JOURNAL WB EXPERIMESTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 3, 1-24 (1967)
The Attribution of Attitudes
EDWARD E. JONES AND VICTOR A. HARRIS
Three experiments were conducted within the framework of correspondent
inference theory. In each of the experiments the
subjects were instructed to estimate the “true” attitude of a
target person after having either read or listened to a speech by
him expressing opinions on a controversial topic. Independent
variables included position of speech (pro, anti, or equivocal),
choice of position vs. assignment of position, and reference group
of target person. The major hypothesis (which was confirmed with
varying strength in all three experiments) was that choice would
make a greater difference when there was a low prior probability
of someone taking the position expressed in the speech. Other
findings of interest were: (I) a tendency to attribute attitude in
line with behavior, even in no-choice conditions; (2) increased
inter-individual variability in conditions where low probabilityopinions
were expressed in a constraining context; (3) that this
variability was partly a function of the subjects’ own attitudes on
the issue; (4) that equivocation in no-choice conditions leads to
the attribution that the equivocator opposes the assigned position.
The main conclusion suggested is that perceivers do take account
of prior probabilities and situational constraints when attributing
private attitude, but perhaps do not weight these factors as
heavily as would be expected by a rational analysis.
When a person verbalizes an opinion he may or may not hold an
underlying attitude that “corresponds” to that opinion. The degree to
which opinions and attitudes-or more generally, acts and dispositionsare
seenas correspondent is a function of the relative weight assignedto
internal versus external causal factors (cf. Thibaut and Riecken, 1955).
Loosely stated, a person will be perceived to hold attitudes that correspond
with his opinion statements when the statements seem to have
beenfreely offered and not coercedby situational pressures.
Jones and Davis (1965) have attempted to develop a systematic statement
of the attribution process in person perception which extends this
’ This research was facilitated by NSF-G8857.
1
@ 1967 by Academic Press Inc.
2 .JONES AND HARRIS
common-sense reasoning. Building on Heider’s earlier work (1944, 1958).
they have proposed a theory of correspondent inferences to clarify the
major variables involved in extracting information about dispositions
from observed acts. An inference about an attribute is correspondent to
the extent that the attribute and a sample of observed behavior are
similarly described by the inference and the attribute serves as a “sufficient
explanation” for the behavior. A “sufficient explanation” is one
that accounts for the occurrence of an act to the reasonable satisfaction
of the perceiver. Correspondent inferences imply a circularity in such
explanations: “he dominated the meeting because he is dominant,” “he
cries because he is in pain, ” ‘(he voted for prohibit,ion because he is against
the sale and consumption of alcohol.”
But more than circular reasoning is involved in decisions about correspondence
as defined in the theory. Since Jones and Davis were interested
in the information gained about a person through the opportunity
to observe him act, not every inference that takes behavior ‘(at face
value” is highly correspondent. If everyone were in favor of prohibition,
and the perceiver was aware of this beforehand, he would gain no information
about person A from observing him vote for prohibition. The
concept of correspondence should reflect person A’s distinctiveness on the
dimension in question. It is not that he (like everyone else) favors
prohibition; our inference becomes correspondent when we attribute to A
more intense feelings about alcohol than we attribute to the average
ljerson. Correspondence is high when the act tells us something in a direct,
way about the person that we did not know beforehand. To paraphrase
t,he formal definition of correspondence offered by <Jones and Davis
(1965) : Given an inference that assigns an attribute to account for an
act, the correspondence of that inference increases as the judged value of
the attribute departs from the judge’s conception of the average person’s
standing.
In the original presentation of correspondent. inference theory, Jones
and Davis (1965) couched their analysis in terms of the effects of action,
the uniqueness of a given act-effect linkage, and the assumed social desirability
of the effects achieved. For our present purposes a simpler
terminology will suffice, one which is easily mapped into the more general
original statement. Given the fact that a person expresses himself on some
opinion issue, the inference that he believes what he says, and that not
everyone would say it, is correspondent. Correspondence should be high
when perceived choice is high and the prior probability of the act occurring
is low. This should be the condition where maximum information
is gained from behavior (cf. Berlyne, 1965)-what a person says is
unexpected or at variance with the norm and he seems to have said it
THE ATTRIBUTIOX OF ATTITUDES 3
“on his own hook.” Information gain is lowest when the person expresses
highly conventional opinions under conditions where it would be extremely
difficult for him to express any other opinions.
An alternative way of stating the relat’ionship between perceived choice,
prior probability, and correspondence conceives of the first two as orthogonal
independent variables and the latter as the dependent variable. The
crucial hypothesis to be tested by the experiments to be presented below
is: When a person expresses a modal (high probability) opinion, attribution
of underlying attitude will not vary as a function of perceived choice ;
when an unexpected or unpopular opinion is expressed, correspondent
attribution will vary directly with the amount of choice perceived. We
are predicting, then, a particular kind of statistical interaction between
the amount of perceived choice and the prior probability of an opinion’s
being expressed, in determining the correspondence of resulting inferences
about opinion-related attitudes.
This hypothesis is hardly paradoxical, though it, does propose that
persons perform a kind of implicit information theory calculus in making
sense out of the behavior of others. The information contained in a
statement, (act) goes up as the prior probability of the statement goes
down, assuming that the speaker was not forced, bribed, or otherwise
constrained to make the statement.. But does the average perceiver in fact
follow this prescription? Relevant experimental evidence is sparse. Steiner
and Field (1960) conducted an experiment in which an accomplice expressed
pro-segregation opinions in a group discussion. In some cases he
chose this role with apparent freedom, in other cases he was assigned the
role by t,he experimenter. Other group members were more confident in
their assignment of pro-segregation beliefs to the accomplice in the choice
condition. They also liked the accomplice less, probably because the
subjects were Northern college students who themselves were against
segregation. In effect the St,einer and Field (1960) study tests half of the
proposed hypothesis, whereas the present experiments attempt to show
that choice is not an important variable when the prior probability of the
behavior being observed is high. A number of ot.her studies (e.g., Jones,
1965; Bern, 1965; Thibaut and Riecken, 1955; Jones, Davis, and Gergen,
1961) are indirectly relevant in assessing the role of perceived choice in
correspondent attribution. They do not, however, provide a direct test of
the theory.
Such a test requires :L design in which a stimulus person states either
Ltn expected or an unexpected opinion under conditions of high- versus
low-perceived choice. Three closely related experiments were conducted
within this general design; the subjects’ primary task in each was to
estimate the true attitude of the person making the statement.
