Norm Reynolds

Wanted to share this study I read about in my psych course. Mark Zanna and his colleagues in 1974 set out to test Zanna’s theory that holding strong beliefs about the characteristics of people belonging to certain groups, (stereotypes) causes a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. In the sense that, people holding stereotypical beliefs about a certain group may behave in such a way while interacting with members of that group, so as to bring about characteristics that are the same or similar to those they expected. Zanna and colleagues, designed 2 studies to test this theory: 1. In the first study they had white male undergraduate subjects act as interviewers in a mock job interview. They had one group (control group) interview white male undergraduate students (secretly accomplices of the study) and in the other group (experimental group) they had interview black male undergraduate students (also accomplices). This study found that while interviewing the white accomplices, the interviewer adopted what may be called an “immediate style” in terms of their body language (sitting closer to the subject, making eye contact, and behaving more comfortably in general). However during the interviews with the black accomplices, the interviewer adopted what may be called a “non-immediate style” (sitting further away, making more speech errors, avoiding eye contact, and in general behaving less comfortably). 2. In the second study, to evaluate the effect of an interviewer behaving in a non-immediate manner, they had white male undergraduate accomplices interview white male undergraduate subjects with both immediate body language (in the control) and non-immediate body language (in the experimental). They found that the students who had been interviewed in a non-immediate style were significantly more anxious, and also performed significantly worse than those in the control group. Ofc this study was conducted in 1974 and uses race, which I don’t doubt people on x could find a problem with lol but the results can (and I feel should) be thought of in a broader sense. It’s entirely likely the students in the first study believed they held no prejudice against the interviewees, let alone them being aware of the fact that their behaviour was different with them or the fact that their behaviour may have been having a negative effect on the interviewees performance and anxiety. I think the fact that we may hold beliefs we aren’t aware of, and these beliefs may cause behaviour we’re not aware of, and that behaviour may impact the people we ascribe those beliefs to in ways that were not aware of, is vv interesting. Lmk what you think! :)