Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
Diversity Helps the Uninterested: Exposure to Counter-stereotypes Benefits
People Low (But not High) in Need for Cognition
Ekaterina Damer
Department of Psychology
The University of Sheffield
Sheffield, S1 2LT
United Kingdom
[email protected]
Thomas L. Webb
Department of Psychology
The University of Sheffield
[email protected]
Richard J. Crisp
Aston Business School
Aston University
Birmingham, B4 7ET
United Kingdom
[email protected]
Corresponding author: Ekaterina Damer
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Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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Abstract
Previous research has linked exposure to counter-stereotypical diversity (e.g., a
female mechanic, a Harvard-educated carpenter) to enhanced cognitive outcomes, such
as cognitive flexibility and creativity. However, more recent findings suggest that the
effects of exposure to counter-stereotypes (CSTs) on cognitive performance may
depend on individual differences. In the present work, we explored a novel and
theoretically important moderator of the effect of exposure to CSTs on cognitive
flexibility: Need for Cognition (NFC), also known as epistemic / intellectual curiosity.
Across three experiments (N = 887), we found support for the prediction that people
low in NFC cognitively benefit from exposure to CSTs (d = .36), while people high in
NFC showed decreased cognitive flexibility after being exposed to CSTs (d = -.21).
This suggests that individuals’ motivation to engage in cognitive activity may be an
important consideration for CST interventions. Implications for theory and future
research are discussed.
Keywords: diversity; counter-stereotypes; cognitive flexibility; individual differences;
need for cognition; curiosity
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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Diversity Helps the Uninterested: Exposure to Counter-stereotypes Benefits
People Low (But not High) in Need for Cognition
When the music legend Prince passed away, the New York Times honored him
by writing that he “defied narrow stereotypes about race and gender” and thus “opened
the minds of others” (The New York Times, 2016). Indeed, it is notable that in
contemporary societies we’re increasingly exposed to complex combinations of social,
religious, and cultural identities (e.g., a female CEO, a Muslim hipster, a gay Catholic,
a Harvard-educated carpenter). All these identities have in common that they do not
conform to traditional stereotypes (and thus are termed “counter-stereotypes”, hereafter
abbreviated as “CSTs”). CSTs have become commonplace in many spheres of our
lives. In the news, we learn about social movements advocating the rights of
suppressed minorities, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. On social media, we
see people dismantling clichés, for example the #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign
started by a female engineer on Twitter. And when we travel, change jobs, or move to
new places, we will almost inevitably meet people who challenge our preconceptions.
The question then, is how do people adapt to new forms of social and cultural
diversity?
In principle, two types of psychological responses can follow from the
exposure to new forms of diversity that violate expectations. First, the experience of
CSTs may engender a psychological threat response (Mendes, Blascovich, Hunter,
Lickel, & Jost, 2007), which is characterized by negative affective-motivational states
(e.g., fear, stress). This is because exposure to CSTs – due to their novelty – can
threaten the perception that the environment is predictable. Unpredictability can
increase stress and aggression in both infants and adults (Baram et al., 2012; Simpson,
Griskevicius, Kuo, Sung, & Collins, 2012) and can even contribute to generalized
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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anxiety disorder (Colonnesi et al., 2011; Dugas, Buhr, & Ladouceur, 2004). People
who feel threatened by CSTs can be motivated to protect the self against the perceived
threat by engaging in meaning maintenance processes (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006).
For instance, evidence suggests that when people face uncertainty they are likely to
affirm unrelated values (e.g., their political beliefs; (Steele & Liu, 1983) and derogate
outgroups in order to defend their worldviews (Greenberg et al., 1990). Since these
meaning maintenance processes deflect attention from the experience that violates
expectancies, people in this psychological state are unlikely to be able or willing to
resolve the apparently conflicting social categories and, as a result, existing stereotypes
are likely to continue guiding their judgment and behavior (Crisp & Turner, 2011).
Second, exposure to CSTs can trigger a psychological challenge response
(Tomaka, Blascovich, Kibler, & Ernst, 1997), which is characterized by positive
affective-motivational states (e.g., interest, epistemic curiosity). Here, the person aims
to resolve the apparently conflicting social categories by trying to make sense of them
(a process termed “inconsistency resolution”; (Hutter & Crisp, 2005). For example, the
person might wonder: “Why is this Muslim a hipster?”, “How did this woman achieve
the rank of a CEO?”, or “What made this Harvard-educated man become a carpenter?”
By seeking answers to these questions, judgments are less likely to be based on
existing stereotypes and more likely on impressions of individuals. Thus, we posit that
the psychological challenge response allows the perceiver to adapt to the counterstereotypical diversity experience. In other words, the perceiver engages in meaning
making processes in order to make sense of his/her experience.1
Note that “meaning making” is a more overarching construct than “inconsistency resolution”. Whilst
“inconsistency resolution” specifically refers to one’s resolving of inconsistent social or cognitive
categories, we define “meaning making” as a process of reasoning about how one’s experiences fit into
one’s life more broadly. For example, I might want to understand to what extent some of my
experiences are logical and meaningful or random and confusing in addition to trying to understand how
inconsistent social categories fit together.
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Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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In support of the idea that exposure to CSTs can prompt people to try to resolve
the inconsistencies and engage in meaning making processes, research has
demonstrated that exposure to CSTs can have the opposite effect to that predicted by
the meaning maintenance model – in other words, it can reduce stereotyping and
prejudice (Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004; Hewstone &
Hamberger, 2000; Lai, Hoffman, & Nosek, 2013; Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996;
Prati, Vasiljevic, Crisp, & Rubini, 2015; Vasiljevic & Crisp, 2013). For example, Blair
et al. (2001) found across five experiments that participants who engaged in counterstereotypical mental imagery demonstrated substantially weaker implicit stereotypes
than those who engaged in stereotypical, neutral, or no mental imagery. On the basis of
this and related work, researchers have begun to develop and devise interventions that
involve exposing people to CSTs in diverse settings such as schools (Cameron,
Rutland, Turner, Nicolas, & Powell, 2011).
However, the potentially divergent effects of exposure to CSTs (i.e., threat vs.
challenge responses) reported above also serve as a warning for researchers and
practitioners seeking to apply these findings. They suggest that we should investigate
the effects of exposure to CSTs on psychological functioning in more depth, and in
particular identify variables that can explain the divergent findings outlined above.
This was the aim of the current research.
What determines whether exposure to CSTs evokes a threat or a challenge
response? One answer is provided by Crisp and Turner (2011) CategorizationProcessing-Adaptation-Generalization (CPAG) Model. Crisp and Turner propose that
at least two conditions are necessary for inconsistency resolution to take place: The
perceiver needs to i) be motivated to resolve the inconsistency, and ii) have sufficient
cognitive resources to resolve the inconsistency. If these conditions are met, then
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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according to the CPAG model, the perceiver will seek to resolve the inconsistency by
suppressing existing stereotypical knowledge and re-construing the target with
individualized attributes (e.g., by thinking about the Harvard-educated carpenter as
“non-conformist”). Crucially, Crisp and Turner predict that the process of resolving
inconsistencies will stimulate both greater spontaneous and more long-term cognitive
flexibility.
