The effects of expectancy violations on early attention to race in an impression-formation paradigm

Previous research has demonstrated that early attentional components of the event-related potential (ERP) reflect differential attention to race during person perception. There is also evidence that inconsistency between stereotypic information following impression formation leads to greater neural processing in later ERP components. However, research has not examined how expectancy violations following impression formation affect the early attentional processing of race. The current study examined this issue by leading White participants to form impressions of targets based on positive or negative behaviors associated with stereotypes about Blacks or Whites, with the purpose of creating an expectation of Black or White targets. Following each impression formation trial, a target face whose race either violated or confirmed this expectancy was displayed. Participants indicated whether this target could have performed the previous behavior. Results demonstrated that reaction times and early attentional components of the ERP varied as a function of the match between expectancy and the race of target faces, with stereotypic expectancy violating trials yielding longer reaction times and greater N1 and N2 amplitudes than expectancy-confirming trials. Implications for impression formation and person perception are discussed.