Electrophysiology of stereotypes: N400 as a measure of the beautiful is good stereotype

Abstract: Our tendency to associate attractive people with positive traits and unattractive people with negative traits is well documented. Stereotypes have traditionally been measured using either explicit measures such as questionnaires, or implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test. In the present experiment it was tested whether the beautiful is good stereotype could also be measured using the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component which is sensitive to semantic and pragmatic rule violations. While their EEG was measured participants were presented with faces rated as attractive or unattractive, followed by words rated as positive or negative. As predicted, the results showed that the N400 was larger for unattractive-positive compared to unattractive-negative face-word pairs, thus confirming that the N400 is sensitive to stereotype violations. However, there was no difference between attractive-negative and attractive-positive pairs. A main effect of attractiveness on EEG was also found.