Estimating Achievement Performance: A Confirmation Bias

Abstract

This study expands on John Darley and Paget Gross's 1983 research examining the process leading to the confirmation of a perceiver's expectancies about a target individual when the social label that created the expectancy provides poor or tentative evidence about the target's true dispositions or capabilities. In line with previous findings, stereotype information in the no-performance condition did not produce differential estimates of the child's achievement ability, but stereotype information did affect estimates of the child in the performance condition. Thus individuals found evidence in the ambiguous performance sequence congruent with the race, class, and gender stereotypes. The combination of race, class, and gender resulted in more extreme expectancy confirmation for the Black, lower class, male child than for the other race, class, and gender combinations. Thefindings are discussed with respect to implicationsfor teacher education.