Page 337 - The Social Animal

Prejudice 319

met, but a mutual acquaintance had warned me that you are a cold,
aloof, reserved person. When we finally meet, I would likely keep
my distance and not try hard to engage you in a lively conversation.
Suppose that, in reality, you are generally warm and outgoing. My
behavior would not afford you the opportunity to show me what a
warm, outgoing person you really are. In response to my behavior,
you would probably keep your distance from me, and my expecta-
tion that you’re less than a warm, friendly person would have been
confirmed.
This is but one of many situations in which “belief creates real-
35
ity.” When we hold strong beliefs or stereotypes about other peo-
ple, our behavior toward them often cause them to behave in ways
that validate our original assumptions. As sociologist Robert Merton
wrote, this self-fulfilling prophecy generates and perpetuates a “reign
of error.” 36 If people hold stereotypes of women as math challenged
and overemotional, or of blacks as lazy and stupid, they may treat
them as such and inadvertently create the very behaviors or charac-
teristics associated with these stereotypes. “See,” they say to them-
selves, “I was right all along about those people.”
Of course, not all of us hold rigid stereotypes about members of
other groups. We often embrace social beliefs only tentatively and
work to determine whether they are accurate. Frequently we use so-
cial interactions to test our hypotheses about what other people are
like. But there are pitfalls inherent in our hypothesis-testing strate-
gies, because the strategies we use to test our hypotheses about other
people can produce confirming evidence, even when the hypotheses
themselves are incorrect. Recall (from Chapter 4) the experiments by
Mark Snyder and William Swann. In one of those experiments,
when individuals were asked to test the hypothesis that a person
might fit the profile of an extrovert, they chose “extroverted” ques-
tions (e.g., “What would you do if you wanted to liven things up at
a party?”). When they were asked to test the hypothesis that the per-
son might fit the profile of an introvert, they chose “introverted”
questions (e.g., “What factors make it hard for you to really open up
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to people?”). As you know, Snyder and Swann found that the na-
ture of the question helps determine the response. That is, people
who were neither particularly extroverted nor introverted will look
extroverted when they answer the first type of question and will look
introverted when they answer the second type of question.