Bias and accuracy in attitude attribution: The role of Attributional Complexity

JOURNAL

OF EXPERIMENTAL

SOCIAL

26, 275-288 (19%)

PSYCHOLOGY

Bias and Accuracy in Attitude Attribution: The Role of Attributional Complexity GARTH J. 0. FLETCHER University

of Canterbury,

GLENN Illinois

New

Zealand

D. REEDER State

University

AND VIVIAN University

of Canterbury,

BULL New

Zealand

Received May I, 1989 This study examined the relation between Attributional Complexity and the bias: the tendency to assign dispositions that are congruent with behavior that is performed under powerful external constraints. Subjects read essays that were written by a separate group of subjects who had been randomly assigned to write essays that either supported or opposed the legalization of homosexuality. As predicted, attributionally complex subjects were significantly more accurate than simple subjects in judging the authors’ real attitudes towards the legalization of homosexuality (assessed before the essays were written), but only when elaborate, in-depth processing of the essays was encouraged; when in-depth processing was restricted there was no difference in performance between the attributionally complex and simple subjects. Despite this increased accuracy in the in-depth processing condition, the attributionally complex subjects were overall somewhat more prone to correspondence bias than simple subjects. The results are discussed in relation to different explanations for the correspondence bias, and the conditions under which elaborate and complex attributional schemata will be an advantage to the naive psychologist. Cl IWO correspondence

Academic

Press, Inc.

We thank Julie Fitness. Simon Kemp, Leonard Newman, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. We also thank Nicki Sinclair for helping with the coding and Nick Fitzgerald for assisting with the data collection. Requests for reprints should be sent to Garth J. 0. Fletcher, Psychology Department, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 1, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected].,NZ. 275 0022-1031/90 $3.00 Copyright 0 1990 by Academic Press. Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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The study of errors and biases in social inference has been a popular topic in social cognition over the last few decades. Perhaps the most celebrated of these biases has been variously dubbed the fundamental attribution error or the correspondence bias-the tendency to assign dispositions that are congruent with behavior that is performed under powerful external constraints. One of the most popular paradigms used for examining the correspondence bias has been developed by Jones and his colleagues. In this paradigm, subjects read essays adopting a particular stance (e.g., for or against abortion) and are asked to judge the “real” attitudes of the authors. The well-replicated finding using this technique is that when subjects are informed that the essay positions were assigned (the authors had no choice) they continue to assign attitudes that are congruent with the attitudes expressed in the essays (Jones, 1979). Subjects apparently fail to discount the effect of the situational cause (instructions to write the essay in that particular direction) and assume the behavior stems from an underlying attitude. Extensive research investigating this paradigm has shown that simple artifacts are not responsible for the effect (Jones, 1979). Moreover, studies that have used actual essays written under these conditions, and used the prior attitudes of these authors as a criterion of error, have found that the attitude attributions of observer subjects appear to constitute errors (Reeder, Fletcher, & Furman, 1989; Snyder & Jones, 1974). More recently, researchers have become more interested in uncovering the conditions that increase or decrease the correspondence bias, with several recent studies suggesting that superficial and casual processing of the stimulus materials, compared to a more thoroughgoing, in-depth analysis, will increase the correspondence bias (Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988; Tetlock, 1985). This finding is consistent with research concerned with other social judgment biases (Klayman & Ha, 1987) and suggests that the correspondence bias may essentially be a top-of-the-head, datadriven phenomenon. In this study we planned to examine more closely the role of processing depth, but in relation to an individual difference variable that we think may be important: the complexity of attributional schemata. The Role of Attributional

Complexity

in Trait Attribution

We proposed to measure the complexity of attributional schemata using a recently developed scale termed the Attributional Complexity Scale (Fletcher, Danilovics, Fernandez, Peterson, & Reeder, 1986). This scale includes seven attributional subconstructs (four items for each subconstruct) that were postulated to vary along a simple-complex cognitive dimension in the domain of human behavior and experience: (a) motivation to explain behavior; (b) preference for complex explanations; (c)