There is some support for the CPAG model. Evidence suggests that one-off
exposures to CSTs can temporarily boost cognitive flexibility (Di Bella & Crisp, 2015;
Gocłowska, Baas, Crisp, & De Dreu, 2014; Gocłowska & Crisp, 2013; Hutter & Crisp,
2005, 2006; Hutter, Crisp, Humphreys, Waters, & Moffitt, 2009; Prati, Vasiljevic, et
al., 2015). For example, Gocłowska, Crisp, and Labuschagne (2012) found that
thinking of a gender CST (e.g., a female mechanic) boosted creative performance
(measured with the “inadvertent plagiarism” task; (Dijksterhuis & Meurs, 2005) within
a short experimental session. In another line of research, Prati, Vasiljevic, et al. (2015)
showed that thinking of CSTs pertaining to gender (e.g., female mechanic) decreased
dehumanization (i.e., the tendency to consider others as less human than ourselves;
(Haslam, 2006). Importantly, this change was mediated by a decreased reliance on
heuristic thinking, lending support to the CPAG model. Heuristic thinking was
measured by asking participants to complete ten reasoning problems used by Tversky
and Kahneman (1974). Di Bella and Crisp (2015) showed that imagining or
recollecting being exposed to CSTs made women in STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics) fields rely less on heuristic thinking. Here, the
researchers measured heuristic thinking by using ten items from Kahneman and
Tversky (1973); Lehman, Lempert, and Nisbett (1988); Tversky and Kahneman (1971,
1973, 1974, 1983), and West, Toplak, and Stanovich (2008). Finally, research on the
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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emotional effects of exposure to CSTs indicates that exposure to CSTs reduces
intergroup bias by evoking surprise (Prati, Crisp, & Rubini, 2015), suggesting that
affective-motivational states may play a critical role in the meaning making processes
following from exposure to CSTs.
Moderators of the effect of CSTs on cognitive flexibility
Recent evidence also suggests, however, that the effect of exposure to CSTs on
cognitive flexibility may be constrained in certain circumstances. Specifically,
researchers have found that that Personal Need for Structure (PNS) can influence the
effect of exposure to CSTs on cognitive flexibility (Gocłowska et al., 2014; Gocłowska
& Crisp, 2013). PNS refers to individual differences in the tendency to create and use
abstract mental representations (e.g., schemata, scripts, attitudes, and stereotypes) that
are simplified generalizations of previous experiences (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993).
According to Gocłowska and Crisp (2013), people high in PNS seek to organize
information in relatively simple ways and therefore dislike experiences that challenge
their mental representations, such as exposure to CSTs. In contrast, people low in PNS
approach tasks in a more open-minded manner and are less inclined to over-generalize,
which predisposes them to embrace inconsistencies. In line with these predictions, the
authors found that exposure to a CST (a female mechanic) only enhanced creative
performance among individuals low in PNS. Consistent with this, Gocłowska et al.
(2014) found that exposure to different types of social schema violations (e.g., a female
mechanic, an astronaut on the beach, an Eskimo in a desert, a hockey player on a
football field)2 promoted creativity among people low in PNS, but impeded creativity
among people high in PNS.
2
Social schema violations are conceptually superordinate to CSTs. While social schema violations refer
to situations when cognitive schemata about social others are violated (e.g., an astronaut on the beach,
an imam in front of a church), CSTs refer more specifically to situations when stereotypes are violated
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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This work raises several important questions: Under which conditions will
exposure to CSTs boost cognitive flexibility? Who is most likely to benefit from
interventions that expose people to CSTs? How can interventions based on exposure to
CSTs be tailored so that they most effectively address pressing social problems, such
as prejudice and discrimination against people from other social and cultural groups?
In line with Walton (2014), and Kenthirarajah and Walton (2015), we argue
that to be effective, psychological interventions need to be “wise”. That is, they need to
be precise (i.e., based on robust theorizing), they need to target recursive processes
(e.g., the recursive process of stereotyping) to cause lasting change, and they need to
be applied in relevant populations and contexts. It is imperative that we explore
potential moderators of the effect of CSTs on cognitive flexibility if we are to
maximize psychological and social benefits. On a practical level, research on
moderators will inform the work of practitioners by helping them to evaluate where
and how to most effectively apply CST interventions.
Why NFC might influence the effects of exposure to CSTs on cognitive
performance
“In a few people, intellectual curiosity is so insatiable that nothing will
discourage it, but in most its edge is easily dulled and blunted. (…) Some lose
it in indifference or carelessness; others in a frivolous flippancy; many escape
these evils only to become incased in a hard dogmatism which is equally fatal
to the spirit of wonder.” (Dewey, 1997)
The present research set out to explore one theoretically and practically
meaningful potential moderator of the effects of exposure to CSTs on cognitive
flexibility – namely, Need for Cognition (NFC), defined as “an individual’s tendency
(a gay imam, a Black president). In other words, all CSTs are social schema violations, but not all social
schema violations are CSTs.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity” (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, &
Jarvis, 1996). Note that NFC is conceptually distinct from the PNS construct. Neuberg
and Newsom (1993) report only a weak, negative correlation between NFC and PNS
and therefore conclude that these constructs are orthogonal. More precisely, they argue
that NFC represents preferences for the amount of cognitive activity, whereas PNS
represents preferences for the desired outcome of any given cognitive activity. NFC is
also conceptually autonomous from the construct of intelligence because it “is more
predictive of drive-related and goal-oriented behavior and attentional resource
allocation [than intelligence]” (Fleischhauer et al., 2009; Perkins, Tishman, Ritchhart,
Donis, & Andrade, 2000).
We argue that NFC may influence the effect of exposure to CSTs on cognitive
flexibility because CSTs are (by definition) surprising and novel in their nature (Prati,
Crisp, et al., 2015) and because NFC is a marker of intellectual curiosity, which is
defined as the willingness to cognitively engage with novel stimuli (Litman &
Spielberger, 2003; Mussel, 2010; von Stumm, Hell, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2011). In
various studies, NFC has been found to influence how people attend to, elaborate on,
evaluate, and recall information (Peltier & Schibrowsky, 1994). Individual differences
in NFC have been shown to predict complex problem solving and decision making
(Nair & Ramnarayan, 2000). What is more, intellectual curiosity has been identified as
a key determinant of academic achievement (von Stumm et al., 2011). Despite the
evident importance of intellectual curiosity / NFC for cognitive performance in settings
that often involve social and cultural diversity, the interactive effects of these variables
are currently unknown. The present research aims to address this empirical gap.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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The present research
The present research follows calls from authors urging diversity scientists to
drop the “main effects approach”, and to focus on moderating variables instead.
