The effects of stereotyping on impression formation: cross-cultural perspectives on viewing religious persons

We examined the effects of stereotyping on impression formation when encountering people dressed to represent a religious faith. We used stimulus photographs of eight male and female models dressed casually and a second photograph of one male and one female model in religious attire that was placed beside the control photos of models dressed causally. From each set of photographs, subjects selected a photo of the person with whom they would associate the various positive personality traits suggested by our stimulus questions. Subjects were students from a U.S. Catholic school, a U.S. public school, and a Malaysian Muslim school. All the subjects attributed more of the positive traits to photos of the models who were religiously attired than to photos of those who were casually dressed, but subjects from U.S. schools attributed more of the positive traits to the photos of religiously dressed models than did the subjects from the Malaysian school.