Behavioral Confirmation of the Loneliness Stereotype

Abstract

College students (perceivers) were given bogus information indicating that their opposite-gender partners (targets) in a forthcoming dyadic conversation were characteristically lonely or nonlonely. The students reported their impressions of each other and engaged in 6 conversational exchanges. Results revealed that perceivers ascribed lower sociability to the expected lonely than expected nonlonely targets before and after the conversations. Perceivers were less sociable in their conversations with expected lonely than expected nonlonely targets. Consistent with expectation, behavioral confirmation of the loneliness stereotype was displayed by targets who were high in other-directedness, and self-verification was displayed by those low in other-directedness. That pattern, however, was only found in the female perceiver-male target dyad.