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Guidelines for Article Analyses*
Your article analysis should include a concise description and explanation of the following:
I.
Introduction
A. What is the main issue or problem that is being investigated?
B. How does relevant previous research and theory (reviewed in the Introduction) provide a
rationale for the current study?
C. What are the specific hypotheses (including expected direction of relationships between
variables) that are tested in the current study?
D. What independent (or predictor) and dependent (or criterion) variables are being investigated?
How are the variables operationalized (defined and measured)?
E. What is the design of the study (e.g., experimental, correlational, quasiexperimental, etc.)?
II.
Method
A. Participants. Provide the number, type, mean age, sex breakdown, and any specific or unusual
characteristics.
B. Measures/Materials/Apparatus. Provide descriptions of measurement instruments that are used
to measure the main variables (e.g., any survey or questions completed by participants, any
participant behavior that is observed or recorded). When describing self-report measures,
include scale anchors (e.g., 1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree) and a sample item.
C. Procedure. Provide an overall description of procedures followed in data collection, including
random assignment of participants to groups, manipulation of independent variables, how
observations were made, and so on. You do not have to include a description of participant
recruitment, informed consent, credit for participation, etc.; however, you should describe
instructions to participants that are relevant to manipulation or measurement of variables.
III.
Results
A. What are the main results in terms of the hypotheses (i.e., are hypotheses confirmed or not?)?
Describe results that pertain directly to hypotheses in terms of group differences or statistical
relationships. Description of results should be broad; you do not have to include specific
descriptive statistics or test results in your report.
IV.
Discussion
A. What general conclusions were drawn by the researchers?
B. Describe how the current results fit or do not fit with the findings of previous research. Do the
current results add anything unique or important to understanding of the phenomena in
question?
C. What are the limitations/flaws of the current study? How could the results be interpreted
differently?
*Article analysis write-ups should be about 3-5 pages long, typed, double-spaced. Be sure to include the
full citation for your article at the top of page 1. Include references mentioned in the text of your paper on
a separate page at the end of your paper; please use APA style for references (see your Pocket Guide to
APA Style).
Article Analysis: Basic Questions
1. What is the main issue being investigated?
2. What are specific hypotheses?
3. What are the independent and dependent
variables?
4. How are the variables operationalized (defined
and measured)? What is the study design?
5. Describe overall method (participants, measures,
procedure)
6. Describe overall results (were hypotheses
confirmed or disconfirmed? Describe the
relationships between variables)
7. What general conclusions are drawn by the
researchers?
8. What are limitations of the current study? What are
directions for future research?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1977, Vol. 35, No. 9, 656-666
Social Perception and Interpersonal Behavior: On the
Self-Fulfilling Nature of Social Stereotypes
Mark Snyder
Elizabeth Decker Tanke
University of Minnesota
Ellen Berscheid
University of Santa Clara
University of Minnesota
This research concerns the self-fulfilling influences of social stereotypes on
dyadic social interaction. Conceptual analysis of the cognitive and behavioral
consequences of stereotyping suggests that a perceiver's actions based upon
stereotype-generated attributions about a specific target individual may cause
the behavior of that individual to confirm the perceiver's initially erroneous
attributions. A pa/adigmatic investigation of the behavioral confirmation of
stereotypes involving physical attractiveness (e.g., "beautiful people are good
people") is presented. Male "perceivers" interacted with female "targets"
whom they believed (as a result of an experimental manipulation) to be physically attractive or physically unattractive. Tape recordings of each participant's
conversational behavior were analyzed by naive observer judges for evidence of
behavioral confirmation. These analyses revealed that targets who were perceived (unknown to them) to be physically attractive came to behave in a
friendly, likeable, and sociable manner in comparison with targets whose perceivers regarded them as unattractive. It is suggested that theories in cognitive
social psychology attend to the ways in which perceivers create the information
that they process in addition to the ways that they process that information.
Thoughts are but dreams
Till their effects be tried
—William Shakespeare *•
Cognitive social psychology is concerned
with the processes by which individuals gain
knowledge about behavior and events that
they encounter in social interaction, and how
they use this knowledge to guide their actions.
From this perspective, people are "constructive thinkers" searching for the causes of beResearch and preparation of this manuscript were
supported in part by National Science Foundation
Grants SOC 75-13872, "Cognition and Behavior:
When Belief Creates Reality," to Mark Snyder and
GS 35157X, "Dependency and Interpersonal Attraction," to Ellen Berscheid. We thank Marilyn Steere,
Craig Daniels, and Dwain Boelter, who assisted in
the empirical phases of this investigation; and J.
