Credit: David Lick and Jonathan Freeman
In the experiments, subjects of varying levels of cognitive ability learned about other people, providing an opportunity for subjects to pick up on specific stereotypes. For example, they may have picked up on the fact that most other people with an arbitrary facial feature, such as a wider nose (bottom of figure) as opposed to narrower nose (top of figure), tend to act more negatively. The experiments demonstrated that subjects with higher cognitive ability are better able to detect these patterns, leading them to more readily detect and apply stereotypes, including at an implicit, less conscious level. Critically, the experiments also showed that those with higher cognitive ability are better able to reverse their stereotypes (e.g., men are authoritative, women are submissive) when confronted with new information that challenges their existing associations.