Attribution II: recent developments

Question 1

the Gilbert model

Answer 1

see notes

Question 2

tweaks and revisions to the Gilbert model

Answer 2

Krull (1993); Krull & Erickson (1995) showed this model can also apply to situation perception as well as person perception

Question 3

flipping the model around

Answer 3

Are we always looking for dispositional (person) explanations as a default?

Maybe studies are set up so that is what perceivers do, but maybe in other settings they might focus on situation first instead

Krull proposed that perceivers’ inferential goals might make the model also applicable to situation perception

Question 4

examples of when we might weight situ more than person

Answer 4

You are thinking of taking a degree course and many people on the course say they did really badly on it (You might ask: “Is the coursework really impossible?” i.e., situation inference)

You are thinking of joining the army (“Why does everyone get up at five in the morning?”)

You are in your first tutorial and no one is answering the tutor’s questions (“Is it the norm to just keep silent in these sessions?)

Question 5

a mixed model of social inference

Answer 5

see notes

So with this more flexible model, the process CAN go:

from dispositional first => situational correction OR

from situational first => dispositional correction

Question 6

empirical demo

Answer 6

Replication of the Gilbert “anxious woman” study but comparing two different inferential goals, one dispositional, one situational

Question 7

results

Answer 7

Replicated Gilbert’s findings for those in the dispositional goal conditions

Opposite pattern found for situational goal conditions

Question 8

what do we conclude?

Answer 8

A more flexible model can aid our understanding of cultural differences (e.g., collectivist cultures; Markus & Kitayama, 1991) – influences cognitive and emotional factors

It can also help our understanding of individual differences (entity versus incremental theorists; Molden & Dweck, 2006) – whether you think personality fixed or can change over time – fixed more likely to focus on person and incremental focus on situation factors

Social cognitive neuroscience suggest three stages may not always be sequential (Lieberman et al., 2002)

But in spite of tweaks and additional research, three-stage model well-established in “adult” sphere

Question 9

developmental issues (Haga et al., 2014)

Answer 9

The three stage model developed to explain behaviour of adults

But how well does it map onto developmental issues of person perception?

Why does it matter whether it does or not?

Question 10

how children develop social inference strategies - the trait stage

Answer 10

Kids as young as four have a pretty good trait vocabulary (Rholes et al., 1990) – make inference

And they know how to apply it when faced with trait-implying behaviour (Liu et al., 2007)

But researchers don’t conclude kids are drawing dispositional inferences unless evidence these tendencies generalise over time – may not mean that they are always going to be like that

Question 11

what about correcting for the situ?

Answer 11

Evidence that kids of five may not discount certain information even when alternative explanations are possible – (Baldwin & Baldwin, 1970)

They don’t differentiate between different explanations (may see effort and ability as equally important; Folmer et al., 2008)

This ability appears to happen later

This may fit the three stage model…

Question 12

why?

Answer 12

“…children should be able to categorize and characterise actors/situations (more automatic processes) before they can use additional information to correct their inferences about the actor’s dispositions or the situation (more deliberate processes).” (Haga et al., 2014)

Question 13

Haga et al. (2014)

Answer 13

Tested hypothesis that only older children would show ability to correct for situational info…

Younger children lack full mastery of more effortful correction process so should be more susceptible to CB

Question 14

study 1 - the sad child

Answer 14

Kids in kindergarten (M = 5 years 4 months) or second graders (M = 7 years 11 months) or sixth graders (M = 11 years 5 months) or ninth graders (M = 14 years 6 months) or undergrads (M = 21 years)

Watched silent video clip of child (Anna/John)

Told child talking about:

• A time his/her parents got mad and punished him/her (punishment condition)
• A time when they were pleased with him/her and gave him/her a gift (gift condition) – must just be a sad child

Child in video wore sad facial expression

Question 15

DVs

Answer 15

Dispositional ratings: “What do you think [Anna] is usually like, in her day to day life, when she is at home or at school?” (scales anchored very sad-very happy, or always crying-never cries or never laughs-is always laughing)

