Orientation,Outcome, and Other-Serving Attributions

In this research, I examined the role of a communal orientation in producing other-serving attributional biases often found in jointly produced performance tasks. I hypothesized that the other-serving attributional responses, which are commonly found in dyadic decision-making tasks, originate from dispositional qualities that reflected an other-oriented construal of the self. Subjects completed a Communal Orientation Scale that purports to measure a dispositional tendency toward communal relationships with others. Next, they participated in a joint decision-making task with a partner for which they were given success or failure feedback. Then, subjects attributed responsibility for that performance. Results support the dispositional orientation hypothesis. Subjects who scored high in a communal orientation toward others gave more credit to their partners after a successful performance and blamed them less following failure. Attributions to the self remained unaffected by communal orientation. Implications of these data for future work in the areas dyadic interaction and cross-cultural attributions are considered.