Where leading questions can lead
The power of conjecture in social interaction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6207548 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William B Swann (0000-0002-8698-2994, The University of Texas at Austin), Toni Giuliano, Daniel M Wegner |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1025-1035 |
| Publication date | 1982-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037//0022-3514.42.6.1025 |
| OpenAlex | W4245764811 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 25 |
| References cited | 17 |
A theoretical analysis of the structure of social interaction led us to postulate two distinct processes through which leading questions may mislead people. When a questioner asks a leading question of a respondent, observers may use their knowledge of conversational rules to infer that the questioner had an evidentiary basis for the question. Hence, observers will treat the question as conjectural evidence for the view of the respondent implied by the question. In addition, observers who listen to respondents answer leading questions may be misled by the answers because, in an effort to cooperate with the questioner, respondents may supply beh(lvioral evidence that misrepresents their actual personalities. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two experiments in which observers listened to tape-recorded interviews. Questioners in these interviews asked respondents a series of leading questions that probed for evidence of either introversion or extroversion. The first experiment showed that it did not matter whether observers had access to the conjectural evidence in the interviewer's questions, the behavioral evidence in respondent's answers, or both. In each case observers inferred
Combinatorics · Conjecture · Lead (geology · Physics · Power (physics · Social relation · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Language and cultural evolution · Mathematics · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Psychology
Errors and mistakes
Blurry words and fuzzy deeds
Unpriming
The auto-verification of social hypotheses
Confirmation, disconfirmation, and information in hypothesis testing.
Confirmation Bias
Order Matters When Using Two-Sided Messages to Influence Morally Based Attitudes
The impact of forms of strategic and non‐strategic voir dire questions on jury verdicts
Social structure in leader‐member interaction
Judgment in a Social Context
Allure of negative feedback
Quest for accuracy in person perception
The questions lay interviewers ask
Effects of Hypothesis Generation on Hypothesis Testing in Rule-Discovery Tasks
Is this a question? Not for long. The statement bias
Rumor rebuttal in the marketplace
Attribution in conversational context
Violating Conversational Conventions Disrupts Cognitive Processing of Attitude Questions
Therapist's positive evaluation of children with hearing impairment
Supervision for Inner Vision
Pick Your Verbs with Care When You Formulate a Question
Effects of Dodging Questions
Methods of Madness
Statistical principles in experimental design.
From Acts To Dispositions The Attribution Process In Person Perception
Leading questions and the eyewitness report
Judgment under Uncertainty
The psychology of interpersonal relations.
Studies in Social Interaction
The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings
The rocky road from acts to dispositions
Incrimination through innuendo
Hypothesis-testing processes in social interaction
Self-perceptions following social interaction
When our identities are mistaken
Inadmissible evidence and juror verdicts
Availability
Sequencing in Conversational Openings1
The Taken-for-Granted
| Unique citing works | 22 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,6 |
| Citation span | 1984 - 2025 (42) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 21 |