The present study examined the immediate and delayed effects of unobtrusive exposure to personality trait terms (e.g., “reckless”, “persistent”) on subjects' subsequent judgments and recollection of information about another person. Before reading a deion of a stimulus person, subjects were unobtrusively exposed to either positive or negative trait terms that either could or could not be used to characterize this person. When the trait terms...

Three experiments show that information consistent with a preferred conclusion is examined less critically than information inconsistent with a preferred conclusion, and consequently, less information is required to reach the former than the latter. In Study 1, Ss judged which of 2 students was most intelligent, believing they would work closely with the one they chose. Ss required less information to decide that a dislikable...

This paper is concerned with the influence of scientists′ prior beliefs on their judgments of evidence quality. A laboratory experiment using advanced graduate students in the sciences (study 1) and an experimental survey of practicing scientists on opposite sides of a controversial issue (study 2) revealed agreement effects. Research reports that agreed with scientists′ prior beliefs were judged to be of higher quality than those...

The tendency for people to rate attitude-confirming information more positively than attitude-disconfirming information (biased assimilation) was studied in a naturalistic context. Participants watched and evaluated the first 1996 Presidential Debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Regression analyses revealed that predebate attitudes but not expectations predicted postdebate argument evaluations and perceived attitude change. Participants evaluated the arguments that confirmed their predebate attitudes as being stronger...

Based on the traditional and attributional perspectives on social comparison, it was hypothesized that the search for social comparison information after performance outcomes is biased so as to provide evidence consistent with a favorable self-evaluation. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to believe that they obtained 16 or 8 out of 20 items correct on a bogus social sensitivity test and were then led to...

Social comparison processes include the desire to affiliate with others, the desire for information about others, and explicit self-evaluation against others. Previously these types of comparison activities and their corresponding measures have been treated as interchangeable. We present evidence that in certain groups under threat, these comparison activities diverge, with explicit self-evaluation made against a less fortunate target (downward evaluation), but information and affiliation sought...

Postulated 2 distinct processes through which leading questions may mislead people. When a questioner asks a leading question of a respondent, observers may use their knowledge of conversational rules to infer that the questioner had an evidentiary basis for the question. Hence, observers will treat the question as conjectural evidence for the view of the respondent implied by the question. Observers who listen to respondents...

Hypothesized that an individual's reluctance to communicate news that is bad for the recipient (the MUM effect) is partially due to guilt associated with not sharing the other's fate. A 2 * 2 design (similar vs. dissimilar fate and good vs. bad news for the recipient) was employed. 72 female undergraduates were given the opportunity to communicate under the guise of a "learning experiment." Each...

The results of a field investigation indicate that people who are highly invested in their self-views (confidently held or personally important) are especially inclined to display a preference for verification of their self-views. Specifically, only those participants who were certain of their self-views or perceived them as important preferred roommates who confirmed their self-views. Such preferences were some-what stronger when the self-views were relatively negative....

Three studies asked why people sometimes seek positive feedback (self-enhance) and sometimes seek subjectively accurate feedback (self-verify). Consistent with self-enhancement theory, people with low self-esteem as well as those with high self-esteem indicated that they preferred feedback pertaining to their positive rather than negative self-views. Consistent with self-verification theory, the very people who sought favorable feedback pertaining to their positive self-conceptions sought unfavorable feedback pertaining...