Examined how communicators send mixed messages containing an explicit surface content and a covert hidden content. In Study 1, Ss wrote constrained essays presenting either an introverted or extraverted personality. Although authors reported manipulating essay credibility and readers reported relying on credibility to make their judgments, readers succumbed to correspondence bias. In Studies 2 and 3, Ss again prepared either constrained essays (Study 2) or constrained videotapes (Study 3) and included in them a hidden message that would be understood by only their friends but not by strangers. Observers then read these essays or watched these videotapes. Friends detected and decoded the hidden messages, whereas strangers did not. We discuss these findings in terms of social perception and strategic communication.

No abstract

We examined how features of the situation and the target's behavior in the attitude-attribution paradigm may lead observers to infer that the behavior was performed purposefully and how these perceptions may contribute to correspondence bias. Experiment 1 demonstrated that cues suggesting that essay assignment resulted from the target's purposeful action lead to correspondent inferences. When these cues were absent, observers' inferences were not correspondent. Experiment 2 demonstrated that observers are sensitive to cues emitted by the target (facial expressions of delight and disappointment) and that those cues' meaning depends on the context in which they take place. When the essay was freely chosen, the expression had little effect; observers judged that the essay accurately reflected the target's attitudes. When the essay assignment was constrained, observers used the expressions to discount the essay when judging the target's attitudes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of correspondent inferences and correspondence bias.

The present study examined the impact of the interaction goals of perceivers and the characteristics of targets of a negative expectancy on the expectancy confirmation process. Perceivers were led to expect that their future interaction partner might have difficulty performing well under pressure. Perceivers were The order of authorship is alphabetical; each author contributed equally.

No abstract

This study investigated 2 properties of distancing behaviors-a class of deliberate and inadvertent behaviors that insulate persons from the consequences of negative self-discrepant behavior and signal that they should not be associated with that behavior. In Phase 1, high-choice Ss in a multiple audience variation of the induced compliance paradigm who read counterattitudinal essays on affirmative action in the presence of a Black woman did not show typical dissonance-induced attitude change. Phase 2 found that this absence of attitude change was significantly related to the extent to which Ss distanced themselves from theiressays before reading them. In Phase 3, distancing behaviors also served as discounting cues for naive observers and were significantly related to their ratings of Ss' attitudes. These results are discussed in terms of the self-regulatory and communicative roles of distancing behaviors in social interaction.

No abstract

Using independently sampled Gallup World Poll survey data from 140 countries, we explored the relationship between interpersonal contact and attitudes toward migrants from a perspective not typically found in the social psychological literature. We hypothesized that respondents who report personally knowing a migrant living in their home country would be more accepting of migrants generally (using a three-item Migrant Acceptance Index (MAI) score) than respondents who do not know a migrant. Results supported our hypothesis in 134 of the 140 countries suggesting that the strong relationship between interpersonal contact and attitudes toward migrants is near-universal. We also quantified migrant acceptance at the country level, finding a wide spectrum of attitudes toward migrants. Low acceptance countries were located primarily in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and high acceptance countries were located in Northern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss these results in the context of interpersonal contact theory (Allport, 1954) and the larger context of global migration.