JOSES AND HARRIS
EXPERIMENT I
Method
In the first experiment subjects were asked to read a short essay on “Castro’s
Cuba” and to record their estimates of the essayist’s true attitude toward Castro.
The essay itself was either pro-Castro or anti-Castro; it had either been written
under conditions of free choice or by assignment from a course instructor. The two
variables of choice and behavior directioa thus comprised a two-by-two factorial
design. This basic design was repeated in each of the three experiments, though
there were variations from experiment to experiment in the manner in which the
cross-cutting variables were manipulated.
Subjects
Thirty-six male and 15 female students served in the experiment in one group
session. They were volunteers from the introductory psychology course at Duke
University who received course credit for their participation.
Procedrtw
Each subject was handed a mimeographed pamphlet that contained an essay on
Castro’s Cuba, a prior statement manipulating the choice variable, and a final
questionnaire. The experimenter then explained the purpose of the experiment as
“an attempt to determine if people can make valid judgments of another’s personality
and attitudes on the basis of very limited information.” The subjects were led to
believe that a variety of personal materials written by the same undergraduate
student were distributed among t,hem. They were told, “Somr of you have an excerpt
from the person’s autobiography, which was originally written to accompany his
college application. Others have in your pamphlet, a short essay prepared for a
creative writing course. The essay deals with conflicting values in contemporary
society. . . . The remainder of you have an answer from a political science hour
fxam.” The suhjccts were then told to glance at the material to identify their
condition. They wverc Ird to believe that the conditions would be compared to see
which kind of written material produced the most valid impression, as measured by
“a lot of additional information that you do not know about.” The experimenter
went on to state that other target persons would be evaluated by other subjects.
Actually, each subject was in the “political science exam” condition. His task was
to read the examination answrr and attempt to judge the true attitude of the
“target person” toward the topic. The experimenter concluded his orienting overview
with some brief remarks identifying the author of the materials as a student
at the University of North Carolina, a resident of the state, and the son of an
automobile salesman. The mimeographed material began with a reproduction of the
exam question. This instructrd the target person in one of three ways: (a) “Based
on the past weclk’s discussion and lectures, write a short cogent c7%ticism of Castro’s
Cuba as if you were giving the opening statement in a debate”; (b) ‘I . . short
cogent defense of Castro’s Cuba as if . “: (c) “ . . . short cogent essay either
defending or Gticizing Castro’s Cuba as if. .” This constituted the choice
manipulation, with subjects in conditions where the target person received either
(a) or (b) instructions ronsidcred as “no choice” subjects.
The essay that followed was approximately 200 words. It was either pro- or
anti-Castro, and in the no choice conditions the dire&ion of the essay was always
that called for by the examination question. Although the essay was typed. there
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 5
were occasional spelling errors, false starts, and cross-outs. The experimenter explained
that this would provide information about the “style and approach” of the
target person. The essay itself was neither polished nor crudr ; it had a C+ quality,
embodying a few reasonsblc and familiar arguments. For example:
pro-Castro essay
. . . the people of Cuba now have a share in the government and are
demonstrating their &&nge+Ihe&at-ttis approval by their
tremendous response to the trials of building a new society from the
wreckage left by the exploiters of foreign industry. ”
anti-Castro essay
“Castro can and does attempt to take over our neighbors and convert
them to communist sattelites by using methods of infiltration sabotage
and subversion. ”
Response measures
The essay was followed in the booklet by (a) a la-item semantic differential scale
for rating various personal qualities of the target person; (h) a IO-item Likert-type
scale for the subject to use in estimating the target person’s true attitude toward
Castro; and (c) a second copy of the same scale for the subject to record his own
attitude.
Results
The subjects’ own attitudes toward Castro were roughly comparable
(not significant,ly different) from condition to condition. Not surprisingly,
the scores clustered at the anti-Castro end of the scale, wit,h very few
scoresbeyond the midpoint in the pro-Castro direction.
The main responsemeasure of inter& is the prediction by the subject
of the target person’s true attitude. This measurewas taken in the form
of scale ratings on ten items concerning Castro and Cuba. Five were
stated in a pro-Castro direction (e.g., “Cuba has as much right as any
other country to choose her own form of government free from outside
interference by t,he United States”), five in an anti-Castro direction (e.g.,
“The communist government of Cuba is one which cannot be to!erated
by the U. S., and must at all costs be destroyed”). Subjects indicated
degree of predicted agreement or disagreement with each statement on a
seven-point scale. The maximum score (pro-Castro) was thus 70, the
minimum score (anti-Castro) was 10. Since t,he pro-Castro items were
6 .rOKES Ah-D HARRIS
TABLE 1
EXPERIMENT I: MEANS” AND VARIANCES M)R ATTRIBUTED ATTITUDE SCORES
Speech direction
Pro-Castro Anti-Castro Pdiff
Choice A 13 13
x 59.62 17.38 <.OOl
9 13.59 8.92
No Choice iv 10 15
x 44.10 “2.87 < ,001”
9 147.65 17.55
pdiff < .Olb <.Ol
0Possible range from 10 (extreme anti) to 70 (extreme pro). The average subject’s
“own score” was 32.23, 9 = 35.54.
bDegrees of freedom, and therefore probability values, adjusted for unequal population
variances.
more indirect and permissive toward differing viewpoints than the antiCastro
items, the scalehasno true neutral point.
Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations of the subjects’
prediction ratings. A number of things are clear by inspection. The
direction of the speechwas of great importance in guiding the prediction
ratings. This was especially true in the choice conditions, a.sone would
expect, but it was also true in the no choice conditions to a highly
significant extent (t = 5.32, df 10.76, p < .OOl). It is also clear that
within each speech condition, correspondence between speech direction
and attributed attitude was greater when the speaker had choice than
when the essaydirection was assigned (p < .Ol in both cases).An equally
obvious fact is that t.he variances are heterogeneous, that of the No
Choice-Pro condition being almost 10 times as large as the next largest
variance. Because of this heterogeneity, all the statistical comparisons
mentioned above were evaluated with the reduced degrees of freedom
called for when t tests are performed under an assumption of unequal
population variances (cf. Walker and Lev, 1953,pp. 157-1581.
The inflated variance in the No Choice-Pro condition is of interest in
its own right, for it is precisely in this cell that the largest variance might
be expected. From the subjects’ perspective, this should be the condition
of greatest ambiguity: the behavior direction is at variance with population
expectations, but the target person was told to behave that way.
