Experimenter prestige and feedback related to acceptance of genuine personality interpretations and self-attitude

The present study examined the relationship between the prestige of the diagnostician and subjects' (a) personal validation of genuine, test-based personality evaluations and (b) pre- and postfeedback changes in self-attitudes. It was found that (a) subjects in all conditions rated the interpretations as being fairly accurate descriptions of their personalities; (b) the acceptance of the feedback did not vary as a function of experimenter prestige; and (c) receiving personality feedback had no effects on subjects' self-attitudes. This latter finding was examined from the viewpoint of social judgment theory.