A robust attribution error in the personality domain

The error of inferring dispositional causes for constrained behavior was investigated in the domain of personality. Subjects were randomly assigned to write essays presenting themselves as strongly introverted or extraverted. Within groups, subjects exchanged essays and estimated the actual (self-rated) introversion/extraversion of the writer. The procedure minimized the likelihood of certain factors conducive to correspondent inference, e.g., the low salience of constraint or nonrepresentative sample of dispositions among essay writers. The experiment included an instructional set variable which involved accentuating the situational constraint or reinforcing the subjects' inclination to individuate the writer. In all conditions, a significant pattern of correspondent inference occurred, with attributions aligned to the directionality of the essays. The results, consistent with findings from attitude attribution research, suggest that the direction of the essay provides an initial hypothesis of correspondent inference. Subjects may then use their impression of the essay's extremity as a basis upon which to adjust their attribution in accord with the constraint of the position assignment.     

Toward an understanding of the fundamental attribution error: Essay diagnosticity in the attitude attribution paradigm

The observer error in attitude attribution was examined, focusing upon the perceiver's conception of the relationship between a writer's attitude and the quality of performance on an essay task. Subjects appear to have invested essays, written under assignment, with diagnostic value on the presumption of a correlation between the quality or strength of the essay and the writer's attitude. When subjects were given essays varying in direction, strength, and constraint, their attributions indicated a reversal of correspondent inference for weak essays produced under high constraint, replicating an earlier, conceptually important result (E. E. Jones, S. Worchel, G. R. Goethals, & J. Grumet, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1971, 7, 59–80). It was suggested that the attribution error need not reflect general misunderstandings about, or the low salience of, situational factors, but rather is based on the perceiver's inclination to adopt a diagnostic judgmental set in the attitude attribution paradigm.     

The effects upon food-reinforced pecking and treadle-pressing of auditory and visual signals for response-independent food

Seven pigeons whose key-pecking was maintained by food reinforcement on a differential-reinforcement-of-low-rates 12-sec limited-hold 4-sec schedule and 12 other pigeons whose treadle-pressing was maintained by the same schedule received appetitive Pavlovian conditioning trials superimposed upon the instrumental baseline. Half the birds in each group received a tone as the CS, and the other half received a stimulus change on the key. Each CS was 20 sec long, and was immediately followed by 10-sec access to grain. The visual CS markedly facilitated the rate of pecking on the key for the birds whose baseline response was pecking. The visual CS produced auto-shaping of the key-peck and tended to produce suppression of treadle-pressing for the birds whose baseline response was treadle-pressing. The auditory CS produced inconsistent effects across birds regardless of the baseline response. In all cases the conditioned effects extinguished when response-independent food was omitted.     

Organizational vs retrieval factors in the development of digit span

Three possible sources of memory span growth were tested with a modified version of the digit span task using subjects 6, 8, 11, and 19 years of age. There was no developmental trend in facilitation due to experimenter-imposed organization of the input strings, ruling out simple input-organizational theories. The notion that children are deficient at organizing retrieved information was also found to be untenable. The data support the view that older subjects use more selective retrieval strategies, strategies which are better suited to the encoded material. The largest improvement in retrieval selectivity occurred between sixth grade and college. Recency effects were smaller for the younger subjects than for older subjects, with first graders showing significantly less recency than third graders, sixth graders, and college students. Improved item identification during input may account for this finding.     

The dispositional shift in attribution over time

Two experiments examined the effect of time on causal attributions. In Experiment I, subjects who described themselves into a tape recorder assumed more personal responsibility for their behavior after 3 weeks' time than others who explained their behavior immediately after its occurrence. In Experiment II, actor-subjects took part in a getting acquainted conversation and explained their behavior more dispositionally and less situationally after 3 weeks' time than they had initially, while observer-subjects experienced no change over time. Results were interpreted in terms of an altered self-perspective in memory and the diminished salience of situational details over time.     

Context effects on the perceived physical attractiveness of faces

Four experiments were conducted to study the nature of context effects on the perceived physical attractiveness of faces. In Experiment 1, photos of faces scaled on attractiveness were presented in sets of three, with target faces appearing in the middle flanked by two context faces. The target faces were of average attractiveness, with the context faces being either high, average, or low in attractiveness. The effect of the context was one of assimilation, rather than contrast, regardless of whether the persons in the photos were portrayed to be associated. This result was interpreted in terms of a “generalized halo effect” for judgments of the physical attractiveness of stimuli within a group. Presenting the persons of a set as friends enhanced the perceived attractiveness of the target face but only when the context did not contain a face of low attractiveness. In Experiment 2, the assimilation effect was observed to carry over to influence ratings of the target faces several minutes after the context faces had been removed. Experiment 3 showed the assimilation effect to be robust regardless of whether the context was composed of two faces or one, but Experiment 4 showed the assimilation effect to be evident only when the context faces were presented simultaneously with the target.     