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presence of causal meta-cognition; (d) awareness of the causal importance of social interaction; (e) tendency to infer complex internal attributions; (f) tendency to infer complex contemporary external attributions; and (g) tendency to infer causes from the past. Initial results with this scale have shown that all seven subscales contribute to the overall construct of Attributional Complexity and confirm the validity of the scale. Fletcher et al. (1986) reported that the 28item scale possessed good internal reliability and test-retest reliability, and also obtained evidence for the scale’s convergent and discriminant validity, concurrent validity, and predictive validity. Other studies have confirmed the good psychometric properties of the scale (e.g., Brookings & Brown, 1988; Flett, Pliner, & Blankstein, 1989). Attributional complexity and correspondent bias. We were frankly uncertain what the impact of attributional complexity on correspondence bias would be, within the context of this study, as we could think of plausible arguments that pointed in different directions. As various authors have pointed out (e.g., Funder, 1987) there are clear demand characteristics in this experimental paradigm for subjects to base their attitude attributions on the essay content. Moreover, although it is true that the authors have no choice over the essay topic and position, they do exercise freedom over the style and content of the essays; hence, for readers to base their attitude judgments on the strength and extremity of the essays is not necessarily irrational. If attributionally complex subjects generally analyze the essays more assiduously than simple subjects, as might be expected on the basis of the “attributional complexity” construct, then complex subjects may produce more polarized attitude attributions, in line with the essay viewpoints, than simple subjects. Hence, attributionally complex subjects may evince more correspondence bias than simple subjects. Conversely, attributionally complex people, compared to attributionally simple folk, should be more aware of the external causes for someone’s behavior, and accordingly be less likely to automatically assume that the behavior stems solely from an internal disposition. This point implies that higher attributional complexity will lead to less correspondence bias. To summarize, the relation between Attributional Complexity and correspondence bias seems less than clear. Attributional Complexity, trait accuracy, and processing depth. In contrast to correspondence bias, the relation between Attributional Complexity and attitude attribution accuracy seemed to us theoretically clearer. The question of accuracy devolves upon whether there is a relation between the authors’ attitudes and essay content. If the essays in fact provide diagnostic information concerning the authors’ attitudes, then the greater ability of the attributionally complex subjects to process and integrate trait-related information should enable them to produce

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more accurate attributions. The few studies, using the essay paradigm, that have measured the authors’ actual attitudes have generally reported positive and significant correlations between the authors’ real attitudes and the attributed attitudes (Miller, Jones, & Hinkle, 1981; Snyder & Jones, 1974). On the basis of these results, we felt that there may be a link between the essay content and the authors’ attitudes that the attributionally complex subjects would be able to exploit. We note here that it is quite possible that attributionally complex subjects, compared to simple subjects, exhibit more correspondence bias but make more accurate judgments, or vice-versa. And, this is simply because the relation between error and bias is chronically loose. The nature of the relation between accuracy and bias depends, in part, on how accuracy is measured. If a correlational measure is used to assess the relation between the judgment and the criterion measure (in this study represented by the subjects’ attitude attributions and the authors’ actual attitudes), then it is possible for a sample to obtain 100% accuracy (a correlation of 1.O) but also produce strong correspondence bias: Consider, for example, a case where all subjects rated the real attitudes of a sample of authors as one unit higher than the authors’ actual attitudes. Even if absolute difference scores are used as the measure of accuracy it would still be possible for subjects to obtain significant levels of accuracy combined with a strong correspondence bias (as in the case above). And, finally, no matter what method of calculating accuracy is used, it is possible that subjects may exhibit no systematic bias whatsoever, but be completely inaccurate in their judgments. To complicate matters further, we consider it unlikely that there is a straightforward relationship between Attributional Complexity and any social inference bias (Fletcher et al., 1986). Presumably, few people unendingly produce detailed explanations for the behavior of those around them-a person who did so would remain permanently lost in thought. In daily life we are all faced with the task of making rapid judgments often on the basis of minimal information. Moreover, people may often simply not be motivated to develop thorough-going or complete explanations. In such situations we may, attributionally complex and simple alike, fall back on simple attributional schemata or heuristics to generate our causal attributions. Alternately, when more consciously controlled, in-depth information processing occurs, then higher-order schemata should assume a more influential role (Bargh, 1984). It follows, therefore, that differences between attributionally complex and simple schemata in trait performance will become accentuated under conditions that facilitate in-depth processing. On the basis of the preceding arguments, we predicted that under conditions that encourage and allow in-depth attributional processing, as compared to conditions that limit attributional processing, that (a) sub-

