An Examination of the Actor-Observer Effect in Young Drivers' Attributions for Their Own and Their Friends' Risky Driving

The attributions of 70 young drivers for their own and their friends' risky driving were examined using open-ended questions to determine if there were self-other differences consistent with the actor-observer effect. Six response categories were created, 4 of which were rated as more dispositional than situational by a subsample of the participants and 2 of which were rated as more situational than dispositional. While the largely dispositional category "Showing off, acting cool" was used significantly more for friends than for self, and the largely situational "In a hurry, late" was used significantly more for self than for friends, there was only limited support for the actor-observer effect overall. The participants also rated their friends as taking more risks than themselves. The actor-observer differences are suggested to be influenced primarily by motivational factors and the context in which young people observe their friends' driving. New approaches to traffic safety interventions are suggested.     

The dispositional inference strikes back: situational focus and dispositional suppression in causal attribution

The authors propose that correction of dispositional inferences involves the examination of situational constraints and the suppression of dispositional inferences. They hypothesized that suppression would result in dispositional rebound. In Study 1, participants saw a video of either a free or a forced speaker. Participants shown a forced speaker later made stronger dispositional inferences about a 2nd, free speaker than control participants did. Study 2 provided evidence for higher rebound among participants who reported trying harder to suppress dispositional inferences during the 1st video. In Study 3, participants were asked to focus on situational constraints or to avoid thinking about the speaker's characteristics. Only the latter instructions led to a dispositional rebound. These data support the view that the correction of dispositional inferences involves 2 processes that lead to distinct consequences in subsequent attribution work.     

More human than you: attributing humanness to self and others

People typically evaluate their in-groups more favorably than out-groups and themselves more favorably than others. Research on infrahumanization also suggests a preferential attribution of the "human essence" to in-groups, independent of in-group favoritism. The authors propose a corresponding phenomenon in interpersonal comparisons: People attribute greater humanness to themselves than to others, independent of self-enhancement. Study 1 and a pilot study demonstrated 2 distinct understandings of humanness--traits representing human nature and those that are uniquely human--and showed that only the former traits are understood as inhering essences. In Study 2, participants rated themselves higher than their peers on human nature traits but not on uniquely human traits, independent of self-enhancement. Study 3 replicated this "self-humanization" effect and indicated that it is partially mediated by attribution of greater depth to self versus others. Study 4 replicated the effect experimentally. Thus, people perceive themselves to be more essentially human than others.     

Motivated expectations of positive feedback in social interactions

People self-enhance in a variety of ways. For example, they generally expect to perform better than others, to be in control of events, and to have a brighter future. Might they also self-enhance by expecting to receive positive feedback in social interactions? Across five studies, we found that they did. People's desire for feedback correlated with how positive they expected it to be (Study 1), and their feedback expectations were more positive for themselves than for others (Study 2). People's positive feedback expectations also covaried with trait tendencies to self-enhance (i.e., self-esteem and narcissism; Study 3) and with a direct situational manipulation of self-enhancement motivation (Study 4). Finally, people expected to receive positive feedback but did not consistently expect to receive self-verifying feedback (Study 5). These findings are consistent with social expectations being driven in part by the self-enhancement motive.     

Temporal Perspective and Attributions: The Role of Causal Stability and Certainty

Examinations of the effect of temporal perspective on attributions have resulted in a set of apparently contradictory findings. Our results suggest that rather than a dispositional shift versus a situational shift, these findings can be reconciled in terms of a "stability shift" in attributions over time. In Study 1, participants were given scenarios and were asked to imagine themselves, or another person, succeeding or failing in the past, present, or future. In Study 2, participants provided attributions for their own real-life exam performances, with a design that instituted a time delay. The dependent measures were eight achievement attributions corresponding to the cells of Weiner's model. Discussion centers around the stability and certainty of causes, and directions for further research.     

Suspicion of ulterior motivation and the correspondence bias

Three studies examined the hypothesis that when perceivers learn of the existence of multiple, plausibly rival motives for an actor's behavior, they are less likely to fall prey to the correspondence bias than when they learn of the existence of situational factors that may have constrained the actor's behavior. In the first 2 studies, Ss who learned that an actor was instructed to behave as he did drew inferences that corresponded to his behavior. In contrast, Ss who were led to suspect that an actor's behavior may have been motivated by a desire to ingratiate (Study 1), or by a desire to avoid an unwanted job (Study 2), resisted the correspondence bias. The 3rd study demonstrated that these differences were not due to a general unwillingness on the part of suspicious perceivers to make dispositional inferences. The implications that these results have for understanding attribution theory are discussed.     