Focus of attention,self-esteem,and the attribution of causality

An experiment was conducted to investigate how actors' attributions of causality are affected by their expectancy about the outcome of an action and their observation of the actual outcome while in a state of high or low objective self-awareness. In the presence or absence of a camera, subjects delivered therapeutic instructions which were expected to have a positive or a negative effect and which resulted in a positive or a negative effect on a supposedly phobic patient. Principal findings were that (1) attributions to self were greater under high objective self-awareness for positive relative to negative outcomes, (2) attributions to the patient were relatively great under high objective self-awareness when a positive outcome was expected but a negative outcome actually occurred. The results are discussed in terms of the joint role of focus of attention and self-esteem processes in the attribution of causality and in terms of their relationship to Duval and Wicklund's (1973) “focus of attention” attributional analysis.     

Relative status and interpersonal presumptuousness

Previous research has shown that, in status-discrepant dyads, the higher-status member's verbal behavior tends to be more presumptuous, that is, to have a higher proportion of utterances that imply a presumption of knowledge of the other, including Advisements, Interpretations, Confirmations, and Reflections as defined by a taxonomy of verbal response modes (VRMs). However, members of these dyads have differed in absolute status in an external social hierarchy as well as in relative status within the dyad. The present study was designed to distinguish relative status from absolute status. Eighteen senior psychology majors each participated in two similar conversations—one with a freshman and one with a professor. Conversations were coded using the VRM system. In freshman-senior dyads, seniors were more presumptuous and in senior-professor dyads, professors were more presumptuous, replicating previous findings. Seniors' presumptuousness was greater toward freshmen than toward professors, supporting the hypothesis that presumptuousness varies with relative status. Absolute status was not highly predictive of presumptuousness; there were no significant differences between seniors with freshmen and professors with seniors or between freshmen with seniors and seniors with professors.     

Causal attribution and dispositional inference: Evidence of inconsistent judgments

Two experiments examined whether individuals who ascribe the disparity in the performances of two actors to situational constraints adequately adjust their dispositional inferences to reflect their own perceptions of causality. Using the quiz-game format of L. D. Ross, T. M. Amabile, and J. L. Steinmetz (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 485–494), the effects of the subjects' awareness of the role-determined, self-presentation advantage of the questioner on their dispositional inferences concerning the quiz-game participants are noted. It is hypothesized that subjects who indicated full awareness of the determining force of the situation would nevertheless draw more favorable dispositional inferences about the questioner than about the contestant. The prediction is confirmed. Although the situationally aware subjects rate the questioner and contestant more similarly than do the other subjects, they still rate the questioner higher in knowledge, memory, and education. The results of Experiment 2 indicate that increasing the salience of the subjects' assessment of the situational advantage of the questioner does not eliminate the disparity. It is proposed that the fudamental attribution error represents more a failure to adjust trait inferences for causal attributions than a misperception of causality. Implications concerning the relationship between knowledge of causality and social judgment and the utility of the distinction between “perceived causality” and “higher order causal inferences” are discussed.     

The group attribution error

There is a parallel between our tendency to infer the attitudes of an individual on the basis of his or her behavior, regardless of the external constraints (Jones & Harris, 1967; Ross, 1977), and our tendency to infer the attitudes of a group on the basis of the group's decision, regardless of the group decision rule. The present research focuses on this latter process. What we term the group attribution error consists of the tendency to assume that group decisions reflect members' attitudes. This assumption can be erroneous because group decision rules, in addition to members' attitudes, can influence group decisions. In Experiment 1, members of a community in which a water conservation law was or was not instituted were assumed to have correspondent attitudes, regardless of how the community decision was made. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects inferred a greater correspondence between out-group decisions and out-group attitudes than between an in-group decision and in-group attitudes. The fourth experiment found that subjects committed the group attribution error because they attended as much to the outcome of a recall election as to the actual proportion of voters for and against the recall. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that subjects' inferences of jury members' attitudes were influenced not only by the final jury vote but also by the actual decision, which was determined by the vote plus the decision rule by which the jury was bound. The results are related to previous research on the fundamental attribution error, stereotyping, and polarized appraisals of out-groups.     