Merrill Carlsmith, Thomas Hummel, E. E. Jones,
Mark Lepper, and Walter Mischel, who provided
helpful advice and constructive commentary.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Mark
Snyder, Laboratory for Research in Social Relations,
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota,
75 East River Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455.
havior, drawing inferences about people and
their circumstances, and acting upon this
knowledge.
Most empirical work in this domain—
largely stimulated and guided by the attribution theories (e.g., Heider, 1958; Jones &
Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1973)—has focused on
the processing of information, the "machinery" of social cognition. Some outcomes of
this research have been the specification of
how individuals identify the causes of an actor's behavior, how individuals make inferences about the traits and dispositions of the
actor, and how individuals make predictions
about the actor's future behavior (for reviews,
see Harvey, Ickes, & Kidd, 1976; Jones et al.,
1972; Ross, 1977).
It is noteworthy that comparatively little
theoretical and empirical attention has been
directed to the other fundamental question
within the cognitive social psychologist's mandate: What are the cognitive and behavioral
consequences of our impressions of other
1
656
From The Rape of Lucrece, lines 346-353.
PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR
people? From our vantage point, current-day
attribution theorists leave the individual "lost
in thought/' with no machinery that links
thought to action. It is to this concern that
we address ourselves, both theoretically and
empirically, in the context of social stereotypes.
Social stereotypes are a special case of
interpersonal perception. Stereotypes are usually simple, overgeneralized, and widely accepted (e.g., Karlins, Coffman, & Walters,
1969). But stereotypes are often inaccurate.
It is simply not true that all Germans are
industrious or that all women are dependent
and conforming. Nonetheless, many social
stereotypes concern highly visible and distinctive personal characteristics; for example, sex
and race. These pieces of information are usually the first to be noticed in social interaction
and can gain high priority for channeling
subsequent information processing and even
social interaction. Social stereotypes are thus
an ideal testing ground for considering the
cognitive and behavioral consequences of person perception.
Numerous factors may help sustain our
stereotypes and prevent disconfirmation of
"erroneous" stereotype-based initial impressions of specific others. First, social stereotypes may influence information processing in
ways that serve to bolster and strengthen
these stereotypes.
Cognitive Bolstering of Social Stereotypes
As information processors, humans readily
fall victim to the cognitive process described
centuries ago by Francis Bacon (1620/1902):
The human understanding, when any proposition has
been once laid down . . . forces everything else to
add fresh support and confirmation . . . it is the
peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than negatives, (pp. 23-24)
Empirical research has demonstrated several such biases in information processing.
We may overestimate the frequency of occurrence of confirming or paradigmatic examples of our stereotypes simply because such
instances are more easily noticed, more easily
brought to mind, and more easily retrieved
657
from memory (cf. Hamilton & Gifford, 1976;
Rothbart, Fulero, Jensen, Howard, & Birrell,
Note 1). Evidence that confirms our stereotyped intuitions about human nature may be,
in a word, more cognitively "available"
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) than nonconfirming evidence.
Moreover, we may fill in the gaps in our
evidence base with information consistent
with our preconceived notions of what evidence should support our beliefs. For example,
Chapman and Chapman (1967, 1969) have
demonstrated that both college students and
professional clinicians perceive positive associations between particular Rorschach responses and homosexuality in males, even
though these associations are demonstrably
absent in real life. These "signs" are simply
those that comprise common cultural stereotypes of gay males.
Furthermore, once a stereotype has been
adopted, a wide variety of evidence can be
interpreted readily as supportive of that
stereotype, including events that could support equally well an opposite interpretation.
As Merton (1948) has suggested, in-group
virtues ("We are thrifty") may become outgroup vices ("They are cheap") in our attempts to maintain negative stereotypes about
disliked out groups. (For empirical demonstrations of this bias, see Regan, Straus, &
Fazio, 1974; Rosenhan, 1973; Zadny &
Gerard, 1974).
Finally, selective recall and reinterpretation
of information from an individual's past history may be exploited to support a current
stereotype-based inference (cf. Loftus & Palmer, 1974). Thus, having decided that Jim
is stingy (as are all members of his group),
it may be all too easy to remember a variety
of behaviors and incidents that are. insufficient
one at a time to support an attribution of
stinginess, but that taken together do warrant
and support such an inference.
