Irish Descendants in America

Abstract

There has been very little research investigating the schema that Americans possess of the Irish. The purpose of this paper is twofold: Firstly, we wanted to establish a set of attributes that Americans relate to the Irish, and secondly, we wanted to explore how the Irish stereotype impacts judgments about those of Irish descent. In Studies 1a and 1b we empirically examined attributes most commonly associated with the Irish. These studies indicate that the “alcohol consumer” attribute is a strong component of the Irish stereotype. In Study 2 we provided further evidence for this stereotype attribute by manipulating availability of cognitive resources. In Study 3 we empirically demonstrated how this stereotype attribute can put people of Irish descent at a relative disadvantage.