Two groups of paid female students were employed in a modified Aronson and Carlsmith (1962) expectancy-performance design. Overall results did not support predictions derived from dissonance theory. (Author)

In a federal correctional institution, cognitive and behavioral variables related to the inmates' loss of freedom and their attempts at reestablishing freedom within the boundaries of the institution were collected. Variables were: (1) personal variables (age, sex, education, etc.); (2) perceptions about life and freedoms in the institution; (3)…

Previous research indicates that social beliefs can act in a self-fulfilling manner, affecting responses to individuals and thereby constraining these individuals to behave in ways that spuriously confirm attitudes about them. The possible role of self-perception, i.e., whether targets of such self-fulfilling prophecies not only alter their…

Differences in ratings of initial expectancy of success, perceived scholastic ability, and causal attributions were assessed for male and female high school students for a simulated academic test. As predicted, higher expectancies were found for high performance achievers and nontraditional females. (Author)

This study assesses college students' reactions to both men and women who were portrayed as behaving in a manner either congruent or incongruent with sex-role stereotypically based social expectations (e.g., either crying or evincing anger in response to either the death of a spouse or severe job criticism). The subjects were 94 women and 107 men,…

Following the reasoning of "expectation states theory", the present study was designed to answer three questions: (1) Is the task orientation of males and females different when they work on a task together? (2) Is the task orientation of males and females working on a task, separately, different? and, (3) If there are differences, will status…

Extensive research has been conducted examining the effects of teacher expectations on student performance, revealing reasonably consistent patterns of differential behavior by teachers toward high and low expectation students. Few theories which integrate isolated research findings into a causal sequence have emerged, however. One such model…

Interpretation of experimental tasks is influenced by knowledge of the language used, by assessment of what the experimenter intends, and by how subjects themselves would normally represent the physical situation. Whether these processes in which children engage in cognitive studies differ from those employed by adults in similar tasks was…

The purpose of the study was to test the discriminative cue hypothesis by attempting to train pupils to increase effort following a high expectancy condition and to reduce effort following a low expectancy condition. Fourth grade high-IQ low achievers were used as subjects in the study, because the authors felt that while they would learn fast,…

The effects of labels, "mentally retarded" and "institutionalized" on the evaluations and causal attributions of nonretarded persons, and on the social distance preferences of EMR persons, were assessed. In addition, each group was asked to predict the likelihood of a labeled (mentally retarded) or a nonlabeled target person achieving success at a…

Subjects were 46 undergraduates attending a major West Coast university who self-monitored their study behavior for four weeks under one of four conditions: (1) expectation of reactivity; (2) cumulative charting, (3) combined expectation and charting; and (4) control group (given no expectation or cumulative chart). Although definitive conclusions…