A Motivationally Based Computational Interpretation of Social Anxiety Induced Stereotype Bias

Lambert et al. (2003) suggested that stereotyping could be thought of as automatic (implicit) responses that may become magnified in certain social settings through a loss of cognitive control. This type of explanation seems reasonable; however, to date, no attempts have been made to provide a more thorough, mechanistic (computational) explanation of the exact processes underlying the phenomenon. This paper proposes just such a detailed explanation using the CLARION cognitive architecture. Our CLARION-based theory takes into account motivational factors as well as the interaction between explicit and implicit processes and is used to provide a plausible interpretation of data from an identification task in Lambert et al. (2003).