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Subjects were asked to form an impression of either an Irish or a Chinese stimulus person described by two traits. These traits were either part of the stereotype image of the stimulus person's ethnic group, or were unrelated to this image. Results showed that the Irish stereotype traits were used to characterize the Irish stimulus persons and Chinese stereotype traits were used to characterize the Chinese stimulus person, whatever their trait descriptions. In addition, when subjects characterized an individual described by traits unrelated to the individuars ethnic group stereotype, they included these traits in their impressions of that person. Thus the subjects' impressions of such a person included all the stereotype traits associated with the person's ethnic group and these unrelated traits. These results suggest that stereotypes play an important role in social perception. Specifically, the results support the notion that stereotypes are over-generalizations that are applied to any ethnic group member regardless of his or her individual characteristics. However, they also suggest that stereotypes do not act to minimize perceived individual differences between ethnic group members along dimensions independent
Grant et al. (Mon,) studied this question.