Primary versus secondary rehearsal in imagined voices: Differential effects on recognition

Subjects were asked to rehearse word trigrams in a particular prefamiliarized male or female voice for 5, 10, or 15 sec. In Experiment 1, recognition performance improved with the amount of primary (maintenance) rehearsal only if the speaker's voice at test matched the rehearsal voice, but recognition performance improved with the amount of secondary (elaborative) rehearsal regardless of the sex of the speaker at test. With a visual testing procedure in Experiments 2 and 3, the amount of primary rehearsal given to a trigram had no effect on recognition performance unless the original voice context was reinstated mentally at test. These results suggest that: (a) Secondary rehearsal builds up semantic associations, whereas primary rehearsal serves to associate items with their physical characteristics at presentation. (b) There is an important memory search component in recognition as well as in recall. (c) Imaginal operations can yield a product in memory that is similar to that left by perceptual operations.     

Coding strategies and cerebral laterality effects

In a short-term recognition memory task, Ss were given relational imagery and rehearsal coding strategies in different sessions, with probes presented to the left or right cerebral hemisphere. Consistent with a model of separate processing systems for verbally and visually coded information, Ss yielded significantly faster response latencies for probes to the left hemisphere than the right when employing the rehearsal strategy, and significantly faster latencies for probes to the right hemisphere than the left when using the imagery code. This suggests that cerebral laterality effects are functionally related to coding strategies, and argues for the inclusion of imagery, or generated visual information, as part of the visual processing system. As such, generated visual information may be viewed as a coding alternative to verbal mediation.     

Role and justice considerations in the attribution of responsibility to a rape victim

This study was designed to assess the extent to which social role and “just world” considerations would affect perceptions and attributions of responsibility to a rape victim. The rape victim was either a topless-bottomless dancer, a social worker, or a Catholic nun, and she was either acquainted or unacquainted with her assailant. In the acquainted condition, the dancer was attributed the greatest and the nun the least amount of responsibility, indicating that social role factors can govern the range of attributional judgments which might be made in any given instance. However, unacquainted victims were ascribed more responsibility for the rape than were acquainted victims, a difference which was significant when the victim was the nun. The latter findings are discussed in terms of Lerner's just world hypothesis. Significant sex differences were found in subjects' perceptions of and responses to the rape incident and, contrary to earlier findings, no relationship was found between victim attractiveness and punitiveness toward the wrongdoer.     

Gaze and emotional expression: The effects of message positivity-negativity and emotional intensity

The effects of emotional positivity-negativity and emotional intensity on actor's gaze were examined by simulating emotional situations to a camera. Female subjects were first asked to act out a neutral message as if they were speaking to a person to obtain a baseline for direct gaze. Subjects were then asked to perform a positive or a negative message to the camera. Half the subjects attempted to express the message with strong emotion; half expressed it with weak, ambivalent emotion. As expected, it was found that more direct gaze was maintained when expressing strong emotion. Whether the message was positive or negative did not affect gaze direction. The results were discussed in relation to the dimensions of nonverbal communication.     

The effects of response-reinforcer contingency on time allocation in the open field

The present experiment explores the effects of the response (1-sec occupancy of a target area in an open field)—reinforcer (intracranial stimulation) contingency on time allocation in the open field in rats. The probability of reinforcement given a response (X) and the probability of reinforcement given the absence of a response (Y) were varied randomly across sessions within a subject. The following (X, Y) values were utilized: (.05, 0), (.15, 0), (.25, 0), (.15, .05), and (.15, .15). The results of this experiment indicate that rate of acquisition of time allocation preference is uniformly rapid during all contingency treatments wherein Y = 0 and is negatively related to the value of Y when X = .15. The relationship between the asymptote of the time allocation acquisition function and the value of X (when Y = 0) is positively sloped and negatively accelerated, while the relationship between asymptote and the value of Y (when X = .15) is negatively sloped with zero acceleration. Proposed contingency metrics are evaluated.     

Effects of threatening and reassuring components of fear appeals on physiological and verbal measures of emotion and attitudes

Physiological processes are integral components of (a) many conceptualizations of emotion, (b) the emotion of fear, and (c) the fear-as-acquired-drive model of attitude change. Nevertheless, few studies of fear and persuasion have simultaneously measured self-reports of fear and autonomic activity. The present factorial experiment manipulated high versus low fear and high versus low reassurance and monitored self-reports and cardiovascular and electrodermal activity. The results disclosed that heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) were highly correlated (r = .70). Although the multiple correlation among HR, SC, and a self-report measure of fear was a modest .44 (p < .05), additional evidence suggested that self-reports were the most sensitive measure of the construct of fear. The fear-film manipulation, which is typical of many fear-arousing communications, had identical effects upon the autonomic and self-report measures of fear. These data support the construct validity of the self-report measure of fear and increase our confidence that “fear” has been aroused in previous studies of fear and persuasion. Neither the fear-film manipulation nor the autonomic components of fear were associated with attitude change. The reassurance variable facilitated attitude change. Overall, the findings emphasized the importance of cognitive mediational processes rather than an emotional state of fear.