What does he really believe? Apparently some subjects put more weight
on the behavior direction than the context, others discounted the behavior
almost entirely becauseof the context.
The main hypothesis was that the difference between Choice and No
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 7
Choice means would be greater for subjects hearing the pro-Castro speech
than for those hearing the anti-Castro speech. While the mean differences
in the pro-Castro condition were larger, both Choice-No Choice comparisons
were significant (as noted above), and the predicted difference
between differences did not approach significance. The hypothesis was
not confirmed.
Returning to the inflated variance in the No Choice-Pro condit.ion,
one might wonder whether the subjects’ own attitudes toward Castro
affected their predictions of the target person’s true attitudes. There is
some slight evidence that this was so. The correlation between own and
imputed attitude was $50 in the No Choice-Pro condition; in the other
conditions the comparable correlations ranged from -.I2 to +.05. Bccause
of the small N’s involved, none of these correlations differ significantly
from zero.
The semantic differential ratings revealed little information of interest.
There were twelve 7-point scales involving such antonyms as bad-good.
worthless-valuable, weak-strong. Scores were totaled for each subject, to
provide a measure of favorability of trait attribution. There was a significant
tendency (p < .05) for subjects in the No Choice conditions to
feel more positively toward the target person than those in the Choice
conditions. This may be understood as a sympathy reaction to a student
forced to take a particular side on a touchy issue in writing an cxamination
essay.
Perhaps the most st’riking result of the first experiment was the
tendency to attribute correspondence between behavior and private attitude
even when the direction of the essay was assigned. If the subjects
fully understood the conditions under which the essay was written, their
tendency to be affected by the essay content in attributing an attitude to
the target person would seem to reflect incomplete or distorted reasoning
in the No Choice conditions. Perhaps some of the subjects were inattentive
and did not clearly understand the context of choice or no choice in which
the exam essay was written. Perhaps some felt that the assignment to
write an exam essay on Cuba was unlikely and were skeptical of the cove1
story. In order to check on these possibilities, a second experiment was
conducted.
The main hypothesis of the first experiment was not confirmed at least
in part because the choice variation affected attitude attribution more
than was expected in the anti-Cast.ro essay conditions. In spite of the fact
that subjects in the four conditions had comparable “own” attitudes, as
measured by a simple one-way analysis of variance, those in the ChoiceAnti
condition did have the most pro-Castro attitudes. The mean “own
score” in that, condition was greater by t test than t’he means in each of
8 JONES AND HARRIS
the other three conditions. The effects of t,his fortuitous event cannot be
estimated, but its occurrence provides another reason for replicating the
first experiment before rejecting the main experimental hypothesis.
EXPERIMENT II
Method
The second experiment included a modified replication of the four basic conditions
of the first experiment plus eight additional conditions. Before describing the new
conditions, the procedural modifications of the basic replication will be described.
In order not to depart too radically from the conditions of the first experiment,
the issue of Castro’s Cuba was retained along with the notion of free choice versus
assignment by an authority. The differences were :
1. Context oi behavior. The essay was presented as the first draft of an opening
statement in a college debate, with appropriate specifications to make this cover
story plausible. We assumed that the subjects would realize that debaters often try
to defend positions in which they do not believe. The topic of the debate was
written on the blackboard in all cases as, “Resolved that Castro’s Cuba is a legitimate
member of the family of nations and that the United States should not
interfere with the sovereign rights of another country.” The choice-no choice
manipulation was delivered orally: the debater had either been directed by the
team advisor to argue a specified side of the topic or was given his choice of sides.
2. Behavior itseZj. The “essays” were changed very little in content, though they
were distributed as Xerox copies of the handwritten original rather than in
mimeograph form.
3. Judgment task. Subjects were again told that the experimenter was interested in
their ability to judge beliefs and personality on the basis of limited information.
However, no mention was made of other subjects working from different materials
on the same target person.
4. Respollse nzeusures. The scale for measuring imputed and own attitudes toward
Castro was identical. The semantic differential items were modified to increase their
relevance. Such items as poor-rich, sane-insane, and dirty-clean were eliminated in
favor of such items as foolish-wise, trite-original, and disorganized-organized. A final
questionnaire was also included to check on the experimental manpulations.
Added Conditions
The results of the first experiment raised a number of questions concerning the
choice manipulation and how it was perceived by the subjects. In the added conditions,
an attempt was made to increase the salience of the choice manipulation by
requiring the subject himself to write a pro- or anti-Castro essay before reading
the target person’s In condition 5 (the first four replicated the basic design, as noted
above) subjects were instructed to write a pro-Castro debate opening speech and
then were exposed to a No Choice-Anti target person; in condition 6 subjects were
instructed to write an anti-Castro speech and were then exposed to a No ChoiceAnti
target person; and in condition 7 subjects were instructed to write a pro-Castro
speech and were then exposed to a No Choice-Pro target person. These additions
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 9
represented a compromise in design, since the major purpose was to make the
subjects in the No Choice conditions aware of how it feels to be assigned a particular
side of the debate, and the remaining combinations of subject- and target personinstructions
were not expected to be equally informative.
Five additional conditions were added in which, regardless of what the target
person was instructed to do, the resulting speech was ambivalent. It combined both
pro- and anti-Castro arguments in a balanced present,ation. Pre-instructions to the
subject and to the target person were varied to generate these five condibions.
The full design of Exp. II is presented in Table 2, along with the means and N’s for
each of the twelve conditions. The ambivalent speech conditions were included to
explore the attribution of attit.ude when behavior is out of line with role prescriptions.
Presumably someone who is instructed to write a pro-Castro debate opener,
but in fact writes an ambivalent statement, should be seen as strongly anti-Castro.
The obverse should also be true: an ambivalent statement following anti-Castro
instructions should lead to predict.ions of pro-Castro attitude.
Administmtiotz of Experiment
A total of 97 subjects (male and female volunteers from the introductory
psycholo,qy course) were run in 11 experimental sessions during a l-week period.
The number of subjects signing up for a particular session could not be entirely
pre-determined, and two sessions were sometimes required to fill one condition.
Otherwise two conditions, which differed only in the direction of the debate statement
being evaluated, were run in the same session.
Results
The subjects’ own attitudes were again predominantly ant,i-Castro, and
this time the mean (‘own scores” in each condition were almost identical.
