Biases in the recall of communicators’ behaviors

While past studies have shown the tendency for an observer's impressions of communicators to become more biased toward the observer's relevant implicit theories as a result of delay, no research has adequately examined whether delayed judgments of observed behaviors are more biased than immediate judgments. Participants made judgments of a woman's behaviors both immediately and one month after observation. As hypothesized, delayed judgments more closely approximated “implicit theories of communicative competence.”; However, delayed judgments did not become more similar to “implicit theories”; for communicators of similar competence than to “implicit theories”; for communicators of different competence levels, contrary to expectation.