Understanding situational constraints (“How would you feel if you were talking about a time when your parents got mad and punished you/were pleased with you and gave you a gift?” – smiley/sad face scale)

Question 16

results of Haga et al. (2014)

Answer 16

Participants of all age groups (except 5-year-olds) characterised sad-looking child as dispositionally sadder when situation could not account for sad behaviour (gift -0-) – greater correction for the situation

Correction appears to be happening in older but not younger kids

Last 3 ages function quite equivalent

Question 17

take home points of Haga

Answer 17

Across several studies using different paradigms, goals and situational constraints, similar results obtained…

“…with age children show more and more adherence to the three stage model of social inference.” (Haga et al., 2014)

Question 18

unanswered questions

Answer 18

But… maybe the tasks were just harder for younger kids (remember, cognitive busyness hampers correction)

Why do these differences emerge? Do older kids have more cognitive resources? Do they extract a rule (discounting) at a certain point?

Does socialization teach them that behaviour is multiply determined?

Question 19

why might mindfulness reduce CB?

Answer 19

What do we know so far? What factors increase CB?

Cognitive capacity, mood, need for cognition – negative mood = more systematic information processor – higher levels cog processing to alleviate negative mood – notice things to help us get rid of bad mood

All show relationship between cognitive processing abilities and CB

“Mindfulness is characterised by a focused, non-evaluative attention to and awareness of the present moment.” (Hopthrow et al., 2016)

It has been shown to enhance various cognitive processes (e.g., attention)

Mindfulness may reduce tendency to overlook situational factors (e.g., stereotype threat; mindless eating behaviours)

Question 20

Hopthrow et al (2017; 1)

Answer 20

2 (condition: mindfulness or control) x 2 (essay position: for or against nuclear power)

Told position determined by coin flip – no choice in position

2 questions:

• “To what extent…
• does the writer favour or oppose use of nuclear power?” (CB)
• do you favour or oppose use of nuclear power?” (own opinions – used as covariate – it did seem to play a part)

Question 21

mindfulness manip

Answer 21

Completed Toronto Mindfulness Scale to assess if manipulation had achieved desired effect – it did

Question 22

results of Hopthrow

Answer 22

Interaction between condition and essay position:

Mindfulness attenuated the CB because difference in ratings in M condition between for and against essay positions was smaller – 3.60 – than difference in C condition – 4.62

Study 2 replicated this (slight tweak to avoid potential for boredom effects in Study 1) and so did Study 3 (tweak to rule out alternative explanation – was it mindfulness or simply sustained attention?)

Question 23

conclusions

Answer 23

The Correspondence Bias continues to draw interest

The three stage model has held up fairly well…

It is possible that situational inferences may occasionally come first (more flexible model)

Developmental approaches fit well with it (effortful correction comes later once cognitive capacities are better developed)

It is possible to reduce CB via methods that increase state mindfulness (what else?)

Question 24

Trope (1986)

Answer 24

Tested, in 2 experiments, predictions of a formal model that decomposes the attribution of personal dispositions into identification and dispositional inference processes. The model assumes that identification processes initially represent the incoming stimulus information in terms of meaningful attribution-relevant categories. The results of the identification process serve as input for dispositional inference processes wherein causal schemata guide the inference of personal dispositions. The 2 illustrative experiments traced the processing of behavioral and situational information at the identification and dispositional inference stages and examined attributions as a joint product of the different stages. Findings and previous relevant research demonstrate that the proposed model can help reconcile conflicting findings in the literature, reveal new attributional phenomena, and improve understanding of the cognitive processes that produce self- and other-attribution. Dispositional attribution calculations are appended.

