[4] In one demonstration of behavioral confirmation in social interaction, Snyder and colleagues had previously unacquainted male and female partners get acquainted through a telephone-like intercom system.
Prior to their conversations, the experimenter gave the male participants a Polaroid picture and led them to believe that it depicted their female partners.
[4]: 963–964 These findings suggest that human beings, who are the targets of many perceivers in everyday life, may routinely act in ways which are consistent not with their own attitudes, beliefs, or feelings; but rather with the perceptions and stereotypes which others hold of them and their attributes.
[5] Snyder proposed a four-step sequence in which behavioral confirmation occurs: The perceiver and the target have a common goal of getting acquainted with one other, and they do so in different functions.
The perceiver asks the target questions in order to form stable and predictable impressions of their partner, and perceivers tend to confidently assume that possession of even the limited information gathered about the other person gives them the ability to predict that that person's future will be consistent with the impressions gathered.
The principle objection to the idea of behavioral confirmation is that the laboratory situations that are used in the research often do not map onto real-world social interaction easily.
A strong criticism by Lee Jussim is the allegation that, in all previous behavioral confirmation studies, the participants have been falsely misled about the targets' characteristics; however, in real life, people's expectations are generally correct.