Behavioral Confirmation of Social Stereotypes
The cognitive bolstering processes discussed
above may provide the perceiver with an
"evidence base" that gives compelling cognitive reality to any traits that he or she may
658
M. SNYDER, E. TANKE, AND E. BERSCHEID
have erroneously attributed to a target individual initially. This reality is, of course, entirely cognitive: It is in the eye and mind of
the beholder. But stereotype-based attributions may serve as grounds for predictions
about the target's future behavior and may
guide and influence the perceiver's interactions with the target. This process itself may
generate behaviors on the part of the target
that erroneously confirm the predictions and
validate the attributions of the perceiver. How
others treat us is, in large measure, a reflection of our treatment of them (cf. Bandura,
1977; Mischel, 1968; Raush, 1965). Thus,
when we use our social perceptions as guides
for regulating our interactions with others,
we may constrain their behavioral options (cf.
Kelley & Stahelski, 1970).
Consider this hypothetical, but illustrative,
scenario: Michael tells Jim that Chris is a
cool and aloof person. Jim meets Chris and
notices expressions of coolness and aloofness.
Jim proceeds to overestimate the extent to
which Chris' self-presentation reflects a cool
and aloof disposition and underestimates the
extent to which this posture was engendered
by his own cool and aloof behavior toward
Chris, that had in turn been generated by his
own prior beliefs about Chris. Little does Jim
know that Tom, who had heard that Chris
was warm and friendly, found that his impressions of Chris were confirmed during their
interaction. In each case, the end result of
the process of "interaction guided by perceptions" has been the target person's behavioral
confirmation of the perceiver's initial impressions of him.
This scenario makes salient key aspects of
the process of behavioral confirmation in social interaction. The perceiver (either Jim or
Tom) is not aware that his original perception of the target individual (Chris) is inaccurate. Nor is the perceiver aware of the
causal role that his own behavior (here, the
enactment of a cool or warm expressive style)
plays in generating the behavioral evidence
that erroneously confirms his expectations.
Unbeknownst to the perceiver, the reality that
he confidently perceives to exist in the social
world has, in fact, been actively constructed
by his own transactions with and operations
upon the social world.
In our empirical research, we proposed to
demonstrate that stereotypes may create their
own social reality by channeling social interaction in ways that cause the stereotyped individual to behaviorally confirm the perceiver's stereotype. Moreover, we sought to demonstrate behavioral confirmation in a social
interaction context designed to mirror as
faithfully as possible the spontaneous generation of impressions in everyday social interaction and the subsequent channeling influences of these perceptions on dyadic interaction.
One widely held stereotype in this culture
involves physical attractiveness. Considerable
evidence suggests that attractive persons are
assumed to possess more socially desirable
personality traits and are expected to lead
better lives than their unattractive counterparts (Berscheid & Walster, 1974). Attractive
persons are perceived to have virtually every
character trait that is socially desirable to
the perceiver: "Physically attractive people,
for example, were perceived to be more sexually warm and responsive, sensitive, kind, interesting, strong, poised, modest, sociable, and
outgoing than persons of lesser physical attractiveness" (Berscheid & Walster, 1974, p.
169). This powerful stereotype holds for male
and female perceivers and for male and female stimulus persons.
What of the validity of the physical attractiveness stereotype? Are the physically
attractive actually more likable, friendly, and
confident than the unattractive? Physically
attractive young adults are more often and
more eagerly sought out for social dates
(Dermer, 1973; Krebs & Adinolphi, 1975;
Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottman,
1966). Even as early as nursery school age,
physical attractiveness appears to channel social interaction: The physically attractive are
chosen and the unattractive are rejected in
sociometric choices (Dion & Berscheid, 1974;
Kleck, Richardson, & Ronald, 1974).
Differential amount of interaction with the
attractive and unattractive clearly helps the
stereotype persevere, for it limits the chances
for learning whether the two types of individuals differ in the traits associated with the
stereotype. But the point we wish to focus
upon here is that the stereotype may also
PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR
659
plained, the participant would engage in a telephone
conversation with another student in introductory
psychology.
Before the conversation began, each participant
provided written permission for it to be tape recorded. In addition, both dyad members completed
brief questionnaires concerning such information as
academic major in college and high school of graduation. These questionnaires, it was explained, would
provide the partners with some information about
each other with which to start the conversation.
Activating the perceiver's stereotype. The gettingacquainted interaction permitted control of the information that each male perceiver received about
the physical attractiveness of his female target. When
male perceivers learned about the biographical information questionnaires, they also learned that each
person would receive a snapshot of the other member of the dyad, because "other people in the experiment have told us they feel more comfortable
when they have a mental picture of the person
they're talking to." The experimenter then used a
Polaroid camera to photograph the male. No mention of any snapshots was made to female participants.
