Director Expectancy and Actor Effectiveness.

This study was designed to test the effect of a director's expectation of a good or bad performance by his actors on the judged effectiveness of their performances. Thirty-two actors were randomly chosen from volunteers in an introductory course in communication theory at the University of Wyoming. The eight directors were students in an upper level directing class. Each student directed two scenes: one in which he was led to believe his actors would perform well and one in which he was led to believe his actors would perform poorly. With dialogue, rehearsal time, properties, and talent held constant throughout the study, each scene was videotaped and judged by a panel composed of theatre faculty and graduate students. The results indicate that the director's expectancies affected the performances given by the actors in the direction of those expectancies. It may be possible, therefore, that a director's expectations of an actor's potential talent may itself be, in part, a determinant of that talent. (TS)