Chapter 2. Social Reality is Not Always What it Appears To Be: The Scientific Roots of Research on Interpersonal Expectancies.

Abstract

This chapter reviews some of the earliest research relating social perception to social reality.  This includes some of the earliest (and classic) studies of stereotypes, the “New Look” in perception movement of the 1940s and 1950s, and some of the early classics of social perception research.  Much of this work was interpreted by the original authors as demonstrating widespread flaws and biases in social judgment, and is routinely interpreted in much the same manner by modern scholars.  Nonetheless, this chapter shows that, in general, this early work either failed to demonstrate inaccuracy or provided far more evidence of accuracy than of error or bias.

EXCERPT:
  Hastorf & Cantril (1954) is a great study, partially because it is an early demonstration of bias, partially because they examined bias in a very rich, real-life context, and partially because this context is one which most of us who have ever attended college or been any type of sports fan can readily relate to.  So this study, like much of the New Look research, did provide some evidence of bias and subjectivity.  But, just as Floyd Allport (1956) would have suggested, over the decades it has been interpretedas emphasizing the biased and idiosyncratic nature of social perception.  But if one takes a deeper look at their data, and the context in which their data were gathered, it is clear that they obtained far more evidence of agreement than of bias, even in a hot, emotionally-charged context.  As Floyd might have said, this is a testament to “the common and mainly veridical character of the basic human perceptions” much more than to bias.