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jects generally would produce less correspondence bias; and (b) subjects with complex attributional schemata, compared to subjects with simple schemata, would produce more accurate attitude attributions. We made no predictions concerning the relation between correspondence bias and Attributional Complexity. In the first phase of the study subjects indicated their attitudes towards the legalization of homosexuality and were then assigned to write either a pro- or an anti-essay. These essays were then read by a second set of subjects, who were informed of the circumstances under which the essays were written, and were then asked to rate the “true” attitude of the authors along with a range of other dependent measures. METHOD

Subjects Subjects participating in this study were recruited from an introductory psychology class at the University of Canterbury. New Zealand. Twenty men and 30 women wrote essays in the first phase of the experiment. Seventy men and 130 women participated in the second stage of the experiment (the attitude attribution phase).’

Essay Writing Phase Prior to being informed of the task ahead, the authors indicated their own attitudes responding to the following statement: Male homosexuality should be illegal (7-point scale; 1, strongly agree; 7, strongly disagree). Subjects were then asked to imagine that they were in a debating situation and to write a persuasive, one-page essay that included the major argument for or against the legalization of homosexuality. Subjects were randomly assigned to either position, with the sexes being equally distributed between the two assigned views. Twenty-five essays were produced for each position.’

Attitude

Attribution

Study

variables. Subjects were run through the procedure in groups of I5 to 20. Two copies of each essay were made (100 essays in total) and each set of essays was randomly distributed to two groups of subjects, with sex and essay position evenly distributed within each condition. In the high-time condition (n = 100) subjects were instructed to read the essay, take as much time as they wished, and take the task seriously. They were also encouraged to re-examine the essays when answering the dependent measures. In the low-time condition (n = 100) subjects were instructed to carefully read the essays once only. Subjects in this condition then completed a 4-min interpolated task (listing all the cities and towns in New Zealand) designed to prevent the accessing of short-term memory in answering the later questions. This group was also not allowed to refer back to the essay while completing the dependent measures. All subjects were initially provided with a full written description of the exact circumstances in which the essays were written, including the instructions described previously Procedure

and

independent

’ There were no significant gender differences in this study. Hence, this variable will not be mentioned further. ’ Copies of these essays can be obtained from the first author. This issue has had a high profile in New Zealand due. in part. to a recent change in the law that legalized homosexual acts in private.

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that were supplied to the authors. In addition, subjects were informed that the authors were undergraduate psychology students, that they were requested to write the essays by Dr. Garth Fletcher, and so forth. A large digital clock, displayed on a television set, was placed at the back of the room showing seconds elapsed. The clock was started when subjects began reading the essays. Subjects were informed the clock was there because the experimenters wanted to measure the time subjects took to complete the study, and they were instructed to take as much time as they needed for the tasks. After completing all the dependent measures, subjects completed the Attributional Complexity Scale (Fletcher et al.. 1986). In this study, this scale obtained an overall internal reliability (Cronbach’s o) of .87. Dependent measures. The critical dependent measure was: “What do you think was the true or personal attitude of the student who wrote the essay? That is. what was his/her actual attitude before he/she wrote the essay?” The last phrase was added to forestall the possibility that subjects might reason that the writers’ attitudes could have been changed by writing the essay. So that the subjects’ attitude attributions could be meaningfully compared to the authors’ attitudes, this measure used an identical 7-point scale to that completed by the authors with the same statement (male homosexuality should be illegal) and the same end points. The remaining 7-point scales required subjects to rate the perceived freedom of the author in writing the essay (I, no freedom at all; 7, complete freedom), essay extremity (1, extremely against the legalization of homosexuality; 7, extremely in favor of the legalization of homosexuality), essay quality (1, poor quality; 7, excellent quality); and subjects’ own attitudes towards the legalization of homosexuality (I, strongly agree; 7, strongly disagree). In addition, subjects were asked to estimate the percentage of university students in general who would agree or disagree with the statement: “Male homosexuality should be illegal.” The last dependent measure required subjects to record the time taken to complete the preceding dependent measures (shown in seconds on the clock at the back of the room). Finally, subjects were instructed to write down what they remembered of their thinking processes while answering the question dealing with the author’s actual attitude.’