When each male perceiver received his partner's
biographical information form, it arrived in a folder
containing a Polaroid snapshot, ostensibly of his
partner. Although the biographical information had
indeed been provided by his partner, the photograph
was not. It was one of eight photographs that had
been prepared in advance.
Twenty females students from several local colleges assisted (in return for $5) in the preparation
of stimulus materials by allowing us to take Polaroid
snapshots of them. Each photographic subject wore
casual dress, each was smiling, and each agreed (in
writing) to allow us to use her photograph. Twenty
college-age men then rated the attractiveness of each
picture on a 10-point scale.2 We then chose the four
pictures that had received the highest attractiveness
ratings (M = 8.10) and the four photos that had
received the lowest ratings (Af = 2.56). There was
Method
virtually no overlap in ratings of the two sets of
Participants
pictures.
Male perceivers were assigned randomly to one
Fifty-one male and 51 female undergraduates at of two conditions of perceived physical attractivethe University of Minnesota participated, for extra ness of their targets. Males in the attractive target
course credit, in a study of "the processes by which condition received folders containing their partners'
people become acquainted with each other." Par- biographical information form and one of the four
ticipants were scheduled in pairs of previously un- attractive photographs. Males in the unattractive
acquainted males and females.
target condition received folders containing their
partners' biographical information form and one of
The Interaction Between Perceiver and Target the four unattractive photographs. Female targets
knew nothing of the photographs possessed by their
To insure that participants would not see each male interaction partners, nor did they receive snapother before their interactions, they arrived at sepa- shops of their partners.
The perceiver's stereotype-based attributions. Berate experimental rooms on separate corridors. The
experimenter informed each participant that she was fore initiating his getting-acquainted conversation,
studying acquaintance processes in social relationships. Specifically, she was investigating the differ2
The interrater correlations of these ratings of
ences between those initial interactions that involve
nonverbal communication and those, such as tele- attractiveness ranged from .45 to .92, with an avphone conversations, that do not. Thus, she ex- erage interrater correlation of .74.
channel interaction so that it behaviorally
confirms itself. Individuals may have different
styles of interaction for those whom they
perceive to be physically attractive and for
those whom they consider unattractive. These
differences in interaction style may in turn
elicit and nurture behaviors from the target
person that are in accord with the stereotype.
That is, the physically attractive may actually come to behave in a friendly, likable,
sociable manner—not because they necessarily
possess these dispositions, but because the
behavior of others elicits and maintains behaviors taken to be manifestations of such
traits.
Accordingly, we sought to demonstrate the
behavioral confirmation of the physical attractiveness stereotype in dyadic social interaction. In order to do so, pairs of previously
unacquainted individuals (designated, for our
purposes, as a perceiver and a target) interacted in a getting-acquainted situation that
had been constructed to allow us to control
the information that one member of the dyad
(the male perceiver) received about the physical attractiveness of the other individual (the
female target). To measure the extent to
which the actual behavior of the target
matched the perceiver's stereotype, naive observer judges, who were unaware of the actual
or perceived physical attractiveness of either
participant, listened to and evaluated tape
recordings of the interaction.
660
M. SNYDER, E. TANKE, AND E. BERSCHEID
each male perceiver rated his initial impressions of
his partner on an Impression Formation Questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed by supplementing the 27 trait adjectives used by Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972) in their original investigation of the physical attractiveness stereotype with
the following items: intelligence, physical attractiveness, social adeptness, friendliness, enthusiasm, trustworthiness, and successfulness. We were thus able
to assess the extent to which perceivers' initial impressions of their partners reflected general stereotypes linking physical attractiveness and personality
characteristics.
The getting-acquainted conversation. Each dyad
then engaged in a 10-minute unstructured conversation by means of microphones and headphones connected through a Sony TC-570 stereophonic tape
recorder that recorded each participant's voice on a
separate channel of the tape.
After the conversation, male perceivers completed
the Impression Formation Questionnaires to record
final impressions of their partners. Female targets
expressed self-perceptions in terms of the items of
the Impression Formation Questionnaire. Each female target also indicated, on 10-point scales, how
much she had enjoyed the conversation, how comfortable she had felt while talking to her partner,
how accurate a picture of herself she felt that her
partner had formed as a result of the conversation,
how typical her partner's behavior had been of the
way she usually was treated by men, her perception
of her own physical attractiveness, and her estimate
of her partner's perception of her physical attractiveness. All participants were then thoroughly and carefully debriefed and thanked for their contribution
to the study.
