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 paradigmatic 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 1 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 be

Behavioral scientists have long tried to specify the links between attitudes and behavior. If indeed there were reliable covariation between an individual's attitudes and behavior, it would be possible to predict future behavior from measures of relevant present attitudes. Similarly, it would be possible to infer private attitudes from observations of ongoing behavior. Furthermore, if attitudes and behavior were causally linked, one could change behavior by influencing relevant attitudes and modify attitudes by altering behavioral experience.Yet empirical researchers typically have found but small and inconsistent relationships between measures of attitudes and observations of social behavior (for reviews, see Deutscher, 1973;Fishbein & Ajzen, 1972; Kiesler, CoUins, & Miller, 1969;Wicker, 1969Wicker, , 1971. Similarly, attitude change and subsequent behavior change often proceed independently of one another (e.g., Festinger, 1964). More promising evidence for consistency between behavior and attitudes is provided by studies which have indicated that under certain conditions of free choice, low justification, and high consequences, individuals who have behaved in a manner discrepant from their initial attitudes may change their attitudes to make them more consistent with their new behavior (for a review, see Collins, 1973). However, this behavior-attitude hnk is also often small and occasionally hard to demonstrate (e.g., Collins, 1973). The attitude-behavior and behavior-attitude 1.

Previously validated methods of memory training were used in conjunction with the Folstein Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) to explore the relationship between complexity of learned mnemonic, aging, and subtle cognitive impairment. Subjects were 218 community-dwelling elderly. Treatment included imagery mnemonics for remembering names and faces and lists. There was a significant interaction among age, type of learning task (face-name vs. list), and improvement when controlling for MMSE score. There was also a significant interaction among MMSE score, type of learning task, and improvement when controlling for age. Scores on the more complex list-learning mnemonic were more affected by age and MMSE scores than were scores on the face-name mnemonic. Implications of the findings for cognitive training of the old old and the impaired are discussed.

The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) is a commonly used instrument for assessing mental impairment. Previous proposals for its underlying structure have focused on scores obtained from a single administration of the test. Because the MMSE is widely used in longitudinal studies, we examined the pattern of relations among the rates of chance of the items. Data were obtained from 63 subjects for 1.5 years or more. The relations among the rates of change of the MMSE items were described by a five-factor solution that accounted for 75% of the variance and comprised factors pertaining to orientation and concentration, obeying commands, learning and repetition, language, and recall. This was in contrast to the structure of the scores obtained from a single administration of the MMSE, which was best described by a two-factor solution. In order to provide a clinical validation, factor scores derived from the MMSE factors were used to predict scores on the Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist and the Brief Cognitive Rating Scale.

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We examined whether older and younger adults share a schema for taking medication and whether instructions are better recalled when they are organized to match this schema. Experiment 1 examined age difference in schema organization. Participants sorted medication items (e.g., purpose, dose, possible side effects) according to similarity and then ordered the items to create a preferred instruction set. Cluster analysis of the sort and order data showed that younger and older adults share a schema for taking medication. Secondary regression analyses found that verbal ability (i.e., vocabulary scores) predicted individual differences in schema organization. In Experiment 2 participants recalled instructions that were either compatible with this schema in terms of grouping and order of items or were presented in nonpreferred orders. Younger participants remembered more information than did older participants, but both age groups better remembered and preferred the more schema-compatible instructions. Secondary analyses showed that recall was also positively related to verbal ability. Along with our earlier research, this study suggests that older and younger adults possess a schema for taking medication and that instructions that are compatible with this schema provide an environmental support that improves memory for medication information.

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