Question 25

Quattrone (1982)

Answer 25

Conducted 2 experiments with 112 undergraduates to investigate whether there may be circumstances in which observers overattribute behavior to situational causes while adjusting insufficiently for information about an actor’s dispositions. Although Ss were clearly informed of the prior attitude of a target person who wrote an attitude-congruent essay under free-choice instructions, they nevertheless attributed the essay in part to essay-congruent features of the target’s situation. This did not depend on whether essays were composed by experimenters or by actual undergraduate target persons, although only essay readers, not essay writers, drew such essay-congruent situational inferences. Results are consistent with an anchoring/adjustment model of sequential attributional processes

Question 26

Dean and Koenig (2019)

Answer 26

This chapter discusses internal and external attributions with regard to several common biases people have when attributing the causes of others’ behavior and our own behavior. It also discusses evidence for cultural similarities and differences and explore why cultural differences exist. When attributing the causes of others’ behavior, a common bias is to explain behavior in terms of internal, dispositional attributes of the target, even when that person’s behavior is constrained by external, situational factors. This bias is called the correspondence bias or the fundamental attribution error. Based on this logic, collectivistic cultures’ acknowledgment of situational forces is not necessarily more accurate, but highlights a different way of thinking that more often takes the context into account. The chapter discusses the implications of the attribution biases for two social issues: group behavior and academic success.

Question 27

Hilton (2017)

Answer 27

Attribution processes appear to be an integral part of human visual perception, as lowlevel inferences of causality and intentionality appear to be automatic, respond to specific kinds of visual patterns and are supported by specific brain systems. However, higher-order attribution processes (e.g., that specify an agent’s beliefs, judgments of internal vs. external causality, dispositional attributions of underlying characteristics to persons and situations) tend to take longer, follow rules of inference that can be characterized in terms of Mill’s
methods of induction, and use information held in memory or made present at the time of judgment. While attribution processes about social objects are sometimes biased, there is scope for partial correction. We review work on the generation, communication and interpretation of complex explanations, with reference to explanation-based models of text understanding that result in situation models of narratives. We distinguish between causal connection and causal selection, and suggest that a factor will be discounted if it is not perceived to be connected to the event-to-be-explained and backgrounded if it is still
perceived to be causally connected to that event, but is not selected as relevant to mention in an explanation. In the final section, we focus on how interpersonal explanation processes constrain causal selection. We review work on the conversational model of causal explanation, which integrates counterfactuals and contrastive explanation and allows common features of social psychological models of causal attribution to emerge (they use the same
difference-based logic to explain different contrasts). It also shows how variations in implicit contrasts and in kinds of causal question (e.g., Why vs. what caused vs. how) select different kinds of elements as relevant explanations (e.g., goals vs. preconditions) in response to a causal question.

Question 28

Kruglanski and Orehek (2007)

Answer 28

The domain of human inference is diverse
and multifaceted. First, inferences vary in the
domain of content to which they belong. Secondly, inferences vary in their speed and immediacy. Inferences vary also on the process-awareness dimension. Possibly
driven by this multifarious variability, a plethora of models and theories has been advanced to identify the processes and mechanisms underlying human inference. In recent
decades, such formulations have preponderantly adopted a partitioning approach distinguishing between qualitatively different manners of reaching inferences. Our review reveals that in early dualmode models, the critical partition often hinged on different types of information.
Possibly in recognition of the open-ended variety of informational types or contents, the more recent dual-systems models tended to be “content-free.” Such models typically adopted two categorical distinctions, namely
those between (a) automatic versus controlled processes and (b) associative versus rule-based processes. The latter categorizations were assumed to coincide such that
the associative processes were typically assumed to be automatic, whereas the rulebased processes were assumed to be controlled. The dual-systems models have been closely attuned to the prevalent Zeitgeist in
social cognition apparent in their emphasis on automatic processes and their reliance on brain activity findings as evidence for their postulates. Conceptual departures from the strict dualistic paradigms have also been noted. The
Quad Model proposes to partition the basic automatic/controlled distinction further into its more specific subtypes. The unimodel parts ways with qualitative partitions altogether and proposes to account for the phenomena of human inference in terms of a number of
intersecting quantitative continua. These latter departures challenge the prevalent dualistic approach to human inference and pose fundamental questions to be resolved, hopefully, via creative new research initiatives (for
a recent debate on these issues, see Deutsch
& Strack 2006; Kruglanski et al. 2006a,b;
Sherman 2006).