Assessing Behavioral Confirmation
To assess the extent to which the actions of the
target women provided behavioral confirmation for
the stereotypes of the men perceivers, 8 male and
4 female introductory psychology students rated the
tape recordings of the getting-acquainted conversations. These observer judges were unaware of the
experimental hypotheses and knew nothing of the
actual or perceived physical attractiveness of the
individuals on the tapes. They listened, in random
order, to two 4-minute segments (one each from the
beginning and end) of each conversation. They heard
only the track of the tapes containing the target
women's voices and rated each woman on the 34
bipolar scales of the Impression Formation Questionnaire as well as on 14 additional 10-point scales;
for example, "How animated and enthusiastic is this
person?", "How intimate or personal is this person's
conversation?", and "How much is she enjoying herself?". Another group of observer judges (3 males
and 6 females) performed a similar assessment of
the male perceivers' behavior based upon only the
track of the tapes that contained the males' voices.3
Results
To chart the process of behavioral confirmation of social stereotypes in dyadic social
interaction, we examined the effects of our
manipulation of the target women's apparent
physical attractiveness on (a) the male perceivers' initial impressions of them and (b)
the women's behavioral self-presentation during the interaction, as measured by the observer judges' ratings of the tape recordings.
The Perceivers' Stereotype
Did our male perceivers form initial impressions of their specific target women on
the basis of general stereotypes that associate
physical attractiveness and desirable personalities? To answer this question, we examined
the male perceivers' initial ratings on the Impression Formation Questionnaire. Recall that
these impressions were recorded after the perceivers had seen their partners' photographs,
but before the getting-acquainted conversation.4 Indeed, it appears that our male per3
We assessed the reliability of our raters by means
of intraclass correlations (Ebel, 1951), a technique
that employes analysis-of-variance procedures to
determine the proportion of the total variance in
ratings due to variance in the persons being rated.
The intraclass correlation is the measure of reliability
most commonly used with interval data and ordinal
scales that assume interval properties. Because the
measure of interest was the mean rating of judges
on each variable, the between-rater variance was
not included in the error term in calculating the
intraclass correlation. (For a discussion, see Tinsley
& Weiss, 1975, p. 363). Reliability coefficients for
the coders' ratings of the females for all dependent
measures ranged from .35 to .91 with a median of
.755. For each dependent variable, a single score was
constructed for each participant by calculating the
mean of the raters' scores on that measure. Analyses
of variance, including the time of the tape segment
(early vs. late in the conversation) as a factor,
revealed no more main effects of time or interactions between time and perceived attractiveness
than would have been expected by chance. Thus,
scores for the two tape segments were summed to
yield a single score for each dependent variable.
The same procedure was followed for ratings of
male perceivers' behavior. In this case, the reliability
coefficients ranged from .18 to .83 with a median of
.61.
4
These and all subsequent analyses are based
upon a total of 38 observations, 19 in each of the
PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR
ceivers did fashion their initial impressions of
their female partners on the basis of stereotyped beliefs about physical attractiveness,
multivariate F(34, 3) = 10.19, p < .04. As
dictated by the physical attractiveness stereotype, men who anticipated physically attractive partners expected to interact with comparatively sociable, poised, humorous, and socially adept women; by contrast, men faced
with the prospect of getting acquainted with
relatively unattractive partners fashioned
images of rather unsociable, awkward, serious,
and socially inept women, all Fs(l, 36) >
5.85, p < .025.
Behavioral Confirmation
Not only did our perceivers fashion their
images of their discussion partners on the
basis of their stereotyped intuitions about
beauty and goodness of character, but these
impressions initiated a chain of events that
resulted in the behavioral confirmation of
these initially erroneous inferences. Our analyses of the observer judges' ratings of the
women's behavior were guided by our knowledge of the structure of the men's initial impressions of their target women's personality.
Specifically, we expected to find evidence of
behavioral confirmation only for those traits
that had defined the perceivers' stereotypes.
For example, male perceivers did not attribute
attractive target and unattractive target conditions.
Of the original 51 dyads, a total of 48 male-female
pairs completed the experiment. In each of the remaining three dyads, the male participant had made
reference during the conversation to the photograph.
