Darley and Gross (1983) Conducted a Study in Which They

question 118

Multiple Choice

Darley and Gross (1983) conducted a study in which they asked participants to evaluate the intellectual ability of a nine-year-old named "Hannah." Some participants were led to believe that she came from a high socioeconomic (SES) background; others were led to believe she came from a low SES background. Which of the following statements about this study is accurate?

• A) Only for perceivers who actually met the target (i.e., Hannah) in person did expectation influence perceptions.
• B) Perceivers' expectations determined the way they behaved toward the target, which in turn influenced the target's behavior.
• C) Perceivers' expectations led them to fail to notice clear limitations of the target's actual performance.
• D) Perceivers' expectations affected their perceptions of the target's performance, even when that performance was identical across conditions.

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Definitions:

Proportion

is a mathematical concept that denotes a part, share, or number considered in comparative relation to a whole.

Standard Deviation

A measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values, indicating how much the values in a data set deviate from the mean.

Control Limits

Control limits are the boundaries set in statistical process control that indicate the acceptable range of variation for a process, distinguishing between common and special causes of variation.

Control Charts

Statistical tools used in quality control to monitor, control, and improve the process performance over time by plotting data points in time order.