Northeastern college samples may bias stereotype findings toward a just-world worldview

Evidence

Study 2 lends considerable support to our first three hypotheses. Perhaps, however, students in Amherst, Massachusetts, and their friends or relatives believe, more than do most Americans, that the cultural stereotype endorses a just world where talent and hard work pay off. Perhaps, also, our other findings are limited by other world views peculiar to this region, for example, a politically correct concern with saying something good about almost any out-group. Either kind of sample bias would create a misleading picture. To explore these alternatives, we took our hypotheses outside the northeast. — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 214

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the just-world hypothesis literature (Lerner) and to usual sampling-bias caveats in social psychology.