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Two experiments investigated the judgmental and behavioral consequences of priming a social category. In the first experiment, assimilation and contrast effects of judgment of a target person's hostility obtained following priming with exemplars of, respectively, moderate and extreme levels of the category hostility. The second experiment replicated these findings and, in addition, demonstrated that subjects then behaved consistently with their evaluations of the target person in a social interaction. The results are discussed in terms of the social interaction literature, with category accessibility serving as a means of creating an expectancy for the target's behavior.A considerable amount of research evidence supports the notion that the expectations held by an individual regarding the behavior of a target person determine, to a great extent, the content of the social interaction between the two individuals. In game settings, subjects who thought that their partner disliked them (Jones & Panitch, 1971) or who were led to believe that their partner was a generally hostile person (Snyder & Swann, 1978) behaved significantly more competitively toward that person than when such an expectancy was not present. Kelley and Stahelski (1970) found that subjects who expected their partners to be competitive behaved in a more competitive manner as well. In each case, subjects' expectancies of another individual were manipulated and the subject holding that expectancy came to act differently toward the target person.The effects of expectancies on social interactions are not confined to game situations. Word, Zanna, and Cooper (1974) found that, in the context of an interracial interview, black "job applicants" received shorter interview times, greater physical distancing, and higher rates of speech errors from white interviewers than did white applicants. Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid (1977) demonstrated that men's beliefs that women who were physically attractive would be warmer and more sociable than physically unattractive women resulted in different behavior to a female target in a telephone conversation.All of these studies provide evidence that individuals' expectations indeed affect the nature of a behavioral interaction. Whether the expectancy was formed in the lab by an experimenter or held by the subject before, the social interaction with This article is based on a doctoral dissertation conducted at Indiana University and supported by an Indiana University doctoral dissertation grant.I would like to thank the members of the dissertation committee,

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