Personality moderators of interpersonal expectancy effects: An integrative research review.

Abstract

We used both quantitative and descriptive procedures to summarize the results of studies examining personality moderators of interpersonal expectancy effects. Five hypotheses associated with this research were identified. Three of these hypotheses specify that expecters who have a greater need to influence others, who have a greater ability to encode nonverbal messages, and who are better liked by their targets should produce target behavior more congruent with their expectancies. The remaining two hypotheses specify that targets who are more susceptible to social influence attempts and who are better decoders of nonverbal communication should be more likely to conform to their expecter's wishes. On average, results were in the predicted direction, but effect sizes were small. Expecter personality may be more influential than target personality. The relation between personality and bias may be influenced by incentives, the length of the task, and the social status of the expecter.In the early 1960s, on the basis of an unanticipated finding in his dissertation research, Robert Rosenthal began a vigorous line of inquiry meant to document and explain the existence of unconscious experimenter bias (Rosenthal, 1985). In one of the first studies of its kind, Rosenthal and Fode (1963) asked 10 graduate and undergraduate students, all of whom had research experience, to help with the development of a test of empathy.Each student experimenter showed subjects 10 photographs of people's faces and obtained the subjects' ratings concerning the degree of success or failure shown in the faces. All experimenters were given identical instructions and were told to administer the photo-rating task in identical ways. However, half of the experimenters were told that it was a well-established finding that the photos depicted successful people, and half were led to expect unsuccessful ratings. In fact, both groups used the same pictures. Results revealed that experimenters expecting more successful ratings obtained more successful ratings from their subjects.The years following this demonstration of experimenter expectancy effects witnessed an enormous amount of related research. Rosenthal and Rubin (1978) summarized over 200 expectancy studies conducted in research settings. The majority of these involved person perception tasks, but studies involving reaction time, inkblot tests, animal and human learning, laboratory interviews, and psychophysical judgments were also represented. The preponderance of evidence in each research area supported the contention that experimenter expectancies can influence research outcomes. Life Cycle of an Artifact McGuire (1969) observed that artifacts in behavioral research have a three-stage life cycle.

The role of expectations in children’s experience of novel events

“…Abundant research suggests that interpersonal expectations create ''expectancy effects,'' whereby positive expectations lead to positive perceptions and negative expectations lead to negative perceptions of experiences (e.g., Cooper & Hazelrigg, 1988;Harris & Rosenthal, 1985;Jussim, 1986;Miller & Turnbull, 1986;Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978;Smith, Jussim, & Eccles, 1999). Such expectancy effects have been studied less among children than among adults, but the available evidence suggests that children's perceptions are similarly affected.…”

“…Regarding expectancies, we know that children's interpersonal perceptions, like those of adults (Cooper & Hazelrigg, 1988;Harris & Rosenthal, 1985;Jussim, 1986;Miller & Turnbull, 1986;Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978), are influenced by their expectancies (Gurland & Grolnick, 2003Harris, Milich, Corbitt, Hoover, & Brady, 1992;McAninch, Manolis, Milich, & Harris, 1993). Similarly, children's interactions and relationships, like those of adults, do not necessarily proceed directly from their expectancies to encounters with others.…”

Four mediation models of teacher expectancy effects on students’ outcomes in mathematics and literacy

“…These factors determine the strength and/or direction of the influence of information on students, on the expectancies formed by teachers, e.g., a low level of cognitive complexity (cf. Brophy 1985;Cooper and Hazelrigg 1988;Harris 1989;Jussim 1986Jussim , 2012Li 2016), teacher expectancy concerning their behaviours, e.g., attributions of student behaviours (cf. Cooper 1985;Darley and Fazio 1980;Good and Brophy 2008;Jussim 1986Jussim , 2012Levesque and Lowe 1992;Li 2016) and teacher behaviours in response to student behaviour (e.g., interaction aims, cf.…”

When Interviewers Desire to Confirm Negative Expectations: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Inflated Applicant Self-Perceptions

“…Most research on expectation-confirmation processes has focused on the perceiversÐ the nature of their expectations, their goals, their personalities, and so forthÐ neglecting target concerns (for exceptions, see Christensen & Rosenthal, 1982;Cooper & Hazelrigg, 1988 ;Copeland, 1994 ;Harris & Rosenthal, 1986 ;Hilton & Darley, 1985 ;Major, Cozzarelli, Testa, & McFarlin, 1988;Smith, Neuberg, Judice, & Biesanz, 1997;Snyder & Haugen, 1995 ;Swann & Ely, 1984 ;Virdin & Neuberg, 1990). It is our belief that a greater focus on the target, particularly with respect to the motivations and interpretive frameworks they bring to such encounters, will prove quite profitable, not only for the understanding of self-fulfilling prophecies in general but, more directly, for applying this information to training successful applicants.…”