Sneaking in through the back door: How category-based stereotype suppression leads to rebound in feature-based effects

Given the dramatic shifts in societal norms to curb overt stereotyping and prejudice, these biases may leak out in more subtle ways than were apparent in the past. Accordingly, we examined how the suppression of stereotypes might affect post-suppression category-based stereotyping and the more subtle feature-based stereotyping. In support of our proposition, participants in the suppression condition used more feature-based, but less category-based stereotypes in their post-suppression task than participants in the control condition. Furthermore, a relation between post-suppression category-based and feature-based stereotyping existed in the suppression condition such that decreases in category-based stereotyping were associated with increases in feature-based stereotyping. Findings as a whole suggest that norms against the expression of stereotypic biases may ironically lead people to be more vulnerable to biases as a function of within-category features.