Specifically, van Knippenberg and Schippers (2007) observed that diversity science
has been dominated by studies focusing on main effects that do not take potentially
moderating variables into account, resulting in an approach that cannot capture the
effects of diversity adequately. Further, they have argued that “(…) it seems time to
declare the bankruptcy of the main effects approach and to argue for models that are
more complex and that consider moderating variables in explaining the effects of
diversity” (p. 518).
In line with this recommendation, we tested two hypotheses. Our first
hypothesis was that exposure to CSTs will boost cognitive flexibility (a main effect),
as indicated by previous findings (Gocłowska et al., 2012; Prati, Vasiljevic, et al.,
2015).
Hypothesis 1: Exposure to CSTs boosts cognitive flexibility.
However, we reasoned that NFC might moderate the main effect. More
specifically, we hypothesized that exposure to CSTs may spark surprise and interest in
individuals low in NFC and motivate them to engage in a meaning making process
with respect to the CST individual. In other words, we predicted that exposure to CSTs
would make individuals low in NFC switch from a heuristic, category-based to a
systematic, individuating processing model (Evans, 2008; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990;
Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). This prediction is consistent
with research by Allen, Sherman, Conrey, and Stroessner (2009) and Goodman, Webb,
and Stewart (2009). For example, Allen et al. (2009) found that when people have low
processing capacity and when stereotypes are strong (e.g. violent Black person, warm
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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and friendly woman), then they pay more attention to inconsistent (vs. consistent)
stereotype information. The authors explain this finding by arguing that low processing
capacity implies greater a discrepancy in comprehension of expected and unexpected
information. As a result, they contend that there should be a greater tendency to
carefully process inconsistent stereotype information.
In contrast, for people high in NFC we predicted that exposure to CSTs might
not be surprising enough to make them engage in even more systematic processing
than they engage in by default. What is more, we reasoned that exposure to CSTs
might potentially invoke a cognitively demanding inconsistency resolution process for
people high in NFC (Hutter & Crisp, 2006).
Hypothesis 2: Exposure to CSTs boosts cognitive flexibility for people low in NFC, but
does not affect, or potentially even decreases, cognitive flexibility for people high in
NFC.
Note that initially we had entertained one alternative hypothesis: that people
high in NFC may be more likely to show cognitive flexibility in response to exposure
to CSTs. This is because their high motivation to engage in cognitive activity is likely
to enhance the extent to which they elaborate on the imagined CST experience. In turn,
this could mean that people high in NFC form more cross-cutting explanations for the
inconsistent social categories, which may activate more distal cognitive associations
and networks (Greenwald et al., 2002) and ultimately enhance cognitive flexibility. We
deemed that this alternative explanation is less likely to hold than Hypothesis 2 for two
reasons. First, research by Heintzelman and King (2016) showed that high meaning in
life (MIL) predicted high NFC (r = .23). High MIL also predicted increased reliance
on intuitive / heuristic thinking. Thus, we reasoned that it is unlikely that exposure to
CSTs would increase systematic thinking in people high in NFC. Second, the crucial
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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role of surprise and expectancy violations in perception, thought, and action is very
well documented (Ekman, 1992; Meyer, Reisenzein, & Schützwohl, 1997; Stangor &
McMillan, 1992). The fact that surprise has been shown to mediate the link between
exposure to CSTs and cognitive flexibility (Prati, Crisp, et al., 2015) demonstrates the
importance of surprise after exposure to CSTs. Therefore it is very likely that exposure
to CSTs affects people low in NFC by prompting more surprise and thus more
systematic thinking.
Three experiments tested Hypotheses 1 and 2 by exposing participants to a
variety of CSTs and subsequently measuring their ability to think flexibly. We
developed and validated two paradigms to solicit CST experiences, and measured
cognitive flexibility using the 7-item Cognitive Reflection Test (Frederick, 2005;
Toplak, West, & Stanovich, 2013). In order to test Hypothesis 2, we measured NFC
using the 18-item NFC scale (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984). We always determined
sample sizes and participant inclusion criteria a-priori. We report all measures,
manipulations, and exclusions in all our experiments. The data sets of all three
experiments and the R code used to run all analyses can be found on
https://osf.io/tcfau/.
EXPERIMENT 1
Pre-test
To manipulate exposure to CSTs, participants were asked to read a short paragraph,
which described a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) named David. Participants in the
control condition were asked to imagine that they read the following paragraph on the
Internet: “David is a CEO. He’s also a college graduate (Harvard), born and raised in
the US, and happily married to his wife Linda”. Participants in the experimental
condition were asked to imagine that they read a slightly different paragraph about
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
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David: “David is a CEO. He’s also a college dropout (Harvard), a Mexican immigrant,
and happily married to his husband Michael.” We established that the description of
David provided to participants in the experimental condition was counter-stereotypical
by recruiting 41 US American participants (16 female; Mage = 31.51, SDage = 11.53)
through the crowdsourcing platform Prolific (www.prolific.ac; Peer, Brandimarte,
Samat, & Acquisti, 2017) and randomly assigning them to the two conditions
described above. We report all measures, manipulations, and exclusions in this pretest.
After reading the paragraph about David, participants were asked “To what
extent do you feel surprised?” and “To what extent do you feel astonished?” on a scale
from 0 (Not at all) to 100 (Very much) because previous research indicates that
counter-stereotypes evoke surprise (Prati, Crisp, & Rubini, 2015). Next, to reinforce
the manipulation, participants were instructed to imagine what David and his life are
like and to describe in as much detail as possible their thoughts as to what
characteristics he might possess (open-ended answer). We checked that this
manipulation was successful by asking participants to indicate their agreement with
four statements: “David is a typical CEO” (reverse-coded), “Reading about David
challenged some of my beliefs”, “There isn’t anything puzzling about David’s life”
(reverse-coded), and “Imagining David’s life made me think ‘outside the box’”, again
on a scale from 0 (Strongly disagree) to 100 (Strongly agree)3. The manipulation check
was followed by an attention check (Oppenheimer, Meyvis, & Davidenko, 2009; see
"Additional Materials"). A composite measure of counter-stereotypicality
(manipulation check) was created by calculating the mean of six items (i.e., the two
items reflection surprise (“To what extent do you feel surprised?” and “To what extent
3
For exploratory purposes, we included measures of vividness, and motivation and ability to engage in
imagination task, see “Additional Materials”.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
14
do you feel astonished?”) and the four counter-stereotypicality items). The internal
consistency of these items was good (α = .80). Lastly, participants were asked to
indicate their sex, nationality, ethnicity, and English speaking ability, and were then
thanked and debriefed.