Methodological

Issues in Measuring Accuracy

There are a number of methodological problems, first pointed out by Cronbach (1955), in the measurement of accuracy. First, using difference scores to measure accuracy produces response bias problems (termed “elevation” by Cronbach). These problems can be circumvented by the use of correlational measures of accuracy, which we used in this study. Second, greater accuracy may be incidental products of subjects projecting their own attitudes, or utilizing accurate baserate beliefs (rather than more sensitive analysis of the essay content). In this study we tested these possibilities by measuring and controlling for each of these variables.

3 According to the coding of the first author, 92% of the subjects reported examining the essay contents in determining the authors’ attitudes. Subjects cited a diverse array of factors including the number and quality of arguments, the emotional tone of the expressions used, the use of humor, how objective or subjective the essay was, the length of the essay, how hurried the handwriting appeared, and so forth. In addition. two coders examined the protocols for evidence that subjects took note of the point that the authors were assigned the essay viewpoint. The coders were in agreement for 95% of the protocols. Disagreements were resolved by discussion between the coders. Of the total sample, 14% (n = 28) of the subjects mentioned the external constraints as factors considered in their judgments. Due to the very uneven distribution of these variables we did not correlate them with the other dependent or independent variables.

281

BIAS AND ACCURACY TABLE MEAN

ATTITUDE

THE ESSAYS, LEGALIZATION

ATTRIBUTIONS

1

AS A FUNCTION

ATTRIBUTIONAL COMPLEXITY OF HOMOSEXUALITY

LEVEL,

OF THE TIME AND

AVAILABLE

PRO OR ANTI

ESAY

THE

Simple

Complex Pro

Anti

Pro

Anti

5.21 (24) 5.70 (23)

3.11 (27) 2.30 (27)

4.36 (25) 4.88 (25)

3.21 (24) 2.52 (25)

Time available High-time Low-time

FOR PROCESSING CONCERNING

Note. The attitude attributions were derived from a 1-7 scale, where 1 represents a strong anti-legalization attitude, and 7 a strong pro-legalization attitude. The n’s for each cell are in brackets.

RESULTS Manipulation

Checks

As expected, subjects rated the authors as exercising little or no choice over the essay topic (M = 1.4; where 1 = no freedom and 7 = complete freedom). In addition, as predicted, subjects spent significantly longer answering the dependent measures in the high-time condition (M = 297 s) than in the low-time condition (M = 128.7 s), t(196) = 16.7, p < .OOl. Evidence of Correspondence Bias

A median split was performed on the Attributional Complexity scores to create an attributionally complex group and a simple group. The difference in actual attitudes between the pro- and anti-legalization essay writers was nonsignificant according to a t test (t < 1, overall M = 4.9). However, as can be seen in Table 1, there was evidence of considerable correspondence bias in subjects’ estimates of the authors’ real attitudes. A 2 (attributional complexity) x 2 (time) x 2 (pro vs. anti-essay) analysis of variance found a significant difference between the attitudes attributed to the pro- and anti-homosexuality essay writers, F(1, 192) = 71.0, p < .OOl. Moreover, when the same analysis of variance was repeated, but covarying out the authors’ attitudes, the main effect for the pro vs. antiessay remained significant, F(1, 191) = 63.5, p < .OOl. As expected, the correspondence bias was stronger in the low-time condition (pro-essay, M = 5.27; anti-essay, M = 2.4) than in the hightime condition (pro-essay, M = 4.78; anti-essay M = 3.16). The associated interaction effect was significant, F( 1, 192) = 5.5, p < .02. The attributional complexity x essay position interaction also approached significance levels, F(1, 192) = 3.4, p < .07. The associated means showed that attributionally simple subjects were less prone to correspondence bias (pro-essay, M = 4.6; anti-essay, M = 2.9) than the

