Stereotypes survive contradictory evidence when they emerge from rationalization rather than hasty judgment.

Evidence

That people are ready to invest resources to keep with their initial views and feel compelled to work hard when unexpected evidence pops up is not only detailed in work on person memory, hypothesis confirmation, and stereotype change. This pattern has been reported in many other areas, such as attribution and persuasion. All in all, social-cognition work is thus strongly compatible with the idea that perceivers have a vested interest in the inertia of their beliefs. In line with lessons from attitude change research, our prediction is that stereotypes are likely to be even more resistant if they survive a stage of thorough examination during which perceivers actively reaffirm them. It would thus seem that stereotypes can emerge in two rather different contexts. Besides being handy interpretations of the evidence, highly susceptible to being abandoned or modified whenever more attention is devoted to the stimulus information, they may also result from a thorough rationalization process and should then be seen as deeply rooted beliefs likely to resist most contradictory facts. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1179

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to belief perseverance and motivated reasoning literature (Kunda, Lord et al.), and to the broader theme of belief inertia in post-truth discourse.

Related

• Stereotypes validated through active reaffirmation resist contradictory evidence most strongly (similarity 0.92)
• Stereotypes actively reaffirmed become deeply rooted beliefs that resist contradiction (similarity 0.90)
• Stereotypes persist both from cognitive limits and from identity-serving motivations. (similarity 0.86)
• Maintaining a stereotype against deviant evidence requires attentional resources people willingly spend (similarity 0.83)
• Stereotypes are self-fulfilling prophecies that perpetuate the status quo endogenously (similarity 0.83)
• Stereotypes survive only when perceivers have spare cognitive resources (similarity 0.82)
• Stereotypes shape perception, memory, judgment, and even elicit confirming behavior (similarity 0.82)
• People confirm their initial stereotypes by biased attention and interpretation (similarity 0.81)
• Stereotypes function as cognitive shortcuts that conserve mental effort (similarity 0.81)
• Stereotypes often rationalize preexisting emotions toward outgroups (similarity 0.81)
• Stereotypes elicit confirming behavior and perpetuate the status quo (similarity 0.81)
• Selective evidence use lets people maintain the illusion of being objective while holding prejudice (similarity 0.81)
• People deploy selective perception and motivated reasoning routinely when faced with evidence (similarity 0.80)
• Post-truth roots lie in ancient cognitive bias, academic relativism, and media change (similarity 0.80)
• People form false stereotypes without any kernel of truth (similarity 0.79)