This article shows that 35 years of empirical research on teacher expectations justifies the following conclusions: (a) Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom do occur, but these effects are typically small, they do not accumulate greatly across perceivers or over time, and they may be more likely to dissipate than accumulate; (b) powerful self-fulfilling prophecies may selectively occur among students from stigmatized social groups; (c) whether self-fulfilling prophecies affect intelligence, and whether they in general do more harm than good, remains unclear, and (d) teacher expectations may predict student outcomes more because these expectations are accurate than because they are self-fulfilling. Implications for future research, the role of self-fulfilling prophecies in social problems, and perspectives emphasizing the power of erroneous beliefs to create social reality are discussed.

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Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity -particularly diversity of viewpoints -for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology.

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In the present research we examined predictions derived from the following three theoretical approaches to stereotyping: complexity-extremity theory, assumed characteristics theory, and expectancy-violation theory. In order to assess these predictions, we manipulated the race, personal appearance, and dialect style of target job applicants. White judges rated these applicants on a set of characteristics relevant to hiring decisions. Results were consistent with all three theories. Specifically, the range of judges' evaluations of black applicants was larger than the range of their evaluations of white applicants; the effects of personal appearance and dialect style were larger than the effects of race; and black applicants, on average, received more favorable ratings than white applicants. We present a model integrating all three perspectives, and we demonstrate its usefulness for explaining our results and for understanding past research on stereotypes.Three theoretical perspectives within social psychology address how stereotypes influence perceptions of individual members of in-groups and out-groups: complexity-extremity theory, assumed characteristics theory, and expectancy-violation theory. Each theory proposes that different processes underlie the impact of background information on evaluations of in-group and out-group members. When considered separately, these theories generate conflicting predictions. Rarely, however, have these theoretical approaches been directly compared with one another. Therefore, in this article we will examine these theories experimentally by investigating how the race, personal appearance, and dialect style of job applicants affects white observers' evaluations.First, we review the basic ideas of each theory to illustrate how they could lead to opposing predictions. For each theory, we generate one set of predictions by assuming that the theory describes the only influences on evaluations. These predictions are useful because they clearly reflect the ideas of each theory. However, researchers from each of these theoretical approaches generally acknowledge the possibility of other influences. Consequently, we also develop a second set of predictions for each theory. These predictions are more realistic and more complex because they reflect how each theory might function in the con-This project was based on work supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship provided to Lee Jussim and by a Spencer Foundation Grant provided to Lerita M. Coleman.We wish to acknowledge Lisa Gibson for her help in collecting the data and