Kent D. Harber

Teacher Expectations and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Knowns and Unknowns, Resolved and Unresolved Controversies

This article shows that 35 years of empirical research on teacher expectations justifies the following conclusions: (a) Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom do occur, but these effects are typically small, they do not accumulate greatly across perceivers or over time, and they may be more likely to dissipate than accumulate; (b) powerful self-fulfilling prophecies may selectively occur among students from stigmatized social groups; (c) whether self-fulfilling prophecies affect intelligence, and whether they in general do more harm than good, remains unclear, and (d) teacher expectations may predict student outcomes more because these expectations are accurate than because they are self-fulfilling. Implications for future research, the role of self-fulfilling prophecies in social problems, and perspectives emphasizing the power of erroneous beliefs to create social reality are discussed.

The visual analysis of emotional actions

Abstract Is the visual analysis of human actions modulated by the emotional content of those actions? This question is motivated by a consideration of the neuroanatomical connections between visual and emotional areas. Specifically, the superior temporal sulcus (STS), known to play a critical role in the visual detection of action, is extensively interconnected with the amygdala, a center for emotion processing. To the extent that amygdala activity influences STS activity, one would expect to find systematic differences in the visual detection of emotional actions. A series of psychophysical studies tested this prediction. Experiment 1 identified point-light walker movies that convincingly depicted five different emotional states: happiness, sadness, neutral, anger, and fear. In Experiment 2, participants performed a walker detection task with these movies. Detection performance was systematically modulated by the emotional content of the gaits. Participants demonstrated the greatest visual sensitivity to angry walkers. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that local velocity cues to anger may account for high false alarm rates to the presence of angry gaits. These results support the hypothesis that the visual analysis of human action depends upon emotion processes.

Feedback to minorities : Evidence of a positive bias

This research tested the prediction that Whites supply more lenient feedback to Blacks than to fellow Whites. In Study 1, White undergraduates were led to believe that they were giving feedback on essays written by either a Black or a White fellow student. As predicted, feedback was less critical when the supposed feedback recipient was Black rather than White. It was also predicted that the feedback bias would be selective for subjective evaluative domains (i.e., essay content) in contrast to objective evaluative domains (i.e., essay mechanics). An interaction between recipient race and evaluative domain confirmed this prediction. The domain-specific quality of the feedback bias suggests that the bias may arise from social motives rather than from more automatic processes. Study 2 replicated these results.

The Emotional Broadcaster Theory of Social Sharing

This article introduces the Emotional Broadcaster Theory (EBT) of emotional disclosure. EBT proposes that the intrapsychic need to share experiences with others serves the interpersonal function of transmitting news. According to the model, psychologically arousing stories will travel across social networks. In addition, the extent to which stories travel reflects the degree to which the original teller was affected by the experience shared. These hypotheses were tested in a field study wherein college students visited a hospital morgue. Students’ reactions to this experience predicted how many people they told (primary sharing), how many people their friends told (secondary sharing), and how many people their friends’ friends told (tertiary sharing). Within 10 days, nearly 900 people heard about this event through these cascading levels of disclosure. The relation of EBT to discrepancy theories of emotion and to basic beliefs is discussed, as are additional predictions arising from EBM.

Psychosocial resources, threat, and the perception of distance and height: support for the resources and perception model.

Threatening things are often perceptually exaggerated, such that they appear higher, closer, of greater duration, or more intense than they actually are. According to the Resources and Perception Model (RPM) psychosocial resources can prevent this exaggeration, leading to more accurate perception. Two studies tested RPM. Study 1 showed that the perceived closeness of a threatening object (a live tarantula) but not an innocuous object (a cat toy) was moderated by induced self-worth. Further, the more self-worth that participants experienced, the less close the tarantula appeared to them. Study 2 showed that greater levels of self-esteem reduced perceived height, but only among participants prevented from holding a protective handrail while looking down. Together, these studies confirm that resources moderate the physical perception of both distance and height, that resources moderate perception of threats but not nonthreats, that different resources have similar moderating effects, and that psychosocial resources can supplant physical resources.

