Questioning the Generality of Behavioral Confirmation to Gender Role Stereotypes: Does Social Status Produce Self-Verification?

Many studies have been conducted to determine the degree to which people (targets) may be induced to behave in ways which are consistent with a perceiver’s expectations (behavioral confirmation), and the degree to which people may resist behaving in ways which are inconsistent with their self-concepts (self-verification). These seemingly opposing tendencies, and the effects of social status on their occurrence, were systematically investigated in a replication and extension of an influential behavioral confirmation study. Seventy-two college students participated in a division-of-labor task. Crossing actual and perceived sex of the target, we explored the gender-stereotyped nature of participant preferences for masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral tasks. The results failed to replicate the behavioral confirmation effect in women, and found no evidence for such an effect in men; regardless of their perceived sex, both groups showed self-verification of their gender self-concept. Social status was found to have a negligible effect on when self-verification occurs. The generality of behavioral confirmation phenomena and explanatory ability of self-verification theory are discussed.