Evaluations, enactment, and expectations

This paper elaborates and refines a theory of evaluations and expectations by Fisek, Berger, and Norman which is an integration of status characteristics and expectation states theory with source theory. The elaboration of evaluations and expectations theory is achieved by incorporating ideas from Moore's role enactment and second-order expectations theory. The new formulation can generate predictions for situations where the sources of evaluations are not only designated evaluators but also interactants; it also can differentiate between situations where enactment of evaluations does and does not occur. The formulation is tested against data from five experimental studies and agrees well with the results of these studies. Among other results, our research shows how a theoretical formulation that deals with a classic sociological problem, one concerned with the effect of others' evaluations on actors' behaviors, can be formalized mathematically and investigated experimentally.