Swann, W. B., Giuliano, T., & Wegner, D. M. (1982). Where leading questions can lead: The power of conjecture in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(6), 1025-1035.

Postulated 2 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. Observers who listen to respondents answer leading questions may be misled because, in an effort to cooperate with the questioner, respondents may supply behavioral evidence that misrepresents their actual personalities. To test these hypotheses, 2 experiments (344 undergraduates) were conducted in which Ss listened to tape-recorded interviews. Questioners in these interviews asked respondents a series of leading questions that probed for evidence of either intro- or extraversion. Exp I showed that it did not matter whether Ss had access to the conjectural evidence in the interviewer’s questions, the behavioral evidence in respondent’s answers, or both. In each case, Ss inferred that the respondent possessed the characteristics for which the questioner had probed. Exp II showed that when the evidentiary basis of the conjectures was undermined by informing Ss that the leading questions had been drawn from a fishbowl, Ss ignored conjectural evidence but still used behavioral evidence. The discussion considers the processes through which conjectures may create their own cognitive and behavioral reality.

 

 

 

Swann, W. B., Giuliano, T., & Wegner, D. M. (1982). Where leading questions can lead: The power of conjecture in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(6), 1025-1035.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.42.6.1025