Expectancy confirmation effects: accumulation and moderation by social interaction

The confirmation of expectancies may result in either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias, altering social reality. The current research posits that expectancy confirmation processes may become more powerful through accumulation of expectancy effects across perceivers. It also investigates the implicit question that these effects may be highly pervasive and have the potential to accumulate across perceivers who share similar false expectancies, but do not have contact with one another. There were two perceivers and one target in each group of participants for a total of 114 groups. Perceivers were induced with either a hostile or non-hostile expectancy and then interacted with targets in a discussion task. Results failed to support either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias. Failure to find effects may have been due to social norms that conflicted with the hostile expectancy, but other paradigms may be more conducive for finding the accumulation of expectancy confirmation processes