There is no question t’hat the subjects were attentive to the choice
manipulation. When asked how much choice the target person perceived
he had (on a g-point scale) t’here was very little overlap between the
Choice and the No Choice distributions (t = 8.09, p < 601). Whether or
not the subject himself was instructed to write an essay (in the choicesaliencecondit,ions)
did not affect the attribution of choice-perceived-by-
target-person.
Turning to the major dependent variable, attribution of at.titude toward
Castro, the mean a’ttribution scores for all 12 conditions are presented
in Table 2. Comparing conditions 5 and 6 with condition 1, and
condition 7 wit’h condition 2, it is clear that there were no systematic
effects of the choice-salience manipulation. Since this was the case, all
No Choice-Anti conditions were combined, and all No Choice-Pro conditions
were combined, to produce the data present’edin Table 3. These
data may be compared directly with those presented in Table 1. (The
attribution data for the ambiguous speechconditions will be deferred for
later consideration.)
Once again there were striking effects for direction of speech. These
effects were significantly greater when the target person was given a
10 JONES AND HARRIS
TABLE 2
DESIGN OF EXPERIMENT II
Instruc- Target
Instruc- tions to person’s
tions to target performsubject
person ante 3 .\A.
Basic conditions
1. NCA NCA ant1 21.78 9
2. NCP x-CP pro 38.57 7
3. CA C anti 22.89 9
4. CP c Pro q57.67 9
B. Salience-of-choice condit,ions
5. Pro-NCA p”’ NGA anti 25.89 9
6. Anti-NCA anti NCA anti 23.56 9
7. Pro-NCP pro NCP pro 43.75 8
C. Salience-ambivalent conditions
8. Pro-NCA-a pro NCA amb 42.00 7
9. Anti-NCA-a anti NCA amb 39.33 9
10. Pro-NCP-a pro NW amb 33.00 7
11. Pro-C-a Pro C amb 40.00 7
12. C-C-a c C amb 42.86 7
Total I%’ 97
Note. C stands for free choice, NC for assignment by the debate captain, A for antiCastro
speech, P for pro-Castro speech, and a for ambivalent speech.
choice, but the pro-anti difference was highly significant even when the
debate side was assigned. Once again the variances were heterogeneous,
and since the greatest variability recurred in the No Choice-Pro condition
this replicated the pattern of variances in Experiment I. The mean values
seem to provide strong support for the main hypothesis that degree of
TABLE 3
EXPERIMENT II: MEANS” AND VARIANCES FOR ATTRIBUTED AITITUDE SCORES
Speech direct ioll
Pro-Castro Anti-Castro /Idif!
Choice hT 9 9
if 57.67 22.89 < ,001
,x2 21.00 34 86
No Choice AT 15 “7
2 41.33 23.74 < OOlh
,s.2 134.81 50.12
pdiff < OOlb 11.6.
a Possible range from 10 (extreme anti) to 70 (extreme pro). The average subject’s
“own score” was 31.67, so = 82.25.
b Degrees of freedom (and therefore probability values) adjusted for unequal populat.ion
variances.
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITITDES ‘11
choice makes a greater difference when the behavior has a low prior
probability. An interaction t test, adjusting the degrees of freedom to
compensate for heterogeneity of variance, is significant (t = 3.37, df =
36.1, p < .Ol). This test compares the means in the following way:
(57.67-41.33) > (23.74-22.89), cf. Table 3, and thus appropriately ignores
the direction of the differences in each column. Otherwise the
interaction test would merely show that the means are further apart in
the first row than in the second row, or that the differences between
speechesis greater when choice is allowed. As we have already noted
above, this form of the interaction is also significant, linking degree of
correspondence of inference directly to degreeof choice.
Effects of making an ambivalent speech.When a t,arget person is directed
to make an anti-Castro present.ation and equivocates in his
argumentation, he should be seen as relatively pro-Castro. The same
ambivalent speech under pro-Castro directions should result in t,he at,tribution
of an ant,i-Castro attitude. The results of conditions 8, 9, and
10 bear out this hypothesis (seeTable 2). When condit,ions 8 and 9 are
combined (since both require the target person to give an anti-Cast.ro
speech) and contrasted with condition 10, the difference is significant.
(t = 2.07, df = 21, p < .05). The target person who gave an ambivalent
speech under free choice conditions was seen to be rather in favor of
Castro, as one would expect. In spit.eof the differences noted, the effects
on attitude attribution of having the target personviolate instructions are
far from overwhelming. The target personwho gave an ambivalent, speech
under anti-Castro instructions was seen as no more in favor of Castro
than the one who gave a pro-Castro speechunder pro-Castro instruct,ions.
The target person who responded ambivalently under pro-Castro instructions
was seen as much more in favor of Castro than the target person
who slavishly followed anti-Castro directions. This seemst.o be further
evidence that the average subject in theseexperiments attaches insufficient
weight to the constraining force of authoritative dire&ions to behave in a
certain way.
Own and attributed attitude. Table 4 presents the pattern of correlations
between the subjects’ own attitudes toward Castro and the attitudes
imputed to the target person. There are several points of interest in this
table, though conclusions drawn from correlations with such small AT’sare
obviously risky. First of all, there is a dramatic replication of t,hrx
correlation between own attitude and imputed attitude in the No ChoicePro
condition. Apparently we may venture the conclusion that when a
subject attempts to predict attitude in a situation with conflicting cues
(where t’he behavior tells him one thing and the context tells him another),
he tends to fall back on his own attitudes as a guide for his
estimate. Note, however, that, this was only true in the no-salience
12 JONES AND HARRIS
TABLE 4
EXPERIMENT II: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OWN ATTITUDE
TOWARD CASTRO AND IMPUTED ATTITUDE
(Product Moment Correlations)
Speech direction
Pro-Castro Anti-Castro Ambivalent
Choice
No ChoiceNo
Salience
No Choice-
Salience
N
,
.I
T
21
,’
9 9
-.03 .09
7 9
.93** .37
8 IS
-.51 .33
14
- .61*
Instructions
Pro Anti
7 16
.64 - .43*
*p < .05.
**p < .Ol.
condition. When the prediction task was preceded by the task of writing
a pro-Castro speechunder directions, the correlation vanishes. Having to
write a speech against one’s own position seemsto reduce the significance
of that position when it comesto imputing t,he attitude of a target person
operating under the same prescription. Perhaps the subjects in the No
Choice-Salience condition were alerted to concentrate more on the speech
itself, being sensitive to any nuancesor signsof sincerity in the arguments
presented.
