The effects of perceptual fluency, schema congruency, and sexuality on attribute ratings

Abstract

Previous literature on schema congruency has largely found that schema incongruence is associated with less positive attribute ratings. However, one recent study found the opposite effects where schema incongruence was associated with more positive ratings. A potential reason for their opposing results was that this study analyzed the schema incongruent stimuli of “a sensitive man” and “an assertive female” as one group and did not examine for differences according to gender; however previous literature has stated that schemas are entrenched different according to gender. The purpose of this study was to replicate this previous study that supported a positive affect for schema incongruence to determine whether this potential gender confound was responsible for the inconsistent results, while also looking to see if manipulating perceptual fluency (how easy something is to read) could mitigate this negative impact, particularly for sexuality schemas. Despite previous robust effects, fluency did not impact attribute ratings. We suggest that this is potentially because the schemas for sexuality are too entrenched. Congruency did impact attribute ratings, and in almost all cases individuals who were schema congruent for sexuality were rated as more positive than those who were schema incongruent, suggesting that gender did play a role in previous findings.