Reduced Constituent Category Application in Surprising Combinations

In a previous study (R. R. C. Hutter & R. J. Crisp, 2005), the authors suggested

that one way in which perceivers resolve the dilemma of shared membership of

incongruent category combinations is by generating emergent attributes. However, the

authors also found evidence that a corresponding process of reduced constituent facilitation

occurs. In the present research, the authors aimed to isolate this phenomenon using

a response-time methodology. Participants were exposed to subliminal unsurprising

or surprising gender–occupation category-combination primes. The authors observed

facilitation in overall response times on a subsequent lexical decision task to constituent

attributes when the combination primed was unsurprising compared with surprising, but

only for female and not for male combinations. The authors suggest that perceivers reduce

their application of constituent attributes when processing surprising versus unsurprising

combinations.