Question 29

March et al. (2018)

Answer 29

Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to a change in one’s attitude toward an object based on its contiguous pairing with other positive or negative objects. EC can, in principle, occur through multiple mechanisms, some more and some less thoughtful. We argue that one relatively lowthought route through which EC produces evaluative change is implicit misattribution. Our Implicit Misattribution Model (IMM) is premised on research indicating: a) attributional thinking is pervasive and relatively automatic, b) affective experiences are pervasive and relatively automatic, and c) errors in automatic attributional processing can lead to misattribution of affect from one object to another, resulting in the latter object taking on the affect produced by the
former. Research employing the “surveillance paradigm” we developed provides support for the model, particularly its key moderating variable, source confusability. We further discuss assumptions of the model in terms of encoding, storage, and retrieval/application of the conditioned attitude, as well as the role of contingency awareness and other central issues in the EC literature.

Question 30

Murray et al. (2020)

Answer 30

Results
Following team victory, simple slopes analysis revealed a moderating effect such that adaptive dispositional team-referent attributions appeared to protect against the effects of maladaptive situational team-referent attributions on collective efficacy. This trend was demonstrated across stability and globality attribution dimensions. Following team defeat, no significant interaction effects were observed.

Conclusions
The results suggest that developing adaptive dispositional attributions after success may protect athletes from experiencing deleterious effects of maladaptive situational attributions. Future research is needed to confirm these results and understand how these results can be applied to attributional retraining interventions in sport.

Question 31

Kramaric and Kamenov (2018)

Answer 31

The aim of the study was to verify the settings of Weiner’s attribution-emotional model of assisting behavior in situations that stimulate cooperativeness and competitiveness. We additionally wanted to test whether the effects of attributions on the propensity to assist in some situations were moderated by the participant’s individual differences in cooperative-competitive orientation. A simulation experiment was conducted in which vignettes were used to describe a student who wanted to borrow lecture notes. Participants were assigned to one of six situations that differed in terms of cooperative-competitive situation and the reason why the student did not have his or her own notes. After reading the description of the hypothetical situation, the participants assessed the degree to which the student did not have his or her notes under his / her own control, the level of positive and negative feelings that the situation described in them, and the likelihood of providing the help requested. Participants also completed the Cooperative-Competitive Orientation Scale. The study involved N = 1,119 undergraduate students of technical, biotechnical, social and humanities courses at the University of Zagreb. The results showed significant effects of attributions, situation and individual cooperative-competitive orientation. Participants expressed significantly higher levels of positive emotions, lower levels of negative emotions, and greater willingness to help when the reason why the student did not have his or her notes was not subject to his or her control, compared to the situation when he or she did. Participants are generally more likely to help a fellow student in a cooperative situation as compared to a neutral and competitive situation, and cooperative students are generally more likely to help compared to their more competitive colleagues. Also, the results indicate some interesting moderating effects of the variables examined. In conclusion, the results confirm Weiner’s attribution-emotional model of helper behavior, but also indicate the importance of examining additional variables within the model.

Question 32

Nisbett (2019)

Answer 32

screenshot

Question 33

Beverly (2004)

Answer 33

Several normative models of interpersonal conflict
exist in counseling psychology and organization development. At least one measure, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Instrument (TKCI), assesses people’s most and least preferred conflict styles. The present study was designed to investigate differences in how people perceive conflict and to initiate an alternative individual differences approach to studying interpersonal conflict. A new hypothetical construct, situational attribution, was created to examine individual differences in personality and its relevance to the extent to which people consider the situation or circumstances when retrospectively explaining conflict outcomes. One hundred and sixteen working professionals and students completed three new measures created by the primary investigator to assess situational attribution, their personal accountability for the outcome of the dispute, and the other person’s accountability for the outcome of the dispute. Participants also completed the short form of the Snyder Self-Monitoring Scale and the Agreeableness subscale of the Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness to Experience Revised Inventory (NEO PI-R). Results suggest that those low in self-monitoring are more likely than are those high in self-monitoring to consider the situation or circumstances when retrospectively explaining conflict outcomes. The writer believes that these results suggest that when given an indeterminate amount of time to reflect after a conflict, low self-monitors are more likely to consider the situation or circumstances when retrospectively explaining conflict outcomes than are high self-monitors. A new individual differences model of interpersonal conflict and its relevance to situational attribution is presented.