When this happened, the experimenter interrupted
the conversation and immediately debriefed the
participants. Of the remaining 48 dyads who completed the experimental procedures, 10 were eliminated from the analyses for the following reasons:
In 4 cases the male participant expressed strong
suspicion about the photograph; in 1 case, the conversation was not tape recorded because of a mechanical problem; and in 5 cases, there was a sufficiently
large age difference (ranging from 6 years to 18
years) between the participants that the males in
these dyads reported that they had reacted very
differently to their partners than they would have
reacted to an age peer. This pattern of attrition was
independent of assignment to the attractive target
and unattractive target experimental conditions
( X 2 = 1.27, ns).
661
differential amounts of sensitivity or intelligence to partners of differing apparent physical attractiveness. Accordingly, we would not
expect that our observer judges would "hear"
different amounts of intelligence or sensitivity
in the tapes. By contrast, male perceivers did
expect attractive and unattractive targets to
differ in sociability. Here we would expect
that observer judges would detect differences
in sociability between conditions when listening to the women's contributions to the conversations, and thus we would have evidence
of behavioral confirmation.
To assess the extent to which the women's
behavior, as rated by the observer judges,
provided behavioral confirmation for the male
perceivers' stereotypes, we identified, by
means of a discriminant analysis (Tatsuoka,
1971), those 21 trait items of the Impression
Formation Questionnaire for which the mean
initial ratings of the men in the attractive
target and unattractive target conditions differed by more than 1.4 standard deviations.5
This set of "stereotype traits" (e.g., sociable,
poised, sexually warm, outgoing) defines the
differing perceptions of the personality characteristics of target women in the two experimental conditions.
We then entered these 21 stereotype traits
and the 14 additional dependent measures
into a multivariate analysis of variance. This
analysis revealed that our observer judges
did indeed view women who had been assigned to the attractive target condition quite
differently than women in the unattractive
target condition, Fm(3S} 2) =40.003, p<
.025. What had initially been reality in the
minds of the men had now become reality in
the behavior of the women with whom they
had interacted—a behavioral reality discernible even by naive observer judges, who had
access only to tape recordings of the women's
contributions to the conversations.
When a multivariate analysis of variance is
performed on multiple correlated dependent
5
After the 21st trait dimension, the differences
between the experimental conditions drop off
sharply. For example, the next adjective pair down
the line has a difference of 1.19 standard deviations,
and the one after that has a difference of 1.02
standard deviations.
662
M. SNYDER, E. TANKE, AND E. BERSCHEID
measures, the null hypothesis states that the
vector of means is equal across conditions.
When the null hypothesis is rejected, the nature of the difference between groups must
then be inferred from inspection of group differences on the individual dependent measures. In this case, the differences between the
behavior of the women in the attractive target and the unattractive target conditions
were in the same direction as the male perceivers' initial stereotyped impressions for
fully 17 of the 21 measures of behavioral confirmation. The binomial probability that at
least 17 of these adjectives would be in the
predicted direction by chance alone is a scant
.003. By contrast, when we examined the 13
trait pairs that our discriminant analysis had
indicated did not define the male perceivers'
stereotype, a sharply different pattern
emerged. Here, we would not expect any
systematic relationship between the male perceivers' stereotyped initial impressions and the
female targets' actual behavior in the gettingacquainted conversations. In fact, for only 8
of these 13 measures is the difference between
the behavior of the women in the attractive
target condition in the same direction as the
men's stereotyped initial impressions. This
configuration is, of course, hardly different
from the pattern expected by chance alone if
there were no differences between the groups
(exact binomial p— .29). Clearly, then, behavioral confirmation manifested itself only
for those attributes that had denned the male
perceivers' stereotype; that is, only in those
domains where the men believed that there
did exist links between physical attractiveness
and personal attributes did the women come
to behave differently as a consequence of the
level of physical attractiveness that we had
experimentally assigned to them.
Moreover, our understanding of the nature
of the difference between the attractive target
and the unattractive target conditions identified by our multivariate analysis of variance
and our confidence in this demonstration of
behavioral confirmation are bolstered by the
consistent pattern of behavioral differences
on the 14 additional related dependent measures. Our raters assigned to the female targets in the attractive target condition higher
ratings on every question related to favorableness of self-presentation. Thus, for example,
those who were thought by their perceivers to
be physically attractive appeared to the observer judges to manifest greater confidence,
greater animation, greater enjoyment of the
conversation, and greater liking for their partners than those women who interacted with
men who perceived them as physically unattractive.0
In Search of Mediators of
Behavioral Confirmation
We next attempted to chart the process
of behavioral confirmation. Specifically, we
searched for evidence of the behavioral implications of the perceivers' stereotypes. Did
the male perceivers present themselves differently to target women whom they assumed
to be physically attractive or unattractive?