We predicted that David would be perceived as more counter-stereotypical in
the experimental vs. control condition. As expected, participants in the experimental
condition perceived David as significantly more counter-stereotypical (M = 48.09, SD
= 16.67) than participants in the control condition (M = 16.24, SD = 9.95), with t(29) =
-7.20, p(two-tailed) < .0014, Cohen’s d = 2.34. In sum, these findings confirm the
adequacy of the manipulation.
Method
Participants
We calculated the minimum required sample size using G*Power 3.1 (Faul,
Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) based on the following assumptions. Following
previous findings exploring PNS as a moderator of the effect of CSTs on cognitive
flexibility (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2013), we reasoned that the effect would be mediumsized (d = .50). Further, we set the alpha error probability at α = .05 and a-priori power
at 95%. Based on these assumptions, the minimum required sample size was N = 210.
We recruited 397 participants via social media (www.reddit.com) and the
crowdsourcing platform Prolific (www.prolific.ac) to take part in an online experiment
on “imagination and problem solving”. Participants either volunteered their time or
were compensated with GB£1.30 / US$1.80. Because it is often difficult to ascertain
whether or not participants pay attention to the study materials (Oppenheimer, Meyvis,
& Davidenko, 2009), we determined a-priori that only participants who a) took less
4
All p-values in this paper are two-tailed.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
15
than 30 minutes to complete the study, b) passed the attention check (see “Additional
Materials”), and c) were not able to guess the purpose of the study would be included
in our analyses. Thus, 315 participants (177 male, 134 female, 3 other, 1 prefer not to
say; Mage = 29.87, SDage = 10.57; 86% US American nationality, 14% other) were
included in the analyses. We report all measures, manipulations, and exclusions in this
experiment.
Procedure and materials
The experiment comprised three parts and participants completed all tasks
online using the survey software Qualtrics (www.qualtrics.com). In part 1, participants
were randomly assigned to imagine the stereotypical vs. counter-stereotypical CEO
named David (identical to the pre-test). We recorded the amount of time that
participants spent on this task, and asked them to rate their surprise and astonishment
(items were identical to the pre-test). Next, to reinforce the manipulation, participants
were instructed to imagine what David and his life could be like and to describe their
spontaneous thoughts as to what characteristics he might possess (identical to the pretest).
In part 2 of the experiment, we measured participants’ cognitive flexibility
using the 7-item version of the CRT (Toplak et al., 2013). The items of the CRT are
designed such that an incorrect solution to each of the seven questions initially comes
to mind. Cognitive flexibility is demonstrated when the incorrect response is
overridden and, upon further reflection, the correct solution is determined. For
example, one item states that “Jerry received both the 15th highest and the 15th lowest
mark in the class. How many students are in the class?” The intuitive, but incorrect,
answer is “30”; while the correct answer is “29”. Participants were presented with
seven such problems in a counter-balanced order and were given up to two minutes to
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
16
solve each problem. They were automatically redirected to the next page when the time
was up. If they solved the problem in less than two minutes, then they were allowed to
proceed straight away. The problem-solving task was followed by the manipulation
check and attention check, which were identical to the pre-test.
In part 3 of the experiment, participants were first asked how vividly they
imagined the CST individual (David) and his life, and several questions about their
motivation and ability to engage in the imagination task and CRT, their feelings about
David and his life, as well as their awe-proneness (Shiota, & Keltner, & Mossman,
2007; see “Additional Materials” for all items used). Then, participants were asked to
indicate whether they were suspicious at any point that the researchers were
investigating something other than what was stated, and if so, they were asked to
describe what they thought the real purpose of the study was. Two participants were
able to guess the real purpose of the study and were excluded from further analyses.
Next, participants indicated their age, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity,
English speaking ability, and their average marks in core high school subjects (English,
Mathematics, Social Sciences, Science). Finally, participants completed the 10-item
version of the Big Five inventory (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003), the 10-item
curiosity and exploration inventory (Kashdan et al., 2009), and the 18-item NFC scale
(Cacioppo et al., 1984). Upon completing these questionnaires, participants were asked
for their feedback on the experiment, thanked and debriefed.5
Analytic approach
The data were analyzed using moderated regression analyses with the pequod
package in the programming language R (Mirisola & Seta, 2016). Conditions were
5
We included the measures of vividness, motivation and ability to engage with experimental materials,
feelings about David and his life, awe-proneness, sex, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, nationality,
English speaking ability, average marks in core high school subjects, the Big 5, and of trait curiosity
purely for exploratory purposes – they were not central to our hypotheses and are only analyzed if
necessary.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
17
contrast coded as −1 (control) and +1 (experimental) and we computed a mean NFC
score by averaging the 18 NFC items (reverse-coded where appropriate).
Results and Discussion
Manipulation check
To check the adequacy of the CST manipulation, we entered condition and
NFC as predictor variables and the mean CST score (α = .82) as the outcome variable
into the regression model. As expected, there was a main effect of condition (β = .57,
t(310) = 12.12, p < .001), such that participants in the experimental condition
perceived David as more counter-stereotypical (M = 45.25, SD = 20.41) than
participants in the control condition (M = 21.40, SD = 14.41). The effect of NFC (β = .04, t(310) = -.94, p = .35) and the interaction term were not statistically significant (β
= .03, t(310) = .60, p = .55). Thus, our manipulation of counter-stereotypicality was
successful.
Randomization check
Prior to testing Hypothesis 2 – that NFC moderates the effect of exposure to
CSTs on cognitive flexibility – we checked whether NFC differed across conditions.
This is because we had measured NFC as part of the same experimental session and,
although unlikely6, participants’ responses to the measure of NFC may have been
affected by the experimental manipulation. A Welch Two Sample t-test7 revealed that
NFC did not statistically significantly differ across conditions, t(312) = .08, p = .93,
Cohen’s d = .009, suggesting that the manipulation did not affect NFC scores.
The effects of condition, NFC, and their interaction on cognitive flexibility
6
It is unlikely that the experimental manipulation affected responses to the NFC scale because the latter
is a trait measure. Furthermore, to minimize the possibility that the experimental condition affected
responses to the NFC scale, we temporally separated the core experiment from the questionnaires by
instructing participants to first answer the demographic questions.
7
We chose to analyze our data using Welch Two Sample t-tests instead of Student’s t-tests because
Welch t-tests perform better than Student's t-tests whenever sample sizes and variances are unequal
between groups, and give the same result when sample sizes and variances are equal (Lakens, 2015).
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
18
Next, to test Hypothesis 2, we repeated the above moderated regression
analysis, but this time entering the number of correctly solved CRT-items as the
dependent measure of cognitive flexibility. The analyses revealed no main effect of
condition (β = .006, t(311) = 0.11, p = .92), but a statistically significant main effect of
NFC (β = .26, t(311) = 4.81, p < .001). Participants high in NFC consistently
outperformed participants low in NFC on the cognitive flexibility task: Whereas
people high in NFC solved 4.2 problems on average (SD = 1.97), people low in NFC
only solved 2.6 problems on average (SD = 2.21). This is not surprising, as previous
research has demonstrated that NFC predicts cognitive performance (Cacioppo et al.,
1996).
