We examine whether survey interviewers an: biased, in their views of certai
n classes of respondents, thereby introducing unobserved bias into survey r
esults. There has been a great deal of previous research on how racial and
gender dynamics affect the responses given by respondents during face-to-fa
ce surveys. In this article, we turn this issue around and ask whether huma
n interaction affects how the interviewer views the respondents, and if so,
how this may systematically bias surveys. If interviewers are biased, this
may impede their ability to conduct interviews in a consistent, nonjudgmen
tal, and unbiased manner. Using three surveys that required the interviewer
to evaluate how informed and intelligent the respondents appeared, we foun
d that interviewers were mote likely to evaluate respondents of lower socio
economic status as less informed and less intelligent, even after controlli
ng for objective levels of political information. There is also evidence th
at Blacks may be negatively evaluated.