The other intriguing feature of the correlational data is the tendency
for own position to be negatively related to imputed position when an
ambiguous speech was given, unless the instructions were to give a
pro-Castro speech.In order to account for this we present the following
post hoc speculation. The target person in the Pro-Ambivalent condition
does not follow instructions slavishly and is therefore seenas quite antiCastro
on the average. Perhaps this is what the anti-Castro subject thinks
he might do in the same circumstances, thus causing him to assimilate
the target person’s attitude to his own. The target person who writes an
ambivalent speech when told to write an anti-Castro speech, or told to
choose one side or the other, reveals himself as moderately pro-Castro.
Here there seemsto be a contrast effect: the more anti-Castro the subject,
the more he judges the speech (and therefore the debater) to be proCastro.
These speculations are basedon rather complex assumptions, but
the reasoning is compatible with the judgmental theory of Sherif and
Hovland (1961) further elaborated by Berkowitz (1960). This theory
proposesthat opinion positions closeto one’s own will be judged as closer
than they are; the extremity of more distant positions will be exaggerated.
The semantic differential results were essentially negative. The tend-
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 13
ency to respond more favorably to the No Choice target person noted in
the first experiment did not replicate.
The second experiment established the main hypothesis much more
firmly than the first and did so under better controIled and probably more
involving conditions. The choice variable does seem to make a greater
difference in attributing correspondence when a noncustomary act is being
assessed than when the act is customary or highly normative. Once again,
the direction of the act had a striking effect even when the actor had no
choice. What are the determinants of this tendency to overemphasize the
content of behavior when attributing attitude? Two major possibilities
suggest themselves. First, the subjects may perceive that the target person
has an import,ant degree of choice even in the No Choice condition.
Perhaps the examination question (described in the first experiment) was
one of several alternative possibilities. In the second experiment, the
debater could have refused the assignment, quit the debating team, or
maneuvered for another issue, if he really found it distasteful to argue on
behalf of Castro. On the other hand, students are familiar with settings,
like the debate context, where a person has good and compelling reasons
to argue against his own private att.itude. Also, the average subject in the
No Choice-Pro condition affirmed on the postexperimental questionnaire
that the target person had very little choice (average of 2.08 on a scale
where 7.00 represents complete freedom).
A more likely possibility is that the speech content conveys information
about the talent of t.he speaker, his familiarity with the issues involved,
and his experience at concocting, say, pro-Castro arguments.
Where does the material come from that goes into the speech? In the first
experiment, presumably, developments in Cuba had been discussed in
class along with arguments attacking and defending the regime. In the
second experiment, the debater presumably had access to various resource
materials in preparing his speech. Nevertheless, in neither case was it
crystal clear that the preparation of arguments was merely a matter of
putting together information assembled by others, Perhaps the pro-Castro
statement was so constructed that it was hard for the subjects to believe
that the arguments were not spontaneous and at, least partly believed by
the target person.
The third experiment was designed with a number of purposes in mind.
First, it was necessary to show that the results were not, a peculiar function
of the particular speeches used or of the Cuban issue. In order to test
the genera1it.y of the findings an entirely different attitudinal area was
tapped. Second, it was important to make more explicit the fact that stock
arguments prepared by others were available for composing the speech,
Finally, an attempt was made to vary t’he reference group of the target
person so as to manipu1at.e directly the probability that he would express
14 JONES AND HARRIS
opinions in a certain direction. To accomplish these objectives, subjects
were exposed to tape-recorded speeches for or against segregation, delivered
by a Northerner or a Southerner, who did or did not have prior
choice. The design was thus a 2 X 2 X 2 factorial with eight experimental
conditions.
EXPERIMENT III
Method
Administration of experiment
The subjects were 125 male volunteers drawn from the same introductory psychology
course and recruited by the same incentive conditions (fulfilling a course
requirement for experimental participation) as in the previous two experiments.
Four subjects were dropped from the analysis, three for suspecting the cover story
and one for elementary failure to follow instructions. Once again, the number of
subjects signing up for a particular session could not be entirely predetermined.
Each condition included data from at least two but no more than three experimental
sessions. There were no significant between-session effects within conditions.
Rationale
The purpose of the experiment, the subjects were told, was to “determine the
predictability of a target person’s attitudes on various issues given information about
his attitudes on other issues.” In order to explain the origin of the tape recordings to
be played, the experimenter’s introduction included a rather complex cover story
describing the recruitment of ten target persons: An advertisement had been placed
in the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina asking for volunteer
upperclassmen to participate as research subjects. Accepted volunteers were promised
$2.50 for “about a half-hour’s work.” The advertisement invited interested participants
to leave their name and phone number at a particular box number. Of those
that responded, the cover story continued, ten were selected as target persons
because data were available (from a large-scale survey of undergraduate opinion
conducted by the sociology department) on their attitudes toward segregation and
other issues. Appointments were arranged to meet with each of these persons in their
dormitory rooms. After the experimenter arrived there, the t.arget person was asked
to study a list of arguments for and against segregation, to construct a speech based
on these arguments, and to deliver the speech in a convincing manner into a
portable tape recorder. As in the previous two experiments, the target person was
either given his choice of constructing a pro- or anti-segregation speech or he was
instructed to take a particular side. Each target person was reassured that he would
receive $2.50 for approximately a half-hour’s work.
The latter portions of this cover story were conveyed on the tape recording itself,
in the form of instructions to the particular target person. The arguments he was
asked to study were allegedly taken from the Letters-to-the-Editor section of a
daily newspaper. In all cases, the target person asked whether he was supposed to
use the arguments provided for him and was told “you can use any arguments you
wish from the list but you don’t have to use the list at all if you don’t want to.”
The experimenter emphasized that he did not necessarily endorse anv of the
arguments otl the list.
THE ATTRIBUTIOK OF ATTITUDES 15
The entire tape recording, including the speech itself, was a carefully scripted
playlet in which the target person presented himself as a junior political science
major from either Sandersville, Georgia or from New Brunswick, New Jersey. The
target person’s accent was accordingly very southern or very northeastern.’ At the
end of the speech, which either favored or opposed segregation, the experimenter
(on the tape) asked the target person to sign a voucher for the $2.50, explained that
the tapes would be used as stimulus materials in an attitude perception project at,
Duke, and secured his permission to use the recording for this purpose without, ever.
of course, revealing his identity.