The main effect of NFC was, however, qualified by a marginally statistically
significant two-way interaction between condition and NFC (β = -.15, t(311) = -1.87, p
= .06). To understand the nature of the interaction effect, we inspected the effect of
condition (experimental vs. control) on cognitive flexibility at different levels of NFC.
We defined “low NFC” as 1SD below the mean and “high NFC” as 1SD above the
mean. Our analysis revealed two trends: a positive trend for condition on cognitive
flexibility among people low in NFC (β = 0.24, t(311) = 1.40, p = .16) and a negative
trend of condition on cognitive flexibility among people high in NFC (β = -0.21, t(311)
= -1.24, p = .21). The results are depicted in Figure 1. We plotted the figures in this
article by using Dawson's (2014) Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.8
8
See http://www.jeremydawson.com/slopes.htm for the excel sheets used to plot the figures.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
19
Figure 1. Cognitive flexibility as a function of exposure to CSTs at different levels of
NFC (Experiment 1).
EXPERIMENT 2
Experiment 2 had two goals. First, we aimed to replicate the findings of
Experiment 1 with an alternative manipulation of exposure to CSTs. Second, we
included a measure of mood (the brief mood introspection scale; (Mayer & Gaschke,
1988) because both positive and negative moods have been previously linked to
enhanced cognitive flexibility and creative performance (Baas, Dreu, & Nijstad, 2008;
Cheng, Leung, & Wu, 2011; Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987). Including the brief
mood introspection scale allowed us to investigate whether the effect of exposure to
CSTs on cognitive performance holds when controlling for different mood states, and
thus to rule out mood as an explanation for the effect.
Pre-test
As before, participants were asked to read a paragraph, but this time describing
a person named Mary. Participants in the control condition were asked to imagine that
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
20
they read the following paragraph on the Internet: “Mary is a secondary school teacher
(married, two children), a university graduate (English literature), and UK native.
Mary has a positive outlook on life.” Participants in the experimental condition were
asked to imagine reading the following paragraph instead: “Mary is a political leader
(remarried, two children), a scientist (quantum physics), and a Polish immigrant. Mary
has a positive outlook on life.” We established the counter-stereotypicality of these
new stimulus materials through a pre-test. To do so, we recruited 51 British
participants (25 female; Mage = 34.06, SDage = 10.15) via the crowdsourcing platform
Prolific and randomly assigned them to imagine Mary as the (stereotypical) female
teacher vs. Mary the (counter-stereotypical) female political leader. After reading the
paragraph about Mary, participants were asked how surprised and astonished they felt
and were instructed to imagine what Mary and her life could be like (identical to
Experiment 1). Following this task, participants indicated their agreement to four
statements: “Mary is a typical woman” (reverse-coded), “Reading about Mary
challenged some of my beliefs”, “There isn’t anything puzzling about Mary’s life”
(reverse-coded), and “Imagining Mary’s life made me think ‘outside the box’” (all on a
scale from 0 (Strongly disagree) to 100 (Strongly agree)). We created a composite
measure of counter-stereotypicality by calculating the mean of the six items, i.e. the
surprise and astonishment items and the four counter-stereotypicality items. The
internal consistency of these items was acceptable (α = .69). Lastly, participants were
asked to indicate their sex, age, nationality, ethnicity, and English speaking ability, and
were then thanked and debriefed. We report all measures, manipulations, and
exclusions in this pre-test.
As expected, participants in the experimental condition perceived Mary as
statistically significantly more counter-stereotypical (M = 37.29, SD = 17.35) than
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
21
participants in the control condition (M = 26.47, SD = 10.14), with t(40) = -2.73, p =
.009, Cohen’s d = .76.
Method
Participants
Based on the calculation of statistical power in Experiment 1, we again aimed
to recruit a minimum of 210 participants to Experiment 2. We recruited 616
participants via a university mailing list of a major UK university to take part in an
online experiment on “imagination and problem solving”. All participants who
completed the experiment were entered into a prize draw to win one out of two
GB£50.00 shopping vouchers or one out of five GB£20.00 shopping vouchers. The
attention check and participant inclusion criteria were identical to Experiment 1. The
final sample consisted of 302 participants (90 male, 206 female, 3 other, 3 prefer not to
say; Mage = 24.21, SDage = 8.12; 81% British nationality, 19% other nationality).9 We
report all measures, manipulations, and exclusions in this experiment.
Procedure and materials
The procedure and materials were identical to Experiment 1 except for the new
manipulation (Mary the female teacher vs. political leader) and the addition of the brief
mood introspection scale (Mayer & Gaschke, 1988) after the attention check. To
examine whether exposure to CSTs altered mood states related to cognitive flexibility,
we computed variables representing positive activating moods (7-point Likert-type
scale; lively, happy, peppy, loving, caring, active; α =.74), negative activating moods
9
There are multiple reasons for the sample size dropping from 616 to 302 participants. Experiment 2
was different from Experiment 1 because we sent out a Qualtrics link via an email server reaching the
entire University of Sheffield (all students and employees), inviting them to take part in our online
experiment. As a result, the experiment was not as constrained as it normally would be in a laboratory
setting or on online platforms like Prolific, where you can set a maximum allowed time to complete a
study. People’s participation in this experiment was completely voluntary, so many participants did not
have an incentive to finish it or read the instructions carefully. As a result, N = 151 participants took
longer than 30 minutes to complete the study and N = 163 participants did not pass our attention check.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
22
(jittery, nervous, fed up, gloomy, grouchy, sad; α =.80), positive deactivating moods
(content, calm; α =.52), and negative deactivating moods (tired, drowsy; α =.66).
Results and discussion
Manipulation check
To check the adequacy of the CST manipulation, we examined the effect of
condition on the mean CST score (α = .69) while controlling for the different mood
states. This produced a highly statistically significant main effect of condition (β = .41,
t(273) = 7.43, p < .001), such that participants in the experimental condition viewed
Mary as more counter-stereotypical (M = 34.74, SD = 15.27) than participants in the
control condition (M = 22.94, SD = 11.98). Thus, our CST manipulation was
successful. The main effect of NFC on the mean CST score was non-significant (β =
.04, t(273) = .70, p = .49) and the interaction term was approaching statistical
significance (β = -.08, t(273) = -1.51, p = .13). In addition, there was marginally
statistically significant main effect of negative activating moods on the mean CST
score (β = .14, t(273) = 1.86, p = .06).
Decomposing the interaction effect revealed that participants low in NFC rated
Mary as more counter-stereotypical in the experimental than in the control condition (β
= 7.40, t(273) = 6.26, p < .001). Participants high in NFC also rated Mary as more
counter-stereotypical in the experimental than in the control condition, but as the βvalue indicates, the slope was less steep (β = 4.88, t(273) = 4.18, p < .001) . This
pattern of results suggests that our CST manipulation was more successful for people
low in NFC than for people high in NFC.10
Mood
10
The pattern of results became more pronounced when running the analysis without the mood control
variables (interaction term: β = -.10, t(283) = -1.82, p = .07).