Adjusting for the correspondence bias: Effects of causal uncertainty, cognitive busyness, and causal strength of situational information

This research examined the conditions under which people who have more chronic doubt about their ability to make sense of social behavior (i.e., are causally uncertain; [Weary and Edwards, 1994] and [Weary and Edwards, 1996]) are more likely to adjust their dispositional inferences for a target’s behaviors. Using a cognitive busyness manipulation within the attitude attribution paradigm, we found in Study 1 that higher causal uncertainty predicted increased correction of dispositional inferences, but only when participants had sufficient attentional resources to devote to the task. In Study 2, we found that higher-causal uncertainty predicted greater inferential correction, but only when the additional information provided a more compelling alternative explanation for the observed behavior. Results of this research are discussed in terms of their relevance to the Causal Uncertainty (Weary & Edwards, 1994) and dispositional inference models.     

Visceral drives in retrospect: explanations about the inaccessible past

The present research demonstrates that the extent to which people appreciate the influence past visceral states have had on behavior (e.g., the influence hunger has had on food choice) depends largely on their current visceral state. Specifically, we found that when people were in a hot state (e.g., fatigued), they attributed behavior primarily to visceral influences, whereas when people were in a cold state (e.g., nonfatigued), they underestimated the influence of visceral drives and instead attributed behavior primarily to other, nonvisceral factors. This hot-cold empathy gap was observed when people made attributions about the past behavior of another person or themselves, and proved difficult to overcome, as participants could not correct for the biasing influence of their current visceral state when instructed to do so. These different attribution patterns also had consequences for people's satisfaction with their performance. Those who attributed their poor performance to visceral factors were more satisfied than those who made dispositional attributions.     

An investigation of the link between attributional judgments and stereotype‐based judgments

Three experiments investigated the relationship between the attributions made for stereotype‐relevant behavior and stereotype‐based judgments. In Experiment 1 participants were presented with a short scenario describing a single stereotypic behavior and were given either a situational or a dispositional explanation for the behavior, before evaluating both the target and the group as a whole on stereotype‐based dimensions. As predicted, participants given a situational explanation for the stereotypic behavior described in the target and the group in less stereotype‐based terms than did baseline participants. In Experiment 2 and 3 participants were presented with a short scenario describing either a single stereotypic or counter‐stereotypic behavior but were asked to provide an explanation for the behavior, rather than being given one. As predicted, stereotypic behavior was attributed more strongly to dispositional than situational factors and counter‐stereotypic behavior more strongly to situational than dispositional factors. No overall moderation of group‐based beliefs relative to baseline was seen in either experiment. Correlations between the attributions and stereotypic‐based judgments did, however, show a relationship between the strength of the attributions made for the behaviors and stereotype‐based judgements. Implications for the moderation of stereotype‐based judgments are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do people agree about the causes of behavior? A social relations analysis of behavior ratings and causal attributions

Two studies examined consistency and agreement in behavior ratings and causal attributions. In Study 1, participants (N = 280) engaged in a series of getting-acquainted conversations in one of 3 communication media (face-to-face, telephone, computer mediated); in Study 2, participants (N = 120) engaged in a competitive group task. In both studies, participants rated themselves and their interaction partners on a set of behaviors and then made attributions about the causes of those behaviors. The major findings were that (a) participants consistently favored some causal factors over others in explaining both their own and their partners' behavior, supporting the existence of generalized attributional styles; and (b) participants showed moderate self-partner and partner-partner agreement about behavior but virtually no agreement about the causes of behavior. Thus, in brief interactions people tend to see themselves and others through the lens of their stable patterns of perceiving and interpreting behavior.     

Figural emphasis and person perception

Based on Jones and Nisbett's (1972) proposition that actor-observer differences in causal attributions derive from differences in attentional focus, it was hypothesized that observers' focus of attention would influence their causal attributions for an actor's behavior. More specifically, it was predicted that the behavior of an actor who was the focus of attention by virtue of some salient physical attribute would be attributed by observers more to dispositional causes and less to situational causes than would the behavior of a less physically salient actor. The manipulations of physical salience were based upon Gestalt laws of figural emphasis in object perception. They included brightness (Study I), motion (Study II), pattern complexity (Study III), and contextual novelty (Studies IV and V). The results revealed that the salinece of the actors' environments (i.e., the other people present) rather than the salience of the actor him/herself had the most consistent influence on causal attributions. When environmental salience was high, behavior was attributed relatively more situationally than when it was low. Prior research findings are considered in light of the proposition that causal attributions for an actor's behavior vary only with the salience of his/her environment, and additional implications of this phenomenon are suggested. Some ambiguities in the application of Gestalt principles to the perception of people are discussed.     

What Do People Think About the Risks of Driving? Implications for Traffic Safety Interventions1

Two studies found that people generally think of themselves as better than average drivers. Both older and younger people rated themselves slightly better than peers, with the younger people rating their peers as the worst drivers but rating themselves as if they did not belong to this group. University students rated their peers as being more similar to themselves than did nonuniversity younger people. A factor analysis found five dimensions along which people thought about driving risks: environmental and road conditions, unexpected events, driver problems, necessary or unavoidable driving risks, and voluntary driving risks. Speeding was thought of in two ways, as both an unavoidable driving risk and as a voluntary risk. Differences were found between general and specific questions, and a theoretical framework for exploring these in future research was proposed predicts differences between a situational or dispositional focus. The implications of the results for traffic safety interventions were drawn out, and specific recommendations, made for targeting such interventions.     

