Hypothesis-Testing Processes in Social Interaction

This research is concerned with the processes by which individuals use social interaction to actively test hypotheses about other people. In four separate empirical investigations, female participants were provided with hypotheses about the personal attributes of other individuals ("targets"). Participants then prepared to test these hypotheses (i.e., that their targets were extraverts or that their targets were introverts) by choosing a series of questions to ask their targets in a forthcoming interview. In each investigation, participants planned to test these hypotheses by preferentially searching for behavioral evidence that would confirm these hypotheses. Moreover, these search procedures channeled social interaction between participants and targets in ways that caused the targets to provide actual behavioral confirmation for the participants' hypotheses. A theoretical analysis of the psychological processes believed to underlie and generate both the preferential search for hypothesis-confirming behavioral evidence and the interpersonal consequences of hypothesis-testing activities is presented.