An Experimental Study of the Inferential Asymmetry in Attribution Judgment

2002 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 12610122
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 教育・社会系心理学
• Research Institution: Gakushuin University (2001-2002); Osaka University (2000)
• Principal Investigator: TOYAMA Midori Gakushuin University, Faculty of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (20132061)
• Project Period (FY): 2000 – 2002
• Keywords: social cognition / attribution process / inference / cognitive bias / prediction / perceptual salience

Research Abstract

The distinction between dispositional and situational attribution has been widely accepted in attribution theory. However, previous research found asymmetry in weighing each type of causal factors, suggesting overemphasis upon dispositional causes. Fundamental attribution error is one of its manifestations. Three experiments were conducted to elucidate this inferential asymmetry found in attribution research. In Experiment 1, the relationship between causal attribution and prediction of behavior was examined. Participants were given information about several persons' behaviors in particular situations, some of which were personality-implying behaviors and others were emotions. One group of participants was asked to predict behavior from the person across situations and other participants predicted behavior from the situation across people. Results indicated that participants were more confident predicting personality-implying behavior from people than from situations but were more conf ident predicting emotions from situations than from people. Two-way ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between the direction of prediction and behavior types. The main effect of the direction of prediction was also significant, indicating that participants tended to predict behavior more readily from people than from situations. With regards to causal attribution, participants attributed emotions more to situations and personality-implying behaviors more to people. In Experiment 2 and 3, the effects of perceptual salience upon the inferential asymmetry were examined. Participants watched the video-recorded conversation between two persons (Exp.2) or computer graphics involving four characters (Exp.3). One of the characters was made perceptually salient and the effects of the salience upon correspondent inference and dominance rating were measured. Results indicated that the actual utterance of each person was the main determinant of dominance rating and the effect of perceptual salience was negligible. More research is needed to explore the salience effects further.