282

FLETCHER,

REEDER. AND BULL TABLE

CORRELATIONS

BETWEEN ATTRIBUTIONAL

ATTRIBUTED

2

ATTITUDES

COMPLEXITY

AND

AND

TIME

SELECTED

AVAILABILITY

VARIABLES

Authors’ attitudes Essay extremity Essay quality Base-rate beliefs Self-attitudes

THE

High-time

Low-time Variables

WITHIN

CONDITIONS

Simple (n = 50)

Complex (n = 50)

Simple (n = 49)

Complex (n = 51)

.26* .59*** .14 .18 .23

.32’ .65*** .31* .I6 .35**

- .02 .32* .03 .27* .29*

.41*** .51*** .32* .I2 .I5

Note. Essay extremity was scored in a positive direction. All other variables, including the dependent variable, were scored so that high scores represent a pro-legalization attitude and low scores an anti-legalization attitude. So that all high essay quality ratings were associated with pro-legalization scores, essay quality ratings for subjects receiving the antilegalization essays were reversed. * p < .05. ** p < .Ol. *** p < .ool.

complex group (pro-essay, M = 5.5; anti-essay, M = 2.7). None of the remaining main effects or interaction effects was significant or close to the p < .05 level. Accuracy

of Attitude Attributions

As a first step, the attributed attitudes were correlated with the authors’ real attitudes within the attributionally complex and simple groups. We predicted that attributionally complex subjects would be considerably more accurate than simple subjects in the high-time condition, but no more accurate than simple subjects in the low-time condition. As can be seen in Table 2, these expectations were confirmed. To test the significance levels of these differences between correlations, a multiple regression strategy was used in which the independent variables were attributional complexity (entered as a continuous measure), the authors’ actual attitudes, and an interaction term (attributional complexity x authors’ actual attitudes); the dependent variable was the attributed attitudes of the subjects who read the essays. If the interaction term is significant, this can be interpreted to mean that the correlations between the authors’ real attitudes and the subjects’ attributed attitudes are significantly different for the attributionally complex and simple groups (see Cohen & Cohen, 1983, for more details). This procedure was carried out within each time availability condition. As expected, the interaction term was significant for the high-time condition, F( 1, 93) = 5.1, p < .05, but not for the low-time condition, (F < 1). These results

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mean that attributionally complex subjects were significantly more accurate than simple subjects in the high-time condition, whereas there was no significant difference in accuracy between the two groups in the low-time condition.4 It is possible, of course, that Attributional Complexity was related to accuracy because it was confounded with one or more of the independent or dependent variables that in turn may be related to accuracy. In actuality, Attributional Complexity was not significantly correlated to any other independent variable including judgments of essay extremity and essay quality, base-rate beliefs, subjects’ own attitudes, and time spent answering the questions (all correlations less than .15). Moreover, Attributional Complexity was unrelated to the author’s actual attitudes (Y = .02). However, to further test the possibility that correlations between Attributional Complexity and other influential variables were responsible for our findings, we repeated the regression analysis, described above, in which we tested the correlations for significant differences; but, for this analysis we also entered all five independent variables, listed above, as covariates. The results, for the hightime condition, showed the interaction effect actually accounted for slightly more variance than in the original analysis, F( 1, 90) = 7.8, p < .Ol. This analysis shows that the difference between attributionally complex subjects and simple subjects, in terms of accuracy, is not simply an artifact of these two groups having different personal attitudes and base-rate beliefs, or making different judgments concerning the strength and quality of the essays. However, the correlations between the attributed attitudes and selected variables, shown in Table 2, do suggest there may be potentially important differences between attributionally complex and simple subjects in the weights they gave to different sources of information in determining the attitude attributions. Within the attributionally simple group, in the high-time condition, the attributed attitudes were significantly related to both baserate beliefs and subjects’ own attitudes, whereas, within the complex group, the same correlations were nonsignificant. In addition, the correlations between the essay attributions and the judgments of essay extremity and quality were higher and more often significant for the attributionally complex subjects than for the simple subjects. Interestingly, the base-rate beliefs were substantially correlated with subjects’ own attitudes in the two high-time groups (v = Sl and Y = .54) which ’ Mean absolute accuracy scores were also derived by calculating the difference between each subject’s attitude attribution and the author’s real attitude. Replicating the correlational results, there was no significant difference between high and low attributional complexity groups in the low-time condition (t < I). However, in the high-time condition attibutionally complex subjects were significantly more accurate (M difference = 1.8) than simple subjects (M difference = 2.8). t(98) = 2.7, p < .Ol.