Because we had 50 dependent measures 7 of
6
We may eliminate several alternative interpretations of the behavioral confirmation effect. Women
who had been assigned randomly to the attractive
target condition were not in fact more physically
attractive than those who were assigned randomly
to the unattractive target condition. Ratings of the
actual attractiveness of the female targets by the
experimenter revealed no differences whatsoever
between conditions, £(36) = .00. Nor, for that matter,
did male perceivers differ in their own physical
attractiveness as a function of experimental condition, £(36) = .44. In addition, actual attractiveness
of male perceivers and actual attractiveness of
female targets within dyads were independent of
each other, r(36) = .06.
Of greater importance, there was no detectable
difference in personality characteristics of females
who had been assigned randomly to the attractive
target and unattractive target conditions of the
experiment. They did not differ in self-esteem as
assessed by the Janis-Field-Eagly (Janis & Field,
1973) measure, F(l, 36) < 1. Moreover, there were
no differences between experimental conditions in the
female targets' self-perceptions as reported after
the conversations on the Impression Formation
Questionnaire (Fm < 1). We have thus no reason
to suspect that any systematic, pre-existing differences between conditions in morphology or personality can pose plausible alternative explanations of
our demonstration of behavioral confirmation.
7
Two dependent measures were added between
the time that the ratings were made of the female
participants and the time that the ratings were made
of the male participants. These measures were
PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR
the observer judges' ratings of the males—12
more than the number of observations (male
perceivers)—a multivariate analysis of variance is inappropriate. However, in 21 cases,
univariate analyses of variance did indicate
differences between conditions (all ps < .05).
Men who interacted with women whom they
believed to be physically attractive appeared
(to the observer judges) more sociable, sexually warm, interesting, independent, sexually
permissive, bold, outgoing, humorous, obvious,
and socially adept than their counterparts in
the unattractive target condition. Moreover,
these men were seen as more attractive, more
confident, and more animated in their conversation than their counterparts. Further,
they were considered by the observer judges
to be more comfortable, to enjoy themselves
more, to like their partners more, to take
the initiative more often, to use their voices
more effectively, to see their women partners
as more attractive and, finally, to be seen as
more attractive by their partners than men
in the unattractive target condition.
It appears, then, that differences in the
level of sociability manifested and expressed
by the male perceivers may have been a key
factor in bringing out reciprocating patterns
of expression in the target women. One reason that target women who had been labeled
as attractive may have reciprocated these
sociable overtures is that they regarded their
partners' images of them as more accurate,
F(l, 28) = 6.75, p < .02, and their interaction style to be more typical of the way men
generally treated them, F ( l , 28) = 4.79, p <
.04, than did women in the unattractive target condition.8 These individuals, perhaps, rejected their partners' treatment of them as
unrepresentative and defensively adopted
more cool and aloof postures to cope with
their situations.
Discussion
Of what consequence are our social stereotypes? Our research suggests that stereotypes
can and do channel dyadic interaction so as
responses to the questions, "How interested is he
in his partner?" and "How attractive does he think
his partner is?".
663
to create their own social reality. In our demonstration, pairs of individuals got acquainted
with each other in a situation that allowed us
to control the information that one member
of the dyad (the perceiver) received about
the physical attractiveness of the other person (the target). Our perceivers, in anticipation of interaction, fashioned erroneous images
of their specific partners that reflected their
general stereotypes about physical attractiveness. Moreover, our perceivers had very different patterns and styles of interaction for
those whom they perceived to be physically
attractive and unattractive. These differences
in self-presentation and interaction style, in
turn, elicited and nurtured behaviors of the
target that were consistent with the perceivers' initial stereotypes. Targets who were perceived (unbeknownst to them) to be physically attractive actually came to behave in a
friendly, likable, and sociable manner. The
perceivers' attributions about their targets
based upon their stereotyped intuitions about
the world had initiated a process that produced behavioral confirmation of those attributions. The initially erroneous attributions
of the perceivers had become real: The stereotype had truly functioned as a self-fulfilling
prophecy (Merton, 1948).9
We regard our investigation as a particularly compelling demonstration of behavioral
confirmation in social interaction. For if there
is any social-psychological process that ought
to exist in "stronger" form in everyday interaction than in the psychological laboratory,
8
The degrees of freedom for these analyses are
fewer than those for other analyses because they
were added to the experimental procedure after four
dyads had participated in each condition.