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
23
We ran the same regression analyses on each of the four mood variables. NFC
predicted more positive activating moods (β = .13, t(281) = 2.23, p = .03), but none of
the other types of moods (all ps >.17). There were no statistically significant effects of
the CST manipulation on any of the mood states (all ps > .23). However, condition
statistically significantly interacted with NFC to affect negative activating moods (β =
-.12, t(282) = -1.95, p = .05) and positive deactivating moods (β = .13, t(282) = 2.10, p
= .04), respectively. Simple slope analyses revealed that participants high in NFC
experienced less negative activating moods (i.e., they felt less nervous and jittery) in
the experimental condition than in the control condition (β = -.10, t(282) = -2.07, p =
.04). However, participants low in NFC were unaffected by the experimental condition
(β = .03, t(282) = .70, p = .48). Furthermore, participants high in NFC experienced
more positive deactivating moods (i.e., they felt calmer and more content) in the
experimental condition than in the control condition (β = .09, t(282) = 1.77, p = .08),
whereas participants low in NFC were unaffected by the condition (β = -.06, t(282) = 1.21, p = .23). These findings suggest that the moods of participants low in NFC were
unaffected by the experimental manipulation while participants high in NFC felt
calmer and less jittery in the experimental (vs. control) condition. To control for the
effects between condition and the different mood states on cognitive flexibility, we
entered the four mood variables as covariates to our regression models in all
subsequent analyses.
Randomization check
First, we checked whether NFC differed across conditions. A Welch Two
Sample t-test revealed that NFC did not statistically significantly differ across
conditions (t(277) = -.87, p = .38, Cohen’s d = .10) suggesting that the manipulation
was not associated with NFC scores and so randomization was successful.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
24
The effects of condition, NFC, and their interaction on cognitive flexibility
Next, to test Hypothesis 2, we repeated the above moderated regression
analysis, but this time entering the number of correctly solved CRT-items as the
dependent variable, while controlling for the four different mood states. The analyses
revealed a trend towards statistical significance of experimental condition on CRTperformance (β = .10, t(274) = 1.68, p = .10). Participants in the experimental
condition solved 3.79 problems on average (SD = 2.13), while participants in the
control condition only solved 3.48 problems on average (SD = 2.17). There was also a
highly significant main effect of NFC (β = .23, t(274) = 3.98, p < .001). That is, while
participants high in NFC solved 4.5 problems on average (SD = 1.63), people low in
NFC only solved 2.9 problems on average (SD = 2.25). In addition, there was a
marginally significant main effect of positive activating moods on CRT performance
(β = -.12, t(274) = -1.83, p = .07).
The main effects were, however, qualified by a statistically significant two-way
interaction between condition and NFC (β = -.13, t(274) = -2.29, p = .02).11 Simple
slopes analyses revealed a positive effect of the experimental condition for participants
low in NFC (β = 0.49, t(274) = 2.79, p = .006), but no effect of the experimental
condition on participants high in NFC (β = -0.08, t(274) = -0.45, p = .65). The results
are plotted in Figure 2.
11
The pattern of results remained the same when running the analysis without controlling for the mood
variables (interaction term: β = -.12, t(284) = -2.10, p = .04).
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
25
Figure 2. Cognitive flexibility as a function of exposure to CSTs at different levels of
NFC (Experiment 2).
EXPERIMENT 3
One limitation with Experiments 1 and 2 is that we manipulated counterstereotypicality and measured cognitive flexibility and NFC in the same experimental
session. In Experiment 3, we separated the NFC measure from the experimental
session, which allowed for a more rigorous test of our hypotheses.
Method
Participants
Once again we aimed to recruit a minimum of 210 participants. We recruited
344 participants via Prolific to take part in an online experiment on “imagination and
problem solving”. Participants were compensated with GB£1.60 for completing the
experiment. The attention check and participant inclusion criteria were identical to
Experiments 1 and 2. Our final sample consisted of 270 participants (96 male, 171
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
26
female, 2 other, 1 prefer not to say; Mage = 31.59, SDage = 10.77; 99% British, 1%
other). We report all measures, manipulations, and exclusions in this experiment.
Procedure and materials
The procedure and materials were identical to Experiment 2 except for the
following changes. In part 1 of the experiment, participants answered the NFC
questionnaire, the Big 5 scale, the curiosity inventory, the awe-proneness items, and
demographic questions (sex, age, nationality, ethnicity, English language ability),
whereas part 2 was administered one week later and involved the CST manipulation
and CRT. Also, in Experiment 3 we used two attention checks. The first attention
check was the same as in Experiments 1 and 2 and was placed in part 1 of the
experiment. The second attention check was placed right after “I was motivated to
solve the 7 problems” in part 2 of the experiment (see Additional Materials). In
addition, we included exploratory items measuring self-relevance of / similarity with
the CST individual (see Additional Materials).
Results and discussion
Manipulation check
To check the adequacy of the CST manipulation, we investigated the effect of
condition on CST scores while controlling for the different mood states (cf.
Experiment 2). As expected, there was a significant main effect of condition (β = .49,
t(248) = 9.04, p < .0005), such that participants in the experimental condition viewed
Mary as more counter-stereotypical (M = 38.01, SD = 18.62) than participants in the
control condition (M = 21.63, SD = 10.38). The main effect of NFC on perceived
counter-stereotypicality (i.e., the mean CST score) was non-significant (β = .02, t(247)
= .22, p = .83), but the interaction term showed a trend towards statistical significance
(β = -.11, t(248) = -1.35, p = .18). Moreover, there was statistically significant main
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
27
effect of positive activating moods on the mean CST score (β = .19, t(248) = 3.08, p =
.002).
Decomposing the interaction effect revealed that participants low in NFC rated
Mary as more counter-stereotypical in the experimental than in the control condition (β
= 19.33, t(248) = 7.24, p < .001). Participants high in NFC also rated Mary as more
counter-stereotypical in the experimental than in the control condition, but as the βvalue indicates, the slope was less steep (β = 14.17, t(248) = 5.34, p < .001) . This
pattern of results suggests that our CST manipulation was more successful for people
low in NFC than for people high in NFC.12
Mood
We ran the same regression analyses on each of the four mood variables. There
were no statistically significant main effects of condition or NFC on any of the mood
states (all ps > .22). However, analyses revealed a marginally significant interaction
effect between condition and NFC on positive activating moods (β = -.11, t(258) = 1.71, p = .09). Simple slopes analyses revealed a trend towards statistical significance
for participants high in NFC such that they experienced less positive activating moods
in the experimental than in the control condition (β = -.07, t(258) = -1.65, p = .10).
