Seventy-nine college students completed a personality inventory and then received a bogus psychological profile that included a highly self-descriptive personality description and a diagnosis based on that description. The personality description was identical for all participants. The diagnostic information varied across two dimensions. Half the subjects received favorable diagnostic feedback indicating that they were particularly resistant to future problems; the other half received unfavorable diagnostic feedback indicating that they were particularly prone to future problems. Half the subjects received information indicating that they were resistant (of prone) to future medical problems; the other half were told that they were resistant (of prone) to future psychological problems. Subjects in a control condition received the personality description with no diagnostic information. Compared to those in favorable feedback conditions, subjects in unfavorable feedback conditions (a) rated both their diagnoses and the overall personality description as less accurate, (b) generated fewer reasons to support the accuracy of their diagnoses, and (c) generated more reasons to support the inaccuracy of their diagnosis. Favorable- and unfavorable-feedback participants did not differ in the perceived accuracy of the individual statements making up the personality description, although unfavorable-feedback subjects remembered fewer' past behavioral instances consistent with the statements. Both theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.
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