Question 34

Rholes et al. (1990)

Answer 34

the attribution of dispositional characteristics, such as personality traits and abilities, to ourselves and others is among the most basic elements of social perception
discuss developmental changes in children’s understanding of dispositions and the impact of such changes on motivational processes two basic theses are addressed: first, that during the early and middle childhood years children gradually come to understand dispositions to be invariant structures—that is, to be abiding, constant aspects of persons that exert a consistent influence on behavior across situations and time; and, second, that following this development some social experiences and information acquire new dimensions or meanings for children, which at least partially transform earlier motivational processes

Question 35

Repacholi et al. (2016)

Answer 35

Adults often attribute internal dispositions to other people and down-play situational factors as explanations of behavior. A few studies have addressed the origins of this proclivity, but none has examined emotions, which rank among the more important dispositions that we attribute to others. Two experiments (N = 270) explored 15-month-old infants’ predictive generalizations about other people’s emotions. In exposure trials, infants watched an adult (Experimenter) perform actions on a series of objects and observed another adult (Emoter) react with either anger or neutral affect. Infants were then handed the objects to test whether they would imitate the Experimenter’s actions. One chief novelty of the study was the inclusion of a generalization trial, in which the Experimenter performed a novel act on a novel object. We systematically manipulated whether the Emoter did or did not respond angrily to this novel demonstration, and whether the Emoter watched the infant’s response. Even when no further emotional information was presented in the generalization trial, infants were still hesitant to perform the act when the previously angry Emoter was watching them. Infants tracked the Emoter’s affective behavior and, based on her emotional history, they predicted that she would become angry again if she saw them perform a novel act. Making predictive generalizations of this type may be a precursor to more mature trait-like attributions about another person’s emotional dispositions.

Question 36

Haga et al. (2014)

Answer 36

The 3-stage model of social inference posits that people categorize behaviors and characterize actors or situations effortlessly, but they correct these characterizations with additional information effortfully. The current article tests this model using developmental data, assuming that the less cognitively demanding processes in the model (i.e., categorization, characterization) should appear earlier in development, whereas the more demanding correction process should not appear until later in development. Using 2 different paradigms, Studies 1 and 3 found that younger children failed to take situational information into account while characterizing the actor. Study 2 found that younger children failed to take dispositional information into account while characterizing the situation. In contrast, in these 3 studies, older children used the available information to correct their characterizations of the actors and of the situations. Consistent with the 3-stage model, during elementary school years, children start to integrate additional information when drawing explicit social inferences. In Study 4, children of all age levels used a prior expectancy to draw a dispositional inference, ignoring situational information, suggesting that characterizations based on prior expectancies about an actor are a highly efficient process, not contemplated by the model. The 4 studies together illustrate how developmental data can be valuably used to test adult socio-cognitive models, to extend their validity, or to simply further inform those models

Question 37

Wang et al. (2016)

Answer 37

In social‐cognitive research, little attention has been paid to the developmental course of spontaneous trait inferences about the actor (STIs about the actor) and spontaneous trait transferences about the informant (STTs about the informant). Using a false recognition paradigm, Study 1 investigated the developmental course of STIs and Study 2 investigated the developmental course of STTs, comparing 8‐, 9‐, 10‐, 11‐, 12‐ and 13‐year olds. The results of Study 1 showed that 8‐year olds could make STIs about the actor, and the magnitude of STIs increased from ages 8 to 10 years, stabilised at the age of 10, 11, 12 years, and decreased from ages 12 through 13 years. The results of Study 2 showed that 8‐year olds could make STTs about the informant, and the magnitude of STTs did not vary with age. In all age groups, the magnitude of STIs about the actor was greater than that of STTs about the informant.