The speeches. The scripted speeches were as comparable as possible except for
their direction and conclusion. They were constructed so that the same “facts” were
discussed from different perspectives. For example :
Pro-segregation Anti-segregation
It is a stardard argument of the “do- It is a standard argument of the
gooders” and others that the reason for “die-hard” segregationists that Negroes
the Negro’s weaknesses is due not to are innately inferior to whites and that
innate factors but rather to environ- environmental factors are of little acmental
conditions. . This argument count. Such an argument is completely
. . is completely fallacious. fallacious. .
Negroes, while contributing far less The fact that. a high percentage of
than their share to the development of Negroes are involved in major crimes
America, have contributed far more than and on welfare case lists is but further
their share to crime statistics and wel- evidence of the awful effects of segregafare
case lists. tion and deprivation.
Etc. Etc.
Each speech was approximately 375 words in length.
Attitude prediction measure. A 15-item Likert scale was constructed to’ measure
the subject’s own attitude toward segregation and his attribution of attitude to the
target person. This scale contained three &item subsets in scattered order. Subset A
consisted of statements taken directly from the speeches (e.g., “The Negro is
innately inferior to the white”). Subset B consisted of statements directly referring
to the segregation issue, but not specifically mentioned in the speeches (e.g., “Integration
threatens one of the basic principles of democracy, the right of each citizen
to choose his own associates”). Subset C consisted of statements making no explicit
reference to the segregation issue but reflecting a more pervasive conservatisma
liberalism likely to be highly correlated with attitude toward segregation (e.g., “A
union should be free to organize workers whether or not the management wants it
to,” and “The federal government has long overstepped its legal authority as defined
by the Constitution and has consistently infringed on constitutionally guaranteed
states’ rights”).
The attitude scale was constructed in this manner to determine whether the
independent variables of choice and speech direction would affect attribution in
areas related to, but not specifically mentioned in, the speech. Do the subjects conceive
of an underlying attitude structure when predicting the target person’s
behavior, or do their attributions merely reflect the explicit content of the speech?
While the choice of items was n priori, we were successful in selecting items for
‘We are indebted to Thomas Hammock and Lloyd Stires for their effective
portrayals of the target persons.
16 JONES AND HARRIS
subsets B and C that the average subject used in the same manner as the A items.
For all subjects combined, the attribution of segregationist attitude on A correlated
with attribution in the same direction on B, r = .90, di = 120; A correlated with C,
r = 85; B with C, r = .81 (all p-values <.OOl).
An additional reason for constructing the scale in three parts was the possibility
of testing a rather subtle hypothesis concerning behavioral departures from reference
group norms. How do subjects perceive a Southerner who chooses to construct an
integrationist speech, or a Northerner who chooses to act like a segregationist?
Perhaps a more coherent attitude structure is assigned to such a “maverick” because
his position differs from the expectations of his community of origin and does not
simply reflect reference group norms. The Northerner who espouses the cause of
integration may be judged to be a “knee-jerk liberal” who passively reflects reference
group norms without fighting through to a coherent attitudinal integration. The same
kind of conclusion (“knee-jerk racist”?) may also be applied to the Southern
segregationist. These considerations suggest the following hypothesis: (1) the
“maverick” who chooses to differ with the assumed position of his community
reference group will be perceived to have a more correspondent attitude than one
who chooses to stand with his reference group; thus the Southern integrationist
will be seen as more pro-integration than the Northern integrationist and the
Northern segregationist will be seen as more in favor of segregation than his
Southern counterpart. (2) There will be a higher correlation among the subsets of
the attitude scale for “mavericks” than for “knee-jerk liberals” or “knee-jerk
racists.” In other words, if the “maverick” is seen as anti-segregation he will also be
seen as basically liberal; if he is seen as pro-segregation he will also be seen as
basically conservative.
Postexperimental queshonnaire. After the subject recorded his attitude predictions
(LLplease try to predict how the target person would honestly respond to the
following statements”), he was asked to indicate his own attitude on the same
&item scale. Finally, each subject answered seven questions in the form of O-point
scales, each designed to check on some aspect of the subject’s perceptions of the
experiment.
Results
Once again, the subjectswere very attentive to the choice manipulation.
When asked how much choice the target person perceived he had (on a
g-point scale), there was very little overlap between the Choice and the
No Choice distributions (t = 10.63,p < ,001).
Attribution of Attitude toward Segregation
As noted above, the attitude scale for measuring attribution was constructed
of three subsets of items varying in degree of remoteness from
the arguments specifically mentioned in the speech.As might have been
expected from the high overall correlations among these subsets (see
above), attribution to each subset was highly comparable within experimental
conditions. This can be verified both by closeinspection of Table 5
and by the fact that significance levels for all statistical tests are roughly
the same whether they refer to subset A, B, C, or the combined total.
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 17
For convenience we shall concentrate on the total attribution scores,
except where interesting differences among the subsets emerge.
For the third time, there were striking effects for direction of speech.
Whether the speech was made by a Southerner or a Northerner, and
whether or not he had choice, all differences between the pro-segregation
speech and the anti-segregation speech were highly significant. The interactive
effects of choice and speech direction were again significant, but
the interaction took the same form for Southern and Northern target
persons. That is, the target person with a choice was seen as more pro
when he made a pro speech and more anti when he made an anti speech
than the t.arget person without a choice.
For those subjects exposed to the northern target person, the main
hypothesis was that choice would affect attribution when a pro-segregation
speech was made but not when an anti-segregation speech was made.
The obverse was predicted for those exposed to the Southerner: choice
would affect attribution when an anti-segregation speech was made but
not under pro speech conditions. The northern target person data in
Table 5A fall into the predicted pattern on each item subset and the total.
In each case the predicted interaction, obtained by comparing the pro
(no choice minus choice) difference with the anti (choice minus no
choice) difference, was significant. For subset A, t = 2.30, p < .05; for B,
t = 3.64, p < .Ol; for C, t = 3.90, p < .OOl; and for all items combined,
t = 3.80, p < ,001. Degrees of freedom were adjusted in each case to
accommodate heterogeneity of variance. Clearly, at least for the northern
target person, attributions to related attitudinal issues are affected by the
experimental variables to an extent that is at least as great as when
issues mentioned in the speech are involved.
A glance at the data summarized in Table 5B indicates that the main
hypothesis was definitely not confirmed in the case of the Southern target
person. In each condition the Southerner was seen as more in favor of
segregation than his Northern counterpart, as one would expect. The
overall Sodhern-Northern difference was highly significant (t = 4.86,
p < .OOl). However, the Southern pattern of means was an attenuated
version of the Northern pattern rather than its obverse. When the
Southerner made a speech under no choice conditions, the attributed
attitude was less extreme whether the speech was in a pro- or antisegregation
direction. The subjects did not readily assume the Southerner
was a pro-segregationist when he had no choice but to make a pro speech.