Analyses also revealed a statistically significant effect for the interaction between
condition and NFC on positive deactivating moods (β = -.15, t(255) = -2.46, p = .02).
Simple slopes analyses revealed a marginally significant effect for participants low in
NFC such that they experienced more positive deactivating moods in the experimental
than in the control condition (β = .11, t(255) = 2.00, p = .05) and a trend towards
statistical significance for participants high in NFC such that they experienced less
positive deactivating moods in the experimental than in the control condition (β = -.08,
12
The pattern of results became more pronounced when running the analysis without the mood control
variables (interaction term: β = -.14, t(256) = -1.82, p = .07).
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
28
t(255) = -1.48, p = .14). Like in Experiment 2, we therefore controlled for mood by
entering the four mood variables as covariates in all subsequent analyses.
The effect of condition, NFC, and their interaction on cognitive flexibility
To test our hypotheses, we repeated the above moderated regression analysis, but this
time entering the number of correctly solved CRT-items as the dependent variable,
while controlling for the four different mood states. The analyses revealed a highly
significant main effect of NFC (β = .28, t(250) = 4.77, p < .001) and no effect of
condition (β = .005, t(250) = .08, p = .94). Like in Experiments 1 and 2, participants
high in NFC outperformed participants low in NFC. That is, while participants high in
NFC solved 3.81 problems on average (SD = 2.38), participants in the control
condition only solved 2.05 problems on average (SD = 1.82). In addition, there was a
marginally significant main effect of positive activating moods on CRT performance
(β = -.13, t(250) = -1.81, p = .07).
Importantly, the main effect was qualified by a significant two-way interaction
between condition and NFC (β = -.16, t(250) = -2.67, p = .008). Simple slopes analyses
revealed a positive effect of the experimental condition for participants low in NFC (β
= .36, t(250) = 1.95, p = .05) and a negative effect of the experimental condition on
participants high in NFC (β = -.34, t(250) = -1.88, p = .06) (Figure 3).13
13
The pattern of results remained the same when running the analysis without controlling for the mood
variables (interaction term: β = -.14, t(258) = -2.44, p = .02).
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
29
Figure 3. Cognitive flexibility as a function of exposure to CSTs at different levels of
NFC (Experiment 3).
META SUMMARY OF EFFECT SIZES ACROSS THE EXPERIMENTS
Because all three experiments investigated the effect of exposure to CSTs on
measures of cognitive flexibility, we employed a fixed-effects meta-analysis model
(using the metafor package in R; (Viechtbauer, 2010) to estimate the average effect of
exposure to CSTs on cognitive performance. Specifically, we computed the sampleweighted (main) effects of condition and NFC on cognitive performance, respectively,
and the effect of condition on low vs. high NFC participants (i.e., for the simple
slopes), respectively.
The average effect of exposure to CSTs on cognitive flexibility across the three
experiments was d = .08, CI.95 [-.06, .22]. The fact that the 95% CI included zero
suggests that exposure to CSTs does not generally boost cognitive flexibility (or at
least not in our sample), thus disconfirming Hypothesis 1. This finding is inconsistent
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
30
with previous research that has reported main effects of exposure to CSTs on cognitive
flexibility (e.g., (Gocłowska et al., 2012; Prati, Vasiljevic, et al., 2015).
NFC had a medium-sized effect on cognitive flexibility across the three
experiments, d = .45, CI.95 [.34, .56], lending strong support for previous findings
showing that high NFC positively predicts cognitive performance (Cacioppo et al.,
1996; Nair & Ramnarayan, 2000).
Exposure to CSTs had a small effect on cognitive performance among
participants low in NFC, d = .36, CI.95 [.16, .56]. This finding supports Hypothesis 2,
that exposure to CSTs boosts cognitive flexibility for people low in NFC. Exposure to
CSTs also had a small influence cognitive performance among participants high in
NFC, d = -.21, CI.95 [-.40, -.01], such that they performed worse in the experimental
than in the control condition.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Three experiments examined how exposure to CSTs affects cognitive
flexibility among participants low vs. high in NFC. As predicted, participants low in
NFC performed better on the Cognitive Reflection Test following exposure to CSTs
than did participants low in NFC who were not exposed to CSTs. Across the three
experiments, the average effect of exposure to CSTs among participants low in NFC
was small (d = .36). Interestingly, exposure to CSTs also influenced the performance
of participants high in NFC on the Cognitive Reflection Test, such that their
performance decreased (d = -.23). Generally, the same pattern of findings was obtained
when controlling for four different mood states (i.e., positive / negative activating
moods and positive / negative deactivating moods). Taken together, the results provide
converging evidence that the CST-diversity interventions helped to close the gap in
cognitive performance between low and high NFC participants.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
31
Theoretical and practical contributions
There has been a surprising dearth of research on the interactive effects of
different types of diversity experiences and motivational constructs such as NFC /
epistemic curiosity (Litman & Spielberger, 2003) on cognitive outcomes. By
identifying one important moderating variable – NFC – and how it interacts with
exposure to CSTs to predict cognitive outcomes, the present research represents an
important step towards closing this gap. More precisely, our experiments support the
hypothesis that exposure to CSTs has a positive effect on the cognitive performance of
people low in NFC. However, our findings also suggest that exposure to CSTs has a
negative effect on the cognitive performance of people high in NFC.
Past research and theorizing can help to understand these effects. It appears that
exposure to CSTs aroused surprise and interest in people low in NFC and made them
switch from a heuristic to a more systematic processing mode, which is in line with
findings by Prati, Crisp, et al. (2015) on the role of surprise in the face of unexpected
category combinations. Previous research has also shown that people who are high in
NFC tend to be open to new experiences and tolerant of diversity (Jost, 2006; McCrae,
1996). It therefore seems plausible that reading about a CST individual would not be as
surprising for people high in NFC as for people low in NFC. These speculations are
supported by the consistent trends towards statistical significance for the interaction
effects of condition and NFC on the CST scores (manipulation check) in Experiments
2 and 3, which showed that participants high in NFC perceived the CST individual
(political leader Mary) as less counter-stereotypical than participants low in NFC.
