Unperturbed, the participants, having been shown only the environmental video, rated the child ' s ability level as hovering close to her known school grade. They rated‘ working-class’ Hannah as slightly below fourth-class level, and‘ middleclass’ Hannah as slightly above. Remember, they had all been offered a‘ don’ t know’ option if they felt they had insufficient information.
Background only
5 4 3 2 1 0
4.3 4.29 3.98 3.9 3.85 4.03
Liberal arts Reading Maths Lower socio-economic group
Higher socio-economic group
The perceived differences between the two Hannahs were 0.32 of a grade level for liberal arts, 0.39 for reading, and 0.18 for maths. These are not insignificant differences— for a child in fourth class, being 39 %, or 32 %, or even 18 % of a grade behind her classmates would be a noticeable distinction.
The two groups were then shown another video recording. In this case, both saw the same recording, in which Hannah responded to 25 achievement-test problems ranging from second- to sixth-class level. Participants were told that the test included‘ easy, moderate, and difficult problems’. Hannah ' s performance was prearranged to present an inconsistent picture of her abilities. She answered both easy and difficult questions correctly as well as incorrectly. She appeared to be fairly verbal, motivated, and attentive on some portions of the video recording and unresponsive and distracted on other portions. The tester provided little feedback about Hannah ' s performance.
Participants, having seen the‘ objective’ evidence of Hannah being tested, became much more confident in their judgement. Rather than judging the two‘ Hannahs’ equally, however, as logic would suggest, they showed a reliably greater distinction between‘ working-class’ and‘ middle-class’ Hannah on all three indices: 1.04 for liberal arts, 1.06 for maths, and 0.96 for reading. Remember, all participants had seen the same recording of the same girl giving the same answers to the same questions on the same test.
Nevertheless, those participants who had seen the video of Hannah suggesting that she was from a lower socio-economic background judged her to be about a full year behind the grade given to Hannah when the graders thought she was from an affluent background.