A plausible explanation of this failure of prediction is available. Perhaps
the prior probability that a college student from Georgia is prosegregation
is not strikingly high, especially one who has gone “north” to
enroll at the University of North Carolina. Some support for this salvag-
18 JOYES ASD HARRIS
TABLE 5
EXPERIMENT III: MEANS” AND VARIANCES FOR ATTRIBUTED ATTITUDE SCORES
A. Northern target person
Speech direction
Pro-segregation Anti-segregation
A” B C Total A B C Tot,al
Choice x 10.05 13.80 13.80 37.65 31.52 29.76 28.76 90.06
82 38.95 29.46 16.36 212.66 9.05 10.53 6.41 50.43
N = 20 N = 17
No Choice a 16.36 21.00 22.36 59.73 31.14 30.86 27.50 89.50
s2 47.14 34.54 17.32 162.82 5.28 3.41 12.68 31.65
N = 11 N = 14
B. Southern target person
Speech direction
Pro-segregation Anti-segregation
A B tc Total A B c Total
Choice x 8.25 9.31 11.31 28.88 28.33 27.46 25.00 80.80
.s2 11.81 12.72 18.34 75.72 34.75 26.38 23.33 191.89
N = 16 N = 15
NoChoice x 13.93 17.13 16.80 47.87 25.38 35.62 22.15 73.15
.+ 46.19 31.72 22.69 231.40 65.16 45.16 27.21 402.30
iv = 15 y = 13
QPossible range (subsets A, B, C) from pro-segregation 5 to anti-segregation 35.
Possible range for total ecores: 15 to 105.
* Refers to item subsets ranging from A (explicitly in speech), through B (mentions
segregation), to C (segregation not explicitly mentioned).
ing speculation may be found in the actual attitude scale scoresof subjects
from the South. The home states of 100 subjects could be readily
ascertained from the Duke student directory. Fifty-seven of t,hesewere
from southern states, while 43 were from the North. The average scale
score of northern subjects (.X = 80.42) was significantly higher than
that of the average Southerner (.a = 70.07; taiff = 3.49, p < .OOl). The
southern subject was, not surprisingly, more in favor of segregation. Of
greater interest for our present argument, however, is the greater variability
among Southerners (s2= 260.42) than Northerners (s” = 166.01)
-significant at the .06level. Thus, being a collegestudent from asouthern
town is not a very informative objective indicator of attitude toward
segregation. The attribution results suggest that the subjects were aware
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 19
of attitudinal variability among southern college students (from a neighboring
university) and were especially responsive to the evidence that the
target person had chosen his speech. The No Choice Southerner is an
ambiguous stimulus object,, a conclusion that is supported by the fact
that subjects were more variable in attributing attitudes to this target
person than to others. It may be noted in Table 4 that the two largest,
variances (total score columns) nppear in the two No Choice Southerner
conditions.
Own and attributed attitude. Although subjects were assigned to conditions
through their own initiative in signing up for particular times,
there were some rather peculiar variations among subjects exposed to the
southern target person. Those in the Choice Pro and No Choice Anti
conditions were significantly more against segregation than those in the
No Choice Pro and Choice Anti conditions. No such pattern emerged in
subjects exposed to the northern target person. However, among the latter
subjects, those hearing the anti-segregation speech ended up significantly
more opposed to segregation than those hearing the pro-segregation
speech. Since the subjects filled out the own-attitude questionnaire after
hearing the speech and after making their attribution ratings (as was the
case in the t,wo preceding experiments as well) it is impossible to estimate
the extent to which they may have been influenced by the speech. The
pattern of “own attitude” scores is reproduced in Table 6 but we demur
from any attempt to interpret the differences between conditions.
Also presented in Table 6 are the correlations between own and attributed
attitude for each experimental condition. Each correlation is
positive, suggesting a general tendency to assimilate the target, person’s
attitude to one’s own. This tendency reaches significance in only three
conditions, all involving the northern target person. In the two previous
experiments, t,he highest correlation between own and attribut,ed attitude
occurred in the condition where no choice was combined with a pro-Castro
speech (low prior probabilit)y behavior). The present correlational results
neither replicate closely nor disconfirm the proposition that the correlation
is highest when ambiguous or conflicting information is presented.
The correlation is high for subjects in the Northern-No Choice-Pro condition,
but it is also high in two other Nort,hern conditions. The correlations
among subjects exposed to t.he Southern speaker are low and non-
significant.
Pemeption of the “muverick’s” attitude stmctul~r. 1Ve proposed in introducing
this experiment that correspondence of attribution would be
especially high in the case of the “maverick” who chooses to differ with
the assumed position of his community referen.ce group. A second hypothesis,
developed from the same reasoning, was that the intercorrela-
20 JONES AND HARRIS
TABLE 6
EXPERIMENT III: SUBJECTS’ OWN ATTITUDES TOWARD SEGREGATION (g), AND
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN OWN AND ATTRIBUTED ATTITUDE (T), BY CONDITIONS
A. Northern target person
Speech direction
Pro-segregation Anti-segregation
2 T n 9 , N
Choice 69 i0 .09 20 56.70 .49* 17
No Choice 64.91 .Bo* 11 78.36 .60* 14
B. Southern target person
Speech direction
Pro-segregation Anti-segregation
Choice 86.50 .06 16 71.53 .24 15
No Choice 69.60 .38 15 84.15 .07 13
Note. Significant comparisons across conditions. Northern target person : Anti versus
Pro, F = 6.67, p < .05; Southern target person: interaction F = 13.78. p < ,001;
Northern versus Southern: F = 3.87, p < 10.
* p < .05.
tions among item subsetswould be higher for ‘?navericks” than for those
who choose the expected speech direction, the “knee-jerk liberals” and
“knee-jerk racists.” We have already noted that there is no support. for the
first of these hypotheses. The Southerner who choosesto give a prointegration
speech is not, seen as more in favor of integration than the
Northerner who choosespro-integration; the Northerner who choosesprosegregation
is not seen as more of a segregationist than his Southern
counterpart. Perhaps the reasoning behind this hypothesis confused extremity
with certitude. The pro-integration Southerner *may be more
confident that he is right, without being more extreme in his dedication to
integration. There is no evidence in the present study that would support
this alternative, however.