Question 38

Scopelliti et al. (2017)

Answer 38

Across consequential attributions of attitudes, ability, emotions, and morality, people make correspondent inferences. People infer stable personality characteristics from others’ behavior, even when that behavior is caused by situational factors. We examined the structure of correspondent inferences and report the development and validation of an instrument measuring individual differences in this correspondence bias (a Neglect of External Demands scale, or “NED”). The NED is internally consistent and distinct from scales and measures of intelligence, cognitive ability, cognitive reflection, general decision-making ability, preference for control, and attributional style. Individual differences in correspondence bias predict blaming people for harmful accidents, believing coerced confessions, correcting for job and task difficulty when making performance evaluations and incentive-compatible personnel selections, and separating market and fund performance when making incentive-compatible investments. Fortunately, the tendency to commit correspondence bias can be reduced. Making situational information easier to process debiases those most prone to correspondence bias

Question 39

Zhou et al. (2019)

Answer 39

The study used an eye-tracking task to investigate whether preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to make inferences about others’ behavior in terms of their mental states in a social setting. Fifty typically developing (TD) 4- and 5-year-olds and 22 5-year-olds with ASD participated in the study, where their eye-movements were recorded as automatic responses to given situations. The results show that unlike their TD peers, children with ASD failed to exhibit eye gaze patterns that reflect their ability to infer about others’ behavior by spontaneously encoding socially relevant information and attributing mental states to others. Implications of the findings were discussed in relation to the proposal that implicit/spontaneous Theory of Mind is persistently impaired in ASD.

Question 40

Brey and Shutts (2015)

Answer 40

Four studies (N=192) tested whether young children use nonverbal information to make inferences about differences in social power. Five- and six-year-old children were able to determine which of two adults was in charge in dynamic videotaped conversations (Study 1) and in static photographs (Study 4) using only nonverbal cues. Younger children (3-4years) were not successful in Study 1 or Study 4. Removing irrelevant linguistic information from conversations did not improve the performance of 3- to 4-year-old children (Study 3), but including relevant linguistic cues did (Study 2). Thus, at least by 5years of age, children show sensitivity to some of the same nonverbal cues adults use to determine other people’s social roles.

Question 41

Jacobs and Narloch (2001)

Answer 41

Learning to generalize from instances is an important part of the development of inductive reasoning skills. This study examined developmental trends in elementary school children’s use of sample size and variability to make inferences about commonly encountered biological and behavioral characteristics. Children in grades 1, 3, and 5, and college students made population estimates based on samples in which both sample size and variability were manipulated. Subjects of all ages used sample size and variability to make their population estimates. Even the youngest children gave significantly lower population estimates for low-variability than for high-variability samples, and for smaller (one or three) than for larger (30) samples. Although the use of sample size depended on variability, this relationship did not change by age group. Variability and domain, however, each independently interacted with age group. Most of the differences in population estimates appeared to be due to sample variability rather than to sample size. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Question 42

Hopthrow et al. (2017)

Answer 42

The correspondence bias (CB) refers to the idea that people sometimes give undue weight to dispositional rather than situational factors when explaining behaviours and attitudes. Three experiments examined whether mindfulness, a non-judgmental focus on the present moment, could reduce the CB. Participants engaged in a brief mindfulness exercise (the raisin task), a control task, or an attention to detail task before completing a typical CB measure involving an attitude-attribution paradigm. The results indicated that participants in the mindfulness condition experienced a significant reduction in the CB compared to participants in the control or attention to detail conditions. These results suggest that mindfulness training can play a unique role in reducing social biases related to person perception.

Question 43

Yu and Zellmer-Bruhn (2017)

Answer 43

The authors introduce the concept of team mindfulness, defined as a shared belief among team members that their interactions are characterized by awareness and attention to present events, and experiential, nonjudgmental processing of within-team experiences. Team mindfulness is examined as a safeguard against multilevel team conflict transformation processes. Results from three multi-wave field studies validate a team mindfulness instrument and indicate that team mindfulness (1) negatively relates to team relationship conflict, (2) reduces the connection between task conflict and relationship conflict at the team level, (3) and reduces the cross-level spillover of team relationship conflict to individual social undermining. The research contributes to the growing workplace mindfulness literature by conceptualizing mindfulness at the team level and demonstrating its positive effects for team functioning. Results also contribute to research on team conflict and social undermining, showing that team mindfulness is a promising intervention to reduce team conflict and its ill effects.

