Gender and nonverbal decoding skill as determinants of interpersonal expectancy effects.

This research investigated the occurrence of the self-fulfilling prophecy in sameand mixed-sex dyads. Males and females served as interviewers and interacted with both male and female interviewees. We hypothesized that male interviewers (a) would be more influenced by erroneous preinteraction information about interviewees than females, (b) would show more biased behavior toward their interviewees, and (c) would be more influential at producing behavior in the interviewees that confirmed their expectations. We also anticipated that females as interviewees would be more responsive than males to the interpersonal expectations of their interviewers and thus, females were predicted to show stronger behavioral confirmation. The results demonstrated that expectancy effects operate in both same- and mixed-sex dyads. Support was found for the hypotheses that males would be more biased by their expectations and would produce stronger behavioral confirmation in their interviewees than females. The results also indicated that females as interviewees more readily showed behavioral confirmation than males. The relationship between expectancy effects and interviewees' nonverbal decoding skills was also investigated. Males who were good audio decoders accurately diagnosed more bias in the behavior of their interviewers than males who were poor decoders. A significant relationship between decoding skill and sensitivity to interviewer bias was not found for female interviewees. It is suggested that the findings of this study have implications for understanding sex role stereotypes and sex role behavior.