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appears to be an example of what has been termed the false CO~X~SUS effect (Ross, Green, & House, 1977). These results suggest that subjects in all conditions form their attitude attributions on the basis of their perceptions of how extreme the essays were, while in the high-time condition, attributionally simple subjects also derived their judgments, in part, from their own attitudes towards the legalization of homosexuality and/or their base-rate beliefs. Finally, if there is a causal link between the authors’ actual attitudes and the strength of the essays, and attributionally complex subjects assessed the strength of the essays more accurately than the simple subjects, then the correlations between the essay extremity judgments and the authors’ actual attitudes should be positive and significant for the complex subjects, but not for the simple subjects5 This pattern of correlations was in fact obtained: Low-Time-Complex, r = .31, p < .05; Simple, r = .09, ns; HighTime-Complex, r = .36, p < .005; Simple, r = .07, ns. DISCUSSION

Our results showed that, under conditions that encouraged in-depth processing, subjects with attributionally complex schemata were significantly more accurate than subjects with simple schemata in judging the attitudes of essay writers who were randomly assigned to argue for or against the legalization of homosexuality. Moreover, there did not appear to be any obvious artifactual explanations for our findings; for example, there was no evidence that subjects with complex attributional schemata were more accurate than subjects with simple schemata because the two groups of subjects spent different amounts of time on the task, had different personal attitudes towards the issue, or had different base-rate beliefs. We also obtained some clues concerning the basis for this superiority of the attributionally complex subjects. Evidence from the subjects’ retrospective accounts of their thinking processes (see Footnote 3) suggested that subjects concentrated on the quality of the arguments, style, and other cues in the essays and paid less attention to the external constraints under which the essays were written-findings that are consistent with previous research using this experimental paradigm (Hicks, 1985; Miller & Rorer, 1982). However, attributionally simple subjects appeared to give less emphasis to the essay contents and, in the high-time condition, derived their judgments, in part, from their own attitudes towards the issue and/or their base-rate beliefs. In contrast, the correlational findings suggest that attributionally complex subjects based their dispositional

’ We are indebted

to an anonymous

reviewer

for suggesting

this analysis

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judgments, to a considerable extent, on the perceived strength and quality of the essays. Given that attributionally complex subjects were more inclined than simple subjects to base their attitude attributions on assessments of essay quality and strength, it is perhaps not surprising that they were somewhat more prone to correspondence bias than simple subjects. These particular results are consistent with Block and Funder’s (1986) finding that socially competent and well-adjusted adolescents were more prone to correspondence bias than less advantaged adolescents, and also underscore the point that “bias” and “error” are different and may operate, to some extent, independently. Alternative Interpretations and Caveats One could reasonably argue here that the essay writing paradigm we have used in these studies is artificial and constrained, and therefore the results will not necessarily generalize to trait attribution as it occurs in more naturalistic and interactive real-life settings (see, for example, Funder, 1987). However, a recent study by Fletcher, Grigg, and Bull (1988) suggests that our results do generalize to more real-life settings. In this study, subjects carried out short conversations with strangers under two goal conditions: personality appraisal of their partners or having a casual conversation. After the conversation, subjects rated their partners and themselves on a 15-item personality scale. Using the agreement between the partner-self ratings as the criterion of accuracy, attributionally complex subjects produced significantly more accurate personality impressions than simple subjects. But, closely paralleling the results in the current study, this advantage only accrued to the attributionally complex subjects when more extensive dispositional processing was encouraged in the personality appraisal condition. Taken together, the results from the current research and Fletcher et al.‘s (1988) experiment support the proposition that people who possess complex attributional schemata more effectively utilize and interpret a large array of trait-related individuating information, than do those with simple schemata. The critical caveat to this conclusion is that this processing advantage emerges most obviously under conditions that encourage in-depth information processing that is consciously controlled and goal driven. One interpretation of our results is that the Attributional Complexity Scale is simply an intelligence test in disguise; hence, all we have shown is that subjects who are smarter do better at trait attribution. However, we have found no evidence that Attributional Complexity is related to academic ability or the sort of ability domains typically measured by IQ tests. Fletcher et al. (1986) found no relation between Attributional Complexity and academic ability (as measured by ACT scores) with students

