Hamilton & Rose (1980)

• Overview - Hamilton & Rose investigated how illusory correlations contribute to the maintenance of social stereotypes.
• EXP 1 - Participants read sets of sentences describing different occupations with pairs of adjectives - doctors (thoughtful, wealthy), and salesmen (enthusiastic, talkative). There were also non stereotypical traits like boring, and demanding.
• EXP 2 - Participants read sets of sentences with adjective pairs either consistent with the stereotypes or unrelated to them
• EXP 3 Adjectives were either inconsistent or unrelated.
• EXP 4 - Participants then estimated how often each of the trait adjectives accurately described members of the occupational group.
• Results - All the studies revealed systematic biases in the participants’ judgements, in that the perceived correlation between traits and occupations was more congruent/similar with existing stereotypical beliefs.
• Demonstrates that - when two infrequent events occur, illusory correlations are triggered. ALSO a correlation between illusory correlations and stereotypes.