Named Styles overriding/not overriding formats

Lets say I select an item by clicking to the left of the bullet. The whole row is highlighted.

Now I open the Sidebar to the Styles Tab, and choose a Named Style - let’s say - purple - and click on it. Then the two I had selected turns purple.

So far, so good.

But let’s say I’ve selected a word in that item and already given it a color. Yellow. Now, when I try to apply a purple named style to that row, it makes purple all the words except the one I’d already colored yellow. In other words, the only way I can override the yellow is to select that word and remove the yellow.

Is there some more efficient way to have a style override another? Do I really have to clear the style first?