This is not the first time social psychologists have found that what people say they would do veers sharply from what people actually do when confronted with a situation.
When Stanley Milgram described his famous obedience experiment to groups of psychiatrists, college students, and middle-class adults, most guessed they would disobey by the time they had administered 135 volts of punishing feedback. None predicted they would administer (under orders) more than 300 volts, by which point the victim screams if supposedly shocked. Yet nearly two-thirds of the actual participants went well beyond this point and right up to the 450 volt terminus.
Consider, also, the Bloomington, Indiana, residents who were called some years ago by Steven (Jim) Sherman and asked to volunteer three hours to an American Cancer Society drive. Only four percent agreed to do so. Meanwhile, Sherman called a comparable group of other residents and asked them to predict how they would react if they were to receive such a request. Of these, 48 percent predicted they would agree to help. (Ironically, having formulated a plan for how they would want to act in that situation, most then did agree when, as the next part of the experiment, the Cancer Society then contacted them--even as you might now be more likely, having imagined yourself rebutting blatant sexism, to do so in a situation similar to that staged by Swim and Hyer.)
