Social roles, social control, and biases in social-perception processes
Ross, Amabile and Steinmetz ran two experiments in which one participant composed difficult general-knowledge questions and another tried to answer them. Perceivers did not allow enough for the advantage the questioner role confers: questioners were rated as more knowledgeable than their partners. The bias was stronger for answerers and for uninvolved observers than for questioners. The paper discusses what this implies for biased perceptions of the powerful and the powerless and for the shortcomings of the intuitive psychologist.
Ross, Amabile and Steinmetz ran two experiments in which one participant composed difficult general-knowledge questions and another tried to answer them. Perceivers did not allow enough for the advantage the questioner role confers: questioners were rated as more knowledgeable than their partners. The bias was stronger for answerers and for uninvolved observers than for questioners. The paper discusses what this implies for biased perceptions of the powerful and the powerless and for the shortcomings of the intuitive psychologist.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-25 via OpenAlex.
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Ross, L. D., Amabile, T. M., & Steinmetz, J. L. (1977). Social roles, social control, and biases in social-perception processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(7), 485-494. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.7.485