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in the United States. To further examine the relation between IQ and Attributional Complexity, we administered Attributional Complexity Scales and the verbal reasoning and number reasoning ACER tests (Australian Council for Educational Research, 1969) to two groups of firstyear students attending the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. As predicted, the correlations between both ACER tests and the Attributional Complexity scores were nonsignificant; indeed, there was a tendency for more attributionally complex subjects to score slightly lower in both tests (verbal reasoning ACER, ~(41) = - .l 1; number reasoning ACER, r(35) = - .26). Accordingly, there is no evidence that Attributional Complexity is directly related to the sorts of abilities traditionally measured by IQ tests. However, we think it eminently plausible that Attributional Complexity is related to social intelligence, which has typically been defined, in part, in terms of the ability to judge the internal psychological attributes of others (Sternberg & Smith, 1985). The results of this and other research (Fletcher et al.. 1988; Funder & Harris, 1986) suggest that Attributional Complexity is related to this general trait-inferential ability. and therefore can be viewed as an aspect of social intelligence. Explaining the Correspondence Bias As predicted, we found that correspondence bias decreased under conditions which encourage in-depth processing. This finding is consistent with recent explanations for the correspondence bias which have exploited the distinction between a characterization processing stage and an inferential processing stage (e.g., Gilbert et al., 1988; Trope, 1986). The initial dispositional inference (characterization) is regarded as rapid, automatic, and data-driven. This inference will tend to be linked closely to the behavior and hence will be heavily subject to correspondence bias. The second stage involves more lengthy, in-depth, effortful, and theorydriven, processing that typically involves a correction to the initial attribution, in light of the external constraints. However, replicating other research results, a residual correspondence bias remained in this study, even under conditions that encouraged indepth processing-a finding that raises problems for an explanation purely in terms of processing depth. In our view, the best explanation for this residual correspondence bias is in terms of prior schematic assumptions concerning behavior-disposition links; namely, that correspondence bias is produced, in part, by subjects receiving more strongly argued essays than they would have expected to receive, if in fact the author had a private attitude opposed to the position adopted in the essay (see Reeder et al., 1989). Finally, the fact that attributionally complex subjects were relatively successful in drawing attitude inferences on the basis of their in-depth

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analyses and extremity judgments of the essay contents shows that, as we suspected, there actually do exist causal links between the essay content and the internal attitudes of the authors, even when the essays are written under no-choice conditions. Hence, we cannot assume that the naive perceiver’s assumption of a strong causal link between internal dispositions and behavior performed under external constraints is necessarily erroneous. Moreover, if base-rate estimates are seriously confounded with personal beliefs, as they were in the present study in the high time condition, then basing one’s dispositional judgments on baserate judgments will not necessarily produce unbiased or more accurate dispositional judgments. In short, we should not assume that forsaking individuating personal information for normative statistical data (such as base-rate beliefs) is the optimal strategy for the layperson to adopt, when attributing attitudes on the basis of behavior performed under powerful external constraints. REFERENCES Australian Council for Educational Research (1969). Manual for ACER advanced test. Frederick Street, Hawthorn, E2. Victoria, Australia. Bargh. J. A. (1984). Automatic and conscious processing of social information. In R. S. Wyer, Jr., & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (pp. l-44). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Block, J., & Funder. D. C. (1986). Social roles and social perception: Individual differences in attribution and “error”. Jommzl of Personality and Social Psychology. 51, 12001207. Brookings, J. B., & Brown, C. E. (1988, April). Dimensionulity of the Attribational Complexity Scale. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL. Cohen, J., & Cohen, J. (1983). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum. Cronbach, L. J. (1955). Processes affecting scores on “understanding of others” and “assumed similarity”. Psychological Bulletin, 52, 177-193. Fletcher, G. J. O., Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson. D., & Reeder. G. D. (1986). Attributional complexity. An individual differences measure. Journal of Personulity and Social

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