On a theoretical level, the present research significantly extends previous work
on PNS as a moderator of the effect of exposure to CSTs on cognitive flexibility
(Gocłowska et al., 2014; Gocłowska & Crisp, 2013). Specifically, Gocłowska et al.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
32
(2014) had found that exposure to different types of social schema violations (e.g., a
female mechanic, an astronaut on the beach, an Eskimo in a desert) promoted cognitive
flexibility among people low in PNS, but impeded creativity among people high in
PNS. The authors explained this finding by arguing that people low in PNS may
approach tasks in a more open-minded manner and thus benefit from exposure to
CSTs, whereas people high in PNS dislike tasks that challenge their stereotypic
expectancies, which constrains their creativity (see also Isen & Daubman, 1984;
Zenasni & Lubart, 2011). In contrast, the present research showed that approaching
tasks in an open-minded manner – that is, being high in NFC – did not grant more
cognitive flexibility after exposure to CSTs. In other words, exposure to CSTs
promoted cognitive flexibility among people who were not motivated to think deeply
about issues, but not among people who were motivated to think deeply. Exploring
these apparently contrasting effects will be an important question for future research.14
The most valuable contribution of this paper may be the insight that low
motivation to engage in cognitive activity is not necessarily a liability but rather a
useful starting point for CST interventions. This is presumably because imagined CST
exercises do not evoke a threat response for people low in NFC, but a challenge
response instead, which may explain the improved cognitive performance on the
Cognitive Reflection Test. In sum, the present research provides further evidence for
the importance of exploring individual differences in motivation when researching the
14
Given that we had included a 10-item measure of the Big Five personality traits (Openness,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability), we were able to run
exploratory follow-up analyses regarding the role of Openness in the effect of exposure to CSTs on
cognitive flexibility. Openness was measured using two items: “I see myself as open to new
experiences, complex” and “I see myself as conventional, uncreative [reverse-coded]”. Our exploratory
follow-up analyses revealed highly inconsistent results for Openness. In Experiment 1, the results were
marginally statistically significant and entirely in line with the results for NFC. In Experiment 2 and 3,
however, the results were non-significant and the pattern of results was inconsistent with the results for
NFC. There are various potential explanations for these findings: the brevity of the two Openness items
may have prevented us from adequately capturing the Openness construct. Alternatively, it can be
argued that NFC is a specific facet of Openness and thus significantly differs from the Openness
construct.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
33
psychological effects of CST experiences. Even if people are low in NFC, they do
continuously try to make sense of their experiences, corroborating previous work on
basic psychological needs for predictability / competence (Ryan & Deci, 2000; Stevens
& Fiske, 1995).
On a practical level, these findings also suggest that CST interventions may be
most effective in contexts that involve people with both a low desire for firm answers
(PNS) and a low desire for cognitive activity (NFC). That is, CST interventions may be
best placed in settings that are characterized by generally low cognitive motivation.
Contexts that meet these criteria could be educational institutions (e.g., schools,
universities), businesses, or governmental institutions.
Limitations and future directions
While it appears that CSTs trigger a psychological challenge response for
people low in NFC and cognitive depletion for people high in NFC – which could be
potential mediators of the effect – we do not have direct evidence to support these
claims. Ideally, future research would measure whether people exhibit psychological
threat or challenge responses when exposed to CSTs in both online and offline
contexts (e.g., at work, in everyday interactions). For example, psychological threat or
challenge responses have previously been measured by monitoring cardiovascular
reactivity and hormonal responses (Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996; Tomaka, Blascovich,
Kelsey, & Leitten, 1993). In addition, it will be interesting to explore if some
subgroups of individuals (e.g., people high in NFC) show even more decreased
cognitive performance in certain circumstances, such as intergroup contact (Allport,
1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, 2008) due to self-regulatory fatigue (Inzlicht &
Schmeichel, 2013; Inzlicht, Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014). In future research, it will be
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
34
imperative to measure potential mediators, for example state epistemic curiosity and
self-regulatory fatigue, in order to directly test for mediation effects.
One final important avenue for future research is to examine the effects of
counter-stereotypical diversity in organizations. For example, research by Homan, van
Knippenberg, van Kleef, and de Dreu (2007) showed that informationally diverse work
groups performed better when holding pro-diversity (vs. pro-similarity) beliefs. In
contrast, the performance of informationally homogeneous groups was not affected by
diversity beliefs. Importantly, this effect was mediated by the extent to which the
groups elaborated on the available information (akin to systematic processing). How
would coworkers respond to counter-stereotypical individuals, who challenge their
preconceptions in surprising and potentially extreme ways? For example, imagine you
find out that your British colleague is not only a homosexual immigrant, but also voted
to leave the European Union, is a strong supporter of the conservative party, and an
avid Catholic? Field experiments will play a crucial role in identifying when and how
counter-stereotypical diversity is beneficial in the real world.
Conclusion
Intellectual curiosity has been described as the “third pillar” of academic
performance, joining intelligence and effort as key determinants of academic success
(von Stumm et al., 2011). Surprisingly, the role of intellectual curiosity / NFC in the
context of diversity experiences has been neglected in social psychological research to
date, despite its evident importance for professional and educational settings. The
present findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the effects of exposure
to CSTs on cognitive flexibility, which in turn could help to maximize the gains and
minimize the pains of diversity (Galinsky et al., 2015). The present research into the
effects of exposure to CSTs on cognitive performance demonstrates how various types
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
35
of CSTs can affect different groups of individuals in contrasting and counter-intuitive
ways. With this work, we hope to stimulate future research in this important
intersection of disciplines.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
36
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42
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
Attention Check (Experiment 1-2)
“Please tell us whether you would like to continue with this study. In fact, we are
interested in determining if people read instructions. You must answer this question
correctly in order to participate in this study. Please select the ‘leave the study’ option
and then click on the arrow below to continue.
Would you like to continue with this study?
☐ Continue with the study
☐ Leave the study
Attention Check (Experiment 3)
Please indicate your agreement to the question and statements below. [Scale from 0
(not at all) to 100 (very much)]
(…) “Please move the slider to number eighty.” (…)
Exploratory items: Vividness and motivation / ability to engage in imagination /
problem solving task
“Please indicate your agreement to the question and statements below.” [Scale from 0
(not at all) to 100 (very much)]
1. How vividly did you imagine David and his life?
2. I felt motivated to engage in the imagination task.
3. I found it easy to engage in the imagination task.
4. Forming an impression about David was a complex task.
5. Forming an impression about David was a difficult task.
6. I felt motivated to solve the 7 problems. [not in pretests]
7. I found it easy to solve the 7 problems. [not in pretests]
Exploratory items: Feelings about David and his life
“The following statements refer to feelings you may have about David and his life.
Please indicate your agreement on a scale from 1(not at all) to 100(very much).”
1. I feel admiration.
2. I feel wonder.
3. I feel amazed
4. I feel awe.
5. I feel inspired
6. I feel uplifted
7. I feel curious.
Exploratory items: Awe-proneness
See Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman (2007) for the items used.
Exploratory items: Self-relevance / similarity
Please think back to the imagination task at the beginning and indicate your agreement
to the statements below. [Scale from 0 (strongly disagree) to 100 (strongly agree)]
1. Mary and I are similar.
2. I identify with Mary.
Exposure to Counter-stereotypes and Need for Cognition
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Mary’s situation resonates with me.
I feel connected to Mary.
Reading about Mary stirred my emotions.
I feel very interested in Mary.
Mary is very dissimilar to me.
I don’t really care about Mary or her life.
Mary’s situation is irrelevant to me.
43