Interpersonal Expectations in Social Interaction: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Confirmatory Biases, and Accuracy.

The research reported here attempts to identify and disentangle three of the ways expectations function in social interaction. Perceivers' expectations regarding targets sometimes lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, sometimes to confirmatory biases, and sometimes accurately (to varying degrees) predict without influencing targets' future behavior. First, a general theoretical analysis of the extent and functioning of each of these expectancy phenomena in naturally-occurring social interactions is presented. Next, this analysis is applied to underst and ing the role of teacher expectations in the performance of sixth grade math students. Analyses assessed self-fulfilling prophecies, confirmatory biases, and accuracy among a sample from a school district in southeastern Michigan, including 429 students and 27 teachers of sixth grade math. Path analyses supporting the occurrence of self-fulfilling prophecies indicated that teachers' evaluations of students' performance in October predicted changes in students' self-concept of math ability over the year, and that teacher perceptions of students' talent at math predicted final grades and seventh grade MEAP scores, even when controlling for students' previous levels of performance and their motivation. There was no evidence that student motivation mediated the performance self-fulfilling prophecies. Analyses also showed that teacher perceptions of effort predicted final grades, but not MEAP scores--a pattern consistent with the occurrence of an effort-based confirmatory bias. Regarding accuracy, teachers' evaluations of performance and talent were generally based on valid information, but teacher perceptions of effort were largely unrelated to the effort students' claimed to exert. These three teacher expectation variables had moderately high correlations with students' final grades and MEAP scores (.3 to.6). Analyses showed that although much of these correlations represented accuracy without influence, a substantial minority represented self-fulfilling prophecy and /or confirmatory bias. The relevance of these findings for underst and ing the role of teacher expectations in student motivation and achievement is discussed, as are more general issues regarding self-fulfilling prophecies, confirmatory biases, and accuracy in naturally-occurring situations.PhDSocial psychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161548/1/8720287.pd