Question 44

Maxfield et al. (2017)

Answer 44

According to terror management theory, awareness of death affects diverse aspects of human thought and behavior. Studies have shown that older and younger adults differ in how they respond to reminders of their mortality. The present study investigated one hypothesized explanation for these findings: Age-related differences in the tendency to make correspondent inferences. The correspondence bias was assessed in younger and older samples after death-related, negative, or neutral primes. Younger adults displayed increased correspondent inferences following mortality primes, whereas older adults’ inferences were not affected by the reminder of death. As in prior research, age differences were evident in control conditions; however, age differences were eliminated in the death condition. Results support the existence of age-related differences in responses to mortality, with only younger adults displaying increased reliance on simplistic information structuring after a death reminder.

Question 45

Scopelliti et al. (2017)

Answer 45

Furthermore, we provide evidence of a
potential debiasing strategy to reduce the impact of
the propensity to make correspondent inferences on
judgments by increasing the accessibility of situational
information with a simple decision aid (Study 8). Taken
together, these results elucidate the nature of the construct, which can be characterized as an overarching bias whose strength varies systematically across
the general population, which influences patterns
of correspondent inferences across different types of
judgments and decisions. Different from a chronic individual difference in personality, the propensity to make
correspondent inferences can be mitigated by means
of appropriate training and situation-specific interventions (see Morewedge et al. 2015 for evidence of its
susceptibility to debiasing training).

While using the NED to measure the distribution of individual neglect of situational information
in these relevant domains may be a straightforward
first application, our studies suggest that the NED may
be a valuable tool to reduce the influence of correspondence bias in consequential evaluations. Consider an organization’s performance evaluation and personnel selection procedures. Simply measuring an assessor’s propensity to exhibit correspondence bias during performance evaluations might help improve the fairness of the selection procedure by (i) providing an estimate of the prevalence of biased evaluations, (ii) suggesting when situational causes are neglected and need to be made salient, and (iii) indicating when assessors are biased and need debiasing training.

Previous research has typically reduced correspondence bias by changing the framing of attributions. Frames leading to the adoption of a focus on the situation (e.g., rating the degree to which a behavior was due to the situation rather than the actor) have been shown to significantly reduce the weight given to dispositional factors (Krull 1993, Krull and Erickson 1995). Rather than by reducing correspondent inferences, however, these frames shift their direction so that observers anchor their judgments on the situation and insufficiently correct for dispositional influences (Krull 1993). Within the same frame, we found that correspondent inference making can itself
be reduced with a debiasing strategy that facilitates
bias correction—reducing the neglect of situational
information by increasing its salience. We think this is a
strategy that should be easy to adopt when situational
information can be made salient.

Question 46

Hardy (2016)

Answer 46

Corporations often use narrative advertisements as they are an effective method of persuasion. Viewers of narrative advertisements enact the correspondence bias due to being too engaged in the storyline to create counterarguments. The present research examined the impact of critical thought induction as a mechanism to counteract the correspondence bias, as measured through
participant ratings of commercial attitude and corporate image. Participants (N = 179; 58 male, 116 female, 5 other) were recruited from a university student pool and Facebook. Participants viewed a narrative advertisement by Anheuser-Busch, completed thought listing, and rated the commercial and company. Results demonstrated that the correspondence bias was present, regardless of the manipulation. However, participants who experienced critical thought induction listed more thoughts relating to the persuasion attempt than the commercial. These
results demonstrate the strength of correspondence bias and provide insight into the interventions required to counter it.

Question 47

Horhota and Blanchard-Fields (2006)

Answer 47

The present study assessed the influence of personal beliefs and attributional complexity on the correspondence bias in young and older adults. Using the attitude–attribution paradigm, participants made judgments about a target’s actual attitude based on an essay that was written by the target. The essay contained a position on a controversial social issue that the target was instructed to advocate. Replicating past research, older adults showed more extreme attitude attribution ratings than did young adults. Extending past research, personal beliefs were related to the extremity of attitude attributions for older adults, but not for young adults. Attributional complexity was also an important factor influencing the extremity of older adults’ attitude attributions.