Perceived academic status biases recalled physical size of a person.

Evidence

P. R. Wilson (1968) manipulated academic status by introducing a male stimulus person as a student, demonstrator, lecturer, senior lecturer, or professor, to different groups of observers at Cambridge University. The observers’ subsequent memory estimates of the person’s height were an increasing function of the status variable, with the student recalled to be shortest and the professor tallest. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition, 96

Categorization

• SHARE: Fun specific result — status literally inflates remembered height.
• CANDY: Professors are remembered as taller than students — a compact, surprising experimental fact.
• XREF: connects to: Physically attractive people are judged superior on unrelated personality and character dimensions — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 91; Perceived membership in a stigmatized group expands the opposing group’s effective size — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 821; Initial stereotypes bias perception of identical evidence to confirm themselves — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1175

Broader Connections

• Initial stereotypes bias perception of identical evidence to confirm themselves #expands (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1175
• Perceived membership in a stigmatized group expands the opposing group’s effective size #expands (0.78) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 821