Stephanie Madon

Social Perception, Social Stereotypes, and Teacher Expectations: Accuracy and the Quest for the Powerful Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of research on accuracy, error, bias, and self-fulfilling prophecies. It also reviews a research showing that teacher expectations predict student achievement—mainly because they are accurate, although they do lead to small self-fulfilling prophecies and biases. The conditions under which self-fulfilling prophecies might be considerably more powerful are embarked. The results of new research showing that teacher expectancy effects are more powerful among girls, students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds or African–Americans are also addressed. Some evidence of bias show differences in teachers perceptions of students from the differing groups corresponded well to actual differences among those same groups of students. The chapter also analyzes ways to distinguish among self fulfilling prophecies, perceptual biases, and accuracy, and examines processes underlying expectancy-related phenomena—discoveries have some relevance and applicability to many other relationships beyond teachers and students. Conceptual model of relationships between teacher perceptions and student achievement and some evidence regarding the role of stereotypes in naturally occurring person perception is also explained in the chapter.

In search of the powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.

This research examined moderators of naturally occurring self-fulfilling prophecies. The authors assessed whether positive or negative self-fulfilling prophecies were more powerful and whether some targets were more susceptible to self-fulfilling prophecies because of their self-concepts in a particular achievement domain and previous academic records. Participants were 98 teachers and 1,539 students in sixth-grade public school math classes. Results yielded a strong pattern showing that teacher perceptions predicted achievement more strongly for low achievers than for high achievers. Results also yielded a much weaker pattern showing that teacher overestimates predicted achievement more strongly than teacher underestimates. Implications for social perceptual accuracy, self-enhancement theory, and understanding when self-fulfilling prophecies are stronger are discussed.

What do people believe about gay males? A study of stereotype content and strength

ConclusionThe current research examined the content and strength of the gay male stereotype. This focus represents a return to the earliest issues addressed by social psychologists. Although once a major substantive area in social psychology, issues of content gradually gave way to issues of process. However, issues of content and process are inextricably tied to one another. Content studies detail the specific attributes in stereotypes, their strength, valence, and inaccuracy. Process studies use this information to examine when stereotypes will influence social reality and social perception. The current research showed that beliefs about gay males included attributes from multiple stereotype components, formed two subtypes, and varied in strength. These findings have implications for research on issues of process because knowing what people believe about gay males and how strongly they hold those beliefs provides insight into when stereotypes may be most likely to create biases.

Ethnic and National Stereotypes: The Princeton Trilogy Revisited and Revised

Three studies assessed changes in the content, consensus, and favorableness of 10 ethnic and national stereotypes by replicating and extending the Princeton trilogy. Results indicated that throughout the past 60 years, almost all of the ethnic and national stereotypes that were examined had changed in content, and more than half had changed in consensus. Most changes in consensus reflected increases rather than decreases, suggesting that modern members of stereotyped groups may confront stereotypes more frequently than did previous members of stereotyped groups. However, the damaging effects that consensual stereotypes can have on members of these groups may be tempered by the finding that most of the stereotypes became more favorable. These results are discussed in terms of changing social roles, intergroup contact, and stereotype accuracy.

Confirming Gender Stereotypes: A Social Role Perspective

In this research we examined whether emotional vulnerability leads women and men to confirm gender stereotypes. Emotional vulnerability is a state where one is open to having ones feelings hurt or to experiencing rejection. Drawing on the tenets of social role theory and research related to normative expectations, we propose that emotional vulnerability leads to stereotype confirmation, as normative expectations are less risky and easier to enact than nonnormative behavior. Fifty-nine dating couples were randomly assigned to a high emotional vulnerability or low emotional vulnerability discussion with their partners. When the degree of emotional vulnerability was high men confirmed gender-stereotypes. Womens behavior, on the other hand, was not significantly affected by condition. We discuss these findings in terms of the domain in which gender-typed behaviors occur and the social pressures to act in accordance with gender norms.

Am I as You See Me or Do You See Me as I Am? Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Self-Verification

This research investigated the extent to which self-fulfilling prophecies and self-verification occurred among 108 teachers and 1,692 students in 108 sixth-grade public school math classrooms. Results demonstrated three main findings. Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-verification occurred simultaneously in a context where perceivers and targets had highly valid information on which to base their initial perceptions. The availability of highly valid information led perceivers and targets to develop initially similar perceptions before mutual influence took place. High similarity between perceivers’ and targets’ initial perceptions had no effect on the power of self-verification but weakened the effect of self-fulfilling prophecies for some targets. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for extended and close relationships and how the nature of people’s perceptions may influence the power of self-fulfilling prophecies and self-verification.

