When we think other people are going to like us, we behave
more warmly towards them and consequently they like us more. When we think
other people aren’t going to like us, we behave more coldly and they don’t like
us as much.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because if we predict
acceptance we get it, if not we don’t. It’s also an intuitively appealing
explanation for how people come to like (or dislike) each other. But the
question for psychologists is whether it is really true or just a neat fairy
story.
Pleased
to meet you
What has proved more controversial is whether anticipating
acceptance really does increase the interpersonal warmth that people project
towards others. It’s this question that Stinson et al. (2009) set out to test
by manipulated people’s expectations about a person they were about to meet for
the first time.
They told 14 of 28 men recruited for their study that the
attractive woman they were going to meet was nervous and worried about how she
would be perceived by them. Quite naturally when these men found that the woman
was nervous and insecure it made them feel better in comparison. This had the
effect of making the men much less anxious about the interaction (actually
about half as nervous as judged by independent observers) and consequently much
warmer.
In comparison the other 14 sweaty-palmed participants were
only given basic demographic information about the woman they were going to
talk to, nothing that would calm their fears of rejection. This manipulation
created two groups, then, one that was anticipating acceptance more than the
other.
What the results showed was that when the risk of rejection
was lower, men acted more warmly towards the woman to whom they were talking.
This extra warmth also lead to a panel of observers liking them more in
comparison with those who were more fearful of risk and therefore
interpersonally colder.
So this provides evidence that the acceptance prophecy holds
true. In this experiment people who expected to be accepted did act more warmly
towards a stranger and consequently they were perceived as more likeable.
Social
optimist or pessimist?
There was an exception, though, to the results of this
study. One sub-group were not affected by the experimental manipulation to
increase how much they expected to be accepted. That’s because they already
expected to be accepted. These are the social optimists (or at least people who
think rather a lot of themselves!).
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