9
Our research on behavioral confirmation in
social interaction is a clear "cousin" of other
demonstrations that perceivers' expectations may
influence other individuals' behavior. Thus, Rosenthai (1974) and his colleagues have conducted an
extensive program of laboratory and field investigations of the effects of experimenters' and teachers'
expectations on the behavior of subjects in psychological laboratories and students in classrooms. Experimenters and teachers led to expect particular
patterns of performance from their subjects and
pupils act in ways that selectively influence or shape
those performances to confirm initial expectations
(e.g., Rosenthal, 1974).
664
M. SNYDER, E. TANKE, AND E. BERSCHEID
it is behavioral confirmation. In the context
of years of social interaction in which perceivers have reacted to their actual physical
attractiveness, our 10-minute getting-acquainted conversations over a telephone must
seem minimal indeed. Nonetheless, the impact
was sufficient to permit outside observers who
had access only to one person's side of a conversation to detect manifestations of behavioral confirmation.
Might not other important and widespread
social stereotypes—particularly those concerning sex, race, social class, and ethnicity—also
channel social interaction so as to create their
own social reality? For example, will the common stereotype that women are more conforming and less independent than men (cf.
Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clarkson, &
Rosenkrantz, 1972) influence interaction so
that (within a procedural paradigm similar
to ours) targets believed to be female will
acually conform more, be more dependent,
and be more successfully manipulated than
interaction partners believed to be male? At
least one empirical investigation has pointed
to the possible self-fulfilling nature of apparent sex differences in self-presentation
(Zanna & Pack, 1975).
Any self-fulfilling influences of social stereotypes may have compelling and pervasive
societal consequences. Social observers have
for decades commented on the ways in which
stigmatized social groups and outsiders may
fall "victim" to self-fulfilling cultural stereotypes (e.g., Becker, 1963; Goffman, 1963;
Merton, 1948; Myrdal, 1944; Tannenbaum,
1938). Consider Scott's (1969) observations
about the blind:
When, for example, sighted people continually insist
that a blind man is helpless because he is blind,
their subsequent treatment of him may preclude his
even exercising the kinds of skills that would enable
him to be independent. It is in this sense that
stereotypic beliefs are self-actualized, (p. 9)
And all too often it is the "victims" who are
blamed for their own plight (cf. Ryan, 1971)
rather than the social expectations that have
constrained their behavioral options.
Of what import is the behavioral confirmation process for our theoretical understanding
of the nature of social perception? Although
our empirical research has focused on social
stereotypes that are widely accepted and
broadly generalized, our notions of behavioral
confirmation may apply equally well to idiosyncratic social perceptions spontaneously
formed about specific individuals in the course
of every day social interaction. In this sense,
social psychologists have been wise to devote
intense effort to understanding the processes
by which impressions of others are formed.
Social perceptions are important precisely because of their impact on social interaction.
Yet, at the same time, research and theory
in social perception (mostly displayed under
the banner of attribution theory) that have
focused on the manner in which individuals
process information provided them to form
impressions of others may underestimate the
extent to which information received in actual
social interaction is a product of the perceiver's own actions toward the target individual.
More careful attention must clearly be paid
to the ways in which perceivers create or construct the information that they process in
addition to the ways in which they process
that information. Events in the social world
may be as much the effects of our perceptions
of those events as they are the causes of those
perceptions.
From this perspective, it becomes easier to
appreciate the perceiver's stubborn tendency
to fashion images of others largely in trait
terms (e.g., Jones & Nisbett, 1972), despite
the poverty of evidence for the pervasive
cross-situational consistencies in social behavior that the existence of "true" traits
would demand (e.g., Mischel, 1968). This
tendency, dubbed by Ross (1977) as the
"fundamental attribution error," may be a
self-erasing error. For even though any target
individual's behavior may lack, overall, the
trait-defining properties of cross-situational
consistency, the actions of the perceiver himself may produce consistency in the samples
of behavior available to that perceiver. Our
impressions of others may cause those others
to behave in consistent trait-like fashion for
us. In that sense, our trait-based impressions
of others are veridical, even though the same
individual may behave or be led to behave
in a fashion perfectly consistent with opposite
PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR
attributions by other perceivers with quite
different impressions of that individual. Such
may be the power of the behavioral confirmation process.
Reference Note
1. Rothbart, M., Fulero, S., Jensen, C , Howard, J.,
& Birrell, P. From individual to group impressions: Availability heuristics in stereotype formation. Unpublished manuscript, University of Oregon, 1976.
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