Influence of role pressures on the perceiver: Judgments of videotaped interviews varying judge accountability and responsibility

The relative influence of the perceiver vs the perceived on person perception was examined in the context of the role constraints of judge accountability and responsibility. Conditions of high and low judge accountability and responsibility were manipulated in the context of rating mock videotaped interviews of applicants to graduate school in psychology. Judgments were made in pairs so that each pair of judges viewed the same pair of applicants. 56 college student judges were randomly paired in a 2 × 2 design, 7 pairs per condition, with 30 videotaped interviews paired and distributed randomly over the 4 conditions. Findings indicate that under the condition of high accountability and/or high responsibility, a perceptual pattern of high interjudge agreement and low within-judge overlap for descriptive characteristics of applicant pairs was obtained ("perceived" effect). Role performance and attention factors in producing greater consensus among the judges' descriptions of applicants are discussed. (7 ref)