Darley and Gross
Darley and Gross (1983)
Laboratory experiment on schema processing in the social world.
In this laboratory experiment, the participants saw two videos of a girl.
- In video 1 a girl was playing in a poor environment; in video 2 a girl was playing in a rich environment.
- Then they saw a video of the girl in what could be an intelligence test.
When the participants were asked to judge the future of the girls they all said that the “rich” girl would do well and the ”poor” girl would do less well.
The study demonstrates that participants probably used pre-stored schemas of what it means to be poor and rich and interpreted the ambiguous information accordingly.
Participants processed information based on a few salient details to form an overall impression that may not necessarily be correct.