Reducing the stigma associated with seeking psychotherapy through self-affirmation.

Psychotherapy may be underutilized because people experience self-stigma-the internalization of public stigma associated with seeking psychotherapy. The purpose of this study was to experimentally test whether the self-stigma associated with seeking psychotherapy could be reduced by a self-affirmation intervention wherein participants reflected on an important personal characteristic. Compared with a control group, we hypothesized that a self-affirmation writing task would attenuate self-stigma, and thereby evidence indirect effects on intentions and willingness to seek psychotherapy. Participants were 84 undergraduates experiencing psychological distress. After completing pretest measures of self-stigma, intentions, and willingness to seek psychotherapy, participants were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation or a control writing task, and subsequently completed posttest measures of self-stigma, intentions, and willingness to seek psychotherapy. Consistent with hypotheses, participants who engaged in self-affirmation reported lower self-stigma at posttest. Moreover, the self-affirmation writing task resulted in a positive indirect effect on willingness to seek psychotherapy, though results failed to support an indirect effect on intentions to seek psychotherapy. Findings suggest that self-affirmation theory may provide a useful framework for designing interventions that seek to address the underutilization of psychological services through reductions in self-stigma.

Trait hostility: the breadth and specificity of schema effects

This study examined the limits of information processing biases associated with trait hostility. Ninety-eight participants processed information to evaluate its descriptiveness of themselves, and of actual antagonists and friends whom they knew well. For both self- and other-referent information, dependent measures included evaluations, response latencies, and memory. Results were consistent with the interpretation that trait hostility is associated with cognitive schemata that produce negative biases in the processing of information about others in general, both antagonists and friends. Specifically, hostile individuals evaluated others more harshly, made favorable judgments more slowly, and recalled less favorable information. By contrast, when evaluating hostile and friendly information for self-descriptiveness, hostile individuals did not exhibit biased processing, suggesting that the operation of hostility-related schemata may be limited to the processing of other-referent information. However, hostile individuals did generally tend to respond more slowly when making self-descriptiveness judgments of both clearly hostile and clearly friendly trait adjectives, perhaps reflecting less clarity in their self-concepts with respect to this dimension of personality.

The Use of Stereotypes and Individuating Information in Political Person Perception

This article introduces the political person perception model, which identifies conditions under which perceivers rely on stereotypes (party membership), individuating information (issue position), or both in political person perception. Three studies supported the model’s predictions. Study 1 showed that perceivers gave primacy to target information that was narrowly relevant to a judgment, whether that information was stereotypic or individuating. Study 2 found that perceivers relied exclusively on individuating information when it was narrowly relevant to the judgment and relied on both stereotype and individuating information when individuating information was not narrowly relevant to the judgment but did imply a political ideology. Study 3 replicated these findings in a more ecologically valid context and showed that people relied on party information in the absence of narrowly relevant policy positions and when individuating information did not imply a political ideology. Implications for political person perception and theories of stereotyping are discussed.

The perfect match: Do criminal stereotypes bias forensic evidence analysis?

This research provided the first empirical test of the hypothesis that stereotypes bias evaluations of forensic evidence. A pilot study (N = 107) assessed the content and consensus of 20 criminal stereotypes by identifying perpetrator characteristics (e.g., sex, race, age, religion) that are stereotypically associated with specific crimes. In the main experiment (N = 225), participants read a mock police incident report involving either a stereotyped crime (child molestation) or a nonstereotyped crime (identity theft) and judged whether a suspects fingerprint matched a fingerprint recovered at the crime scene. Accompanying the suspects fingerprint was personal information about the suspect of the type that is routinely available to fingerprint analysts (e.g., race, sex) and which could activate a stereotype. Participants most often perceived the fingerprints to match when the suspect fit the criminal stereotype, even though the prints did not actually match. Moreover, participants appeared to be unaware of the extent to which a criminal stereotype had biased their evaluations. These findings demonstrate that criminal stereotypes are a potential source of bias in forensic evidence analysis and suggest that suspects who fit criminal stereotypes may be disadvantaged over the course of the criminal justice process. (PsycINFO Database Record