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Effects of Script Availability on Social Behavior

University of Virginia

John A. Capitman

Berkeley Planning Associates

The effect of increasing the availability of cognitive scripts on social behavior was investigated in three studies. In Study I male subjects read either a story describing a "boy-meets-girl" encounter or a control story. Those who read the boy-meets-girl story subsequently behaved in a much friendlier manner toward a female confederate than those who had read the control story, i.e., they smiled more, talked more, leaned forward more, and gazed at the confederate more. Study 2 replicated Study 1, except that subjects rated their mood after reading the stories. As predicted there were no differences between the conditions in mood, indicating that mood changes were not responsible for the behavioral effects. However, the behavioral effects in Study 2 were very weak. Study 3 attempted to explain why the behavioral effects in Study 2 were so much weaker than in Study 1. When there was a short delay (M = 4 minutes) between the time subjects read the story and met the confederate, subjects were significantly less friendly than subjects who had interacted with the confederate immediately after reading the story. It was concluded that making scripts available in memory can have powerful effects on behavior, although these effects appear to be quite temporally limited.

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