Chapter 2. Social Reality is Not Always What it Appears To Be: The Scientific Roots of Research on Interpersonal Expectancies.<\/p>\n
Abstract<\/p>\n
This chapter reviews some of the earliest research relating social perception to social reality.\u00a0 This includes some of the earliest (and classic) studies of stereotypes, the \u201cNew Look\u201d in perception movement of the 1940s and 1950s, and some of the early classics of social perception research.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
EXCERPT:
\n<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So this study, like much of the New Look research, did provide some evidence of bias and subjectivity.\u00a0 But, just as Floyd Allport (1956) would have suggested, over the decades it has been <\/i>interpreted<\/u><\/i>as emphasizing the biased and idiosyncratic nature of social perception.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As Floyd might have said, this is a testament to “the common and mainly veridical character of the basic human perceptions” much more <\/i>than to bias<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"