Detecting Perceiver Expectancies: The Role of Perceiver Distraction in Spontaneously Triggering Identity Negotiation

To examine whether social interaction processes can trigger naturally-occurring identity negotiation, the current research manipulated perceiver distraction and valence of perceivers' expectations about targets. Nondistracted perceivers corrected their behaviors and impressions for the influence of their expectancies. Distracted perceivers corrected their overt information-gathering behaviors, but appeared to exhibit their biases in subtle ways. Targets detected distracted perceivers' negative expectancies, and showed signs of engaging in identity negotiation processes by behaving contrary to their perceivers' expectancies. The results suggest that distraction may facilitate the emergence of subtle expectancy-biased perceiver behaviors, and may trigger targets to intuitively engage in identity negotiation processes.