logical errors when a criminally untrustworthy individual was paired with atheist than with other comparison groups? — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 276

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Explains how the conjunction fallacy (Linda-problem method) is adapted as an indirect stereotype measure.

Related

• The conjunction fallacy works only when a description matches perceived group stereotypes. (similarity 0.82)
• The representativeness heuristic can be repurposed as a covert measure of implicit group stereotypes (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Stereotyping functions as a starting baseline for updating trust estimates #expands (0.78) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 566