Perceptions of Moral-Expectancy Violation: The Role of Expectancy Source

Subjects anticipated playing a bargaining game with a target person (male) who was described either by himself or by a friend (“claim” vs. “reputation” expectancy source) as invariably honest or as likely to dissemble. Subjects then watched a videotape of the target person in a previous bargaining game as he either did or did not misrepresent himself in order to gain an advantage. Subjects' ratings of the target person revealed that claim-based expectancies were additively integrated with behavioral observations in the perception of “strategic deviousness,” whereas equally strong reputational expectancies were essentially disregarded in the face of behavior. When the target person claimed to be invariably honest and behaved deceptively, he was seen as lacking in insight but not as especially immoral. Results of recall and recognition tasks suggest that claim-based expectancies caused assimilation of behavioral episodes to the claim (even when the target person claimed honesty and then dissembled), whereas reputational expectancies were themselves distorted in the direction of the behavior.