A mile in moccasins: how situational experience diminishes dispositionism in social inference

In four studies, this article investigates the impact of situational experience on social inference. Participants without firsthand experience of a situation made more extreme and erroneous inferences about the personalities of people behaving in that situation than did participants with firsthand experience. Firsthand experience, thus, appears to diminish dispositionism in social inference because it informs people about the situational constraints that guide behavior. Across all studies, participants also displayed holier-than-thou biases, overpredicting how generously they would act relative to predictions about their peers and also relative to how they actually acted when the situation came.     

Trait and situational attributions in a naturalistic setting: Familiarity, liking, and attribution validity

Student dormitory advisors (n = 16) made trait/situation attributions to themselves and also identified three friends and three acquaintances. Friends (n = 41) and acquaintances (n = 43) then made attributions to themselves along with attributions and familiarity ratings of the advisors who identified them. The actor-observer effect was obtained for situational but not for trait attributions, both when advisors' self-attributions were compared to attributions made about them by friends and acquaintances (common target) and when the latter's self attributions were compared to their target attributions (common rater). Among friends and acquaintances, target familiarity was positively related to trait attributions and was negatively related to uncertainty attributions. Also, familiarity was positively related to the validity of situational but not of trait attributions. It was concluded that familiarity appears to influence the process of attribution, but differentially for dispositional vs. situational attributions and for actor-observer differences vs. observer variations in attributions. Moreover, increased information about the actor as a result of greater familiarity may lead to both more accurate and more favorable attributions.     

The Gender Heuristic and the Database: Factors Affecting the Perception of Gender-Related Differences in the Experience and Display of Emotions

Two studies investigated the conditions under which people use gender stereotypes about emotion to make judgments about the emotions of self and others. Participants in Study 1 either played or watched a competitive word game (actual game conditions), or imagined themselves playing or watching the same game (hypothetical condition). Participants actually involved in the game made emotion judgments either immediately after the game (online condition) or after a time delay (delayed condition). Both in terms of self-reports of emotional experience and perceptions of the emotional displays of others, gender-related stereotypes had a significant influence on judgments of participants in the hypothetical condition but had no significant influence on online judgments. Furthermore, participants rating their own emotional experiences (after a 1-week delay) exhibited responses consistent with gender stereotypes, whereas participants rating the emotional displays of others (after a 1-day delay) did not show a gender-stereotypic response pattern. Study 2 found that participants rating hypothetical others were more likely to employ gender-related stereotypes of emotion than participants rating themselves were. The results of both studies suggest that people tend to use an emotion-related gender heuristic when they lack a database of concrete situational experiences on which to base their judgments.     

Self-image bias in drug use attributions

The aim was to examine the degree to which people's personal drug use affects how they perceive other drug users, with a view to investigating the possibility that drug use attributions are a function of self-image bias. University students (n = 60), categorized post hoc as drug users or nonusers, completed questionnaires assessing locus, control, and stability attributions about their own personal drug use or imagined drug use. Attributions pertaining to presented vignettes of light and heavy drug use by others were also assessed. Heavy drug use elicited the most "addicted" attributions (dispositional locus, low control, and high stability) and drug-using participants made more addicted attributions about their own personal drug use than did nonusing participants about their imagined use. Additionally, attributions made by non-drug users regarding their imagined personal drug use were similar to those they made for the light drug use described in presented vignettes. Conversely, drug users made attributions which were similar for their personal drug use and for the heavy drug-use vignette. These data lend support to conceptualizing addiction as a product of the functional attribution process-"addict" attributions being applied mainly where drug use is more problematic (heavy) and thus in need of explanation. The data also lend support to the notion that a self-image bias is operating in drug use attributions when people can identify with the behavior of others.     

A test of whether attributions provide for self-enhancement or self-defense

It is well known that people often make attributions in a way that is favorable to their self-concepts (see R. L. Collins, 1996, for a review). However, it is less clear whether the primary effect is to enhance self-esteem or to defend against the possible loss of self-esteem. The authors performed an experiment to test these possibilities against each other. In a completely between-participants design, participants recalled either a positive behavior or a negative behavior that was performed by themselves or others. They then judged the positivity or negativity of the behavior and made trait attributions about the actor (i.e., himself, herself, or others). The results indicated that although judgments and trait attributions for positive behaviors were similar for the self and for others, judgments and trait attributions for negative behaviors were less negative for the self than they were for others. The authors interpreted these and other findings as supporting a defensive strategy rather than an enhancive strategy.