This figure illustrates the predicted results (based on Swim and Hyers, 1999). It demonstrates that people often do not confront prejudice to the same extent as their predictions. The blue bars represent how participants predicted they would behave, while the red bars represent how participants actually behaved. The percent of participants that responded a certain way is represented in the y-axis, while the type of behavior is represented in the x-axis.
The task that you completed is similar to ones done in studies conducted by Swim and Hyers (1999). They had female students interact with other students (actually trained confederates who were in on the study). Some of the confederates made non-sexist comments, while others made sexist comments, and the participants' reactions were recorded. In addition, other female participants were asked to predict how they would behave in the same situation. Their results reveal that people predict that they would confront the individual who made the sexist comments to a greater extent than they actually would in the situation (48% and 40% said they would either make a comment or show surprise, respectively, but only 16% actually did so for each behavior). Indeed, although only 1% of participants predicted they would ignore the sexist comments and do nothing, the majority of participants (55%) actually ignored the comments.