Modern Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli Attitudes

Anti-Semitism is resurgent throughout much of the world. A new theoretical model of anti-Semitism is presented and tested in 3 experiments. The model proposes that mortality salience increases anti-Semitism and that anti-Semitism often manifests as hostility toward Israel. Study 1 showed that mortality salience led to greater levels of anti-Semitism and lowered support for Israel. This effect occurred only in a bogus pipeline condition, indicating that social desirability masks hostility toward Jews and Israel. Study 2 showed that mortality salience caused Israel, but no other country, to perceptually loom large. Study 3 showed that mortality salience increased punitiveness toward Israels human rights violations more than it increased hostility toward the identical human rights violations committed by Russia or India. Collectively, results suggest that Jews constitute a unique cultural threat to many peoples worldviews, that anti-Semitism causes hostility to Israel, and that hostility to Israel may feed back to increase anti-Semitism.

Self-Esteem and Affect as Information:

This research tests whether people with high self-esteem are more informed by their emotions than are people with low self-esteem. In Study 1, participants listened to a series of disturbing baby cries, rated how much distress these cries conveyed, and reported their own emotional reactions to the cries. As predicted, the relation between participants’ emotional reactions and their cry ratings was strongest at higher levels of self-esteem. In Study 2, self-esteem again determined how strongly participants’ own emotional reactions influenced their baby cry ratings, even though esteem was measured weeks before the experiment and even after controlling for social desirability. Study 3 manipulated self-regard and showed that the correlation between participants’ emotional reactions and their cry ratings was strong for high-regard participants, moderate for control participants, and weak for low-regard participants. These results suggest that self-esteem serves to validate the informational value of feelings.

Emotional Disclosure and Closeness Toward Offenders

Two studies tested whether emotional disclosure increases feelings of closeness toward offenders. In Study 1, participants recalled either someone who had offended them or a neutral acquaintance. “Disclosure” participants then expressed their thoughts and feelings regarding their targets, and “suppression” participants described their targets nonemotionally. As predicted, disclosure increased closeness toward offenders but not toward acquaintances. Study 2 extended these results by including a good friend to test whether disclosure selectively increases closeness toward offenders, and not simply toward any person who evokes strong feelings. This prediction was confirmed. Furthermore, the disclosure effect remained reliable even after controlling for mood. Studies 1 and 2 also showed that closeness toward offenders, but not toward friends or acquaintances, was positively related to the proportion of emotion-related words disclosed. Collectively, these findings suggest that confronting the emotions associated with an offense may be an important first step toward forgiveness.

Self-structure and well-being in life transitions

Two studies examined the effects of self-congruence and negative elaboration on life transitions. Study 1 involved college students considering the transition from college to careers. Students with greater self-congruence reported decreased dejection and higher quality of life. Students with high negative elaboration reported greater dejection and lower quality of life. Students with high self-congruence and low negative elaboration had higher self-esteem than students with high self-congruence but high negative elaboration. Study 2, a prospective study of new mothers, showed that low self-congruence during pregnancy was associated with higher postpartum dejection, but only for mothers with high negative elaboration. Together, these studies indicate that self-congruence promotes, and negative elaboration impairs, well-being. Furthermore, negative elaboration may moderate the effects of self-congruence. For impending transitions (college to career) negative elaboration may decrease the benefit of high self-congruence, and for completed transitions (becoming a mother) negative elaboration may exacerbate the liability of low self-congruence.

Cognitive Training Using Self-Discovery Methods

Improvements in problem solving performance have been achieved when appropriate strategies are explained, demonstrated, or modeled for older adults. The present study attempted cognitive training of Ravens Progressive Matrices using guided self‐discovery, but without directly providing strategies. Thirty‐six older and 36 younger adults were pretested, underwent training, and were posttested. There were three training conditions: (1) participants were prompted by questioning to attend to all components of the matrix elements, (2) attentional training was augmented by questioning that prompted the participant to discover the correct solution, and (3) a practice‐only control. There was significant improvement from pretest to posttest, but it was the same for all three groups, and there was no significant difference in improvement between younger and older adults. The study failed to find evidence for successful cognitive training when strategies must be self‐discovered rather than simply adopted.