The second hypothesis does receive some support. Table 7 presents the
intercorrelations between item subsets for each experimen.tal condition.
These correlations are generally positive and, as we have already noted,
the three over-all correlations are very high. Those correlations especially
involved in the second hypothesis are italicized in the table, and the
probabilities of the observed differences are indicated. The correlations
between subsets for the “mavericks” (Southern-Choice-Anti, and
THE ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES 21
TABLE 7
EXPERIMENT III: CORRELATIONS BETWEEN ITEM SUBSETS,
ATTRIBUTED ATTITUDE SCORES, BY CONDITIONS
Condition I\: A-B B-C S-C
NNCA
SNCA
NNCP
SNCP
SCAQ
NCA
SCP
NCP
Total
14
13
11
15
15
17
16
20
121
00
.74**
.62*
.72**
.s3***
..cS
pdiff n.s.
.23
,74***
Pdiff < .05
go***
.ll .43
76** 93***
- .41 .34
.61* .43
.53 .43
.61 .56*
ns. . .
.07 .nGsR**
fig*** .74***
<.05 n.s.
.s1*** g5***
n “Mavericks.”
*p <.05
**p <.Ol
***p <.OOl
Northern-Choice-Pro subjects) did tend to behigher than the correlations
for the remaining choice subjects in five of six comparisons. Two of these
were statistically significant. While these results suggest that further
research on the attribution of a coherent attitude structure to the
“maverick” might be fruitful, the evidence in support of the hypothesis is
only suggestive.
DISCUSSION
We have presented three experiments involving the samegeneral design.
In each case subjects were asked to rate the true attitude of a target
person from a set of his opinion statements. The content of these statements
was either in the direction expected from such a target person or
in the opposite direction. The target person either chose to express
opinions in the direction he did or was instructed by an authority figure
to do so. Our main interest was to test the hypothesis from correspondent
inference theory (Jones and Davis, 1965) that degree of choice would
affect. attribut’ion more when the opinions expressedwere in an unexpected
direction than when their prior probability was high. Figure 1 summarizes
t.he findings that bear on this hypothesis in a form that facilitates
comparing the similarities and differences from experiment to experiment.
Confirmat,ion was clear in the second experiment and for the northern
target person in the third experiment. The difference between differences
was in the predicted direction in Exp. I, but was not significant. In Exp.
22
ISSUE: CASTRO’S CUBA ISSUE’ CASTRO’S CUBA ISSUE- SEGREGATION
PRO ANTI
CGC csic
60
IEXPERIMENT
I
PRO ANTI
c-k Gic
PRO ANTI
C% C&
4 NORTHERNER ( SOUTHERNER
EXPERIMENT II EXPERIMENT ZI
PIG. 1. Attribution of attitude in each of three experiments. The dividing midline
in each case represents the arithmetic mid-point of the possible scoring range; it
bears no necessary relation to the psychological neutral point. The symbol o superimposed
on each column refers to the mean “own rating” for subjects in that
condition.
III, we presented evidence to suggest that a southern college &dent’s
attitudes toward segregation are difficult to predict if all the predict,or
knows is that the student was born in the South. Objectively, there is
high variability among Southerners on the segregation issue and the
subjects seem to be aware of this. In general, given fairly determinate
expectations about the target person’s most probable private attitude, the
hypothesis may be considered confirmed.
A striking feature of the results in each experiment was the powerful
effect on attribution of the cont’ent of opinions expressed. While the
subjects do take account of choice and prior probability, as correspondent
inference theory proposes, they also give substantial weight to the intrinsic
or “face value” meaning of the act itself in their attributions of
attitude. This is true even when the act occurs in a no choice context.
The question is whether this tendency reflects an irrational bias that is
inherent in person perception, or whether it is a function of specific,
removable cues in the three procedures. Heider (1958) comments on the
common tendency to assign too little significance to the determining
context of action in social perception. “It seemsthat behavior in particular
has such salient properties it tends to engulf the total field rather than
be confined to its proper position as a local stimulus whoseinterpretation
requires the addit,ional data of a surrounding field” (p. 54).
Perhaps behavior did “engulf the field” in the present experiments, but.
THE ATTRIBUTIOK OF ATTITUDES 23
this describes the results without really explaining them. We have already
wondered (in the introduction to Exp. III) whether the amount of choice
perceived in the no choice conditions is enough to have significant effects.
Obviously, the target persons did have t,he ultimate option to refuse then
instructor in Exp. I, t,heir debate captain in Exp. II, or the dormitory
visitor in Exp. III. Nevertheless, it seems fair to assume that each subject
himself would agree to express false opinions under comparable
circumstances of authoritative assignment, and the subjects’ postexperimental
ratings of choice indicated their awareness of strong ext,ernal
constraint,s on the t,arget person’s behavior.
An important area of choice does remain, however, even in the no
choice condition. This is the choice between various ways of expressing
t,he directed opinion. The arguments advanced in each essay or speech
were not specified in detail by t.he constraining authority; an unknown
degree of freedom to select and organize arguments remained even in the
third experiment. In planning the present experiments, we assumed that
t,his minimal ambiguity was necessary to bring out the specific interaction
t,hat was the test of our major hypot’hesis. If the target person had been
merely handed a speech to read under very strong external constraints,
his compliance would have conveyed little or no information t,o the
subjects. Under these circumstances we would have expected no differences
between No Choice-Pro and No Choice-Anti conditions. Were the
constraints to extend to every tlet~ail and facet of an observed performance,
the prediction that attribution is uninfluenced by performance
would be a trivial one. The present experiments show that, when the
major decisions about t.he direction and form of behavior are made for
the target person, his performance is st,ill a powerful source of variation
in the attribution results. Short of some extreme degree of specification,
behavior does engulf the field and it is difficult for t,he perceiver to assign
appropriate weights to the situat,ional context.
We are led to conclude that correspondence in attributing underlying
attitudes to account for expressed opinions is high when the opinions are
unexpected and expressed in a context of free choice. However, the content
and direction of the opinions exert a clear inference on attribution
even when choice is drastically reduced. In a context that permits the
target person some very minimal degree of spontaneity, the perceiver
seems to view his performance as more informative than a rational
analysis of act and context would suggest. This bias may have important
implications for interpersonal relations, and we might propose a hypothesis
for further research that distortion, in the form of assigning too much
significance to performance, increases as the objective constraints on a
target person’s actions increase.
24 JONES AND HARRIS
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