The Attribution of Attitudes (PDF)

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 cor- respondent i...

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 cor- respondent 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 probability- opinions 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 dispositions- are seen as correspondent is a function of the relative weight assigned to internal versus external causal factors (cf. Thibaut and Riecken, 1955). Loosely stated, a person will be perceived to hold attitudes that cor- respond with his opinion statements when the statements seem to have been freely offered and not coerced by situational pressures. Jones and Davis (1965) have attempted to develop a systematic state- ment 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 “suf- ficient 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 cor- respondence as defined in the theory. Since Jones and Davis were inter- ested 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 in- formation 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