Group attribution errors and the illusion of group attitude change

JOURNAL

OF EXPERIMENTAL

SOCIAL

Group Attribution

23, 460-480 (1987)

PSYCHOLOGY

Errors and the Illusion of Group Attitude Change DIANE M. MACKIE

University

of California,

Santa

Barbara

AND SCOTT T. ALLISON University

of Richmond

Received June 25, 1986 The group attribution error refers to people’s tendency to use a group’s decision to attribute correspondent attitudes to its members, even when information is available that indicates that all members do not support the decision. Three experiments were conducted to investigate the role of this phenomenon in the perception of group attitude change over time. Subjects in these studies were informed that a group had made two decisions on an issue, roughly 6 months apart, and that the proportion of members in favor of the decision was roughly the same at both times. A group decision rule in operation at the time of each decision was either the same at both times, producing identical decisions, or it differed across time, producing inconsistent decisions. Study 1 found that subjects were more likely to infer that the group’s attitudes had changed over time when the two decisions differed than when they were consistent. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between the degree to which attitudes were believed to have changed and the degree to which correspondent inferences were generated at the time of each decision. Study 2 replicated this result using a different procedure and also showed that the ascription of attitudes to members at the time of each group decision was associated with the perception of reduced attitudinal variability within the group. Study 3 eliminated a possible alternate explanation of the findings. Q 1987 Academic Press. I~C.

The authors thank George R. Goethals, David L. Hamilton, David M. Messick, Leila T. Worth, and two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments on an earlier version of this manuscipt. Requests for reprints should be directed to Diane M. Mackie, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, or to Scott T. Allison, Department of Psychology, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173. 0022-1031/87 $3.00 Copyright All rights

Q 1987 by Academic Press. Inc. of reproduction in any form reserved.

460

ILLUSION

OF

GROUP

A’ITITUDE

CHANGE

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Recent research has demonstrated that people use the outcome of a group’s decision to infer the internal characteristics of its members, even when this outcome is constrained by factors external to the group (Allison & Messick, 1985; Worth, Allison, & Messick, in press). In these studies, subjects are informed of a decision-making situation in which group members vote for or against an issue, and a formal decision rule is used to translate the votes into a final group outcome. For example, 55% of residents might vote to recall a school board. If the percentage of votes required by a decision rule for a successful recall is 60%, the recall would fail despite majority support. On the other hand, if 45% of voters support the recall and the decision rule requires only 40%, the recall would succeed without majority support. Subjects respond to these events by inferring correspondence between the group outcome and the attitude of the typical group member toward the decision issue, even though this outcome is known to have been influenced by the decision rule as well as by the actual percentage of members supporting the decision. This phenomenon has been termed the group attribution error. These studies thus illustrated conditions in which insensitivity to context effects led perceivers to make varying attributions in the face of invariant behavioral information. For example, the typical member of the group was thought to support the recall if the recall succeeded, and to oppose the recall if the recall failed, even though in both cases the identical percentage of voters supported the recall. Insensitivity to external constraints placed upon the group thus led to different inferences being made about underlying group properties, even when members’ overt behavior remained unchanged. Allison and Messick’s (1985) analyses focused on the different attributions made by subjects exposed to different outcome information about a single event (the group decision). However, the tendency for subjects to make attitude inferences correspondent with collective outcomes, rather than with members’ overt behavior, suggests intriguing implications for withinsubject perceptions of attitude change over time. Suppose that external constraints changed so that a first group decision appeared to reflect attitude X at one time and a second decision seemed to reflect attitude Y at some later time, even though members’ behavioral support for the decisions did not change. Allison and Messick’s results suggest that perceivers, relatively insensitive to external constraints, will first infer the presence of attitude X, and will later infer the presence of attitude Y, even though the information available clearly shows that behavior in the group has not changed. Faced with invariant behavior, but having made different correspondent inferences, will perceivers believe that members’ attitudes have in fact undergone change? Might perceivers have the illusion that attitude change has occurred in the group, although

462

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AND ALLISON

no behavior change has actually occurred? These are the issues that we explored in the present research. There are several aspects of subjects’ tendency to make correspondent inferences based on group outcomes, rather than on members’ overt behavior, that may facilitate an illusory perception of attitude change. First, to the extent that attitudes are considered internal and relatively stable influences on behavior (Jones & Harris, 1967), subjects in the group attribution situation make internal, dispositional attributions. Although the preference for imputing dispositional characteristics has often been seen as contributing to stability in person perception (Silka. 1981), attribution of a target’s behavior to dispositional properties may ironically be a necessary prerequisite for the perception that true change has taken place. The perception of change depends on the belief that internal properties have undergone change. As mere change in surface behavior may be due to either external or internal causes, it is only when behavior is perceived as reflecting an internal property that behavior change can be taken as evidence of “real” change. Thus, perceived differences in attributes underlying actions, rather than differences in the actions themselves, may be necessary conditions for the perception of change. Second, making a dispositional attribution about a typical member may make salient central tendencies in the group’s behavior, rather than the diversity or variation in members’ behavior. If thinking about a typical member provides a heuristic representation of the group, the group may be remembered as having the characteristics of that member, rather than as embodying a wide variety of behavior. Attribution of traits and characteristics to members of social groups (particularly outgroups) has been shown to reduce both perceived and predicted variability in members’ behavior (Mackie, 1986; Tajfel, Sheikh, & Gardner, 1964; Turner, 1985; Wilder & Cooper, 1981), often because the behavior of one member of the group is generalized to all of its members (Allport, 1954: Hamill, Wilson, & Nisbett, 1980; Quattrone & Jones, 1980; Wilder, 1977. 1978). If the process of drawing attitude inferences about a typical group member similarly operates to reduce perceived attitudinal variability within a group, subjects’ representations of the group may make unduly salient an average tendency in behavior (attitudinal support or opposition for the recall, for example) rather than variability in the group’s actions (how many group members voted for and against the recall). Compared to a focus on the variability in behavior, a focus on the average tendency in past and present behavior has been found to facilitate the perception that change has occurred (Silka, 1981, 1983). If a dispositional attribution acts as a summary judgment of the behavioral variability actually displayed, making attitude attributions at more than one point in time may thus contribute to the perception that change has occurred over time.

ILLUSION

OF GROUP ATTITUDE

CHANGE

463

The present research explored the possibility that committing the group attribution error at two different points in time would lead subjects to perceive an illusory change in the group’s attitudes, even though no significant change in the group’s behavior had occurred. We expected subjects to overweigh the outcomes of two group elections when attributing attitudes to members at the time of each election, and to underweigh both the degree to which members supported the outcomes and the decision rules used to determine the outcomes. We expected subjects to perceive a greater change in the attitudes of the group over time when the outcomes of the elections differed, compared to when they were the same, even though in both elections the distributions of votes remained constant. Thus, if a majority of voters supported an issue but the decision rule caused the measure to fail, we expected opposition to the issue on the part of group members to be inferred. If at a later date, a similar majority voted for the issue but a change in decision rule caused the measure to succeed, we expected support for the measure to now be attributed to the group members. Under these conditions, we expected estimates of the extent of attitude change that had occurred in the group to reflect changes in the attitudes attributed to the group, rather than actual changes in vote distribution.

EXPERIMENT 1

Method Subjects. The subjects were 105 male and female undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose participation fulfilled an introductory psychology course requirement. Design. The experiment employed a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects factorial design. The first factor was the decision rule at the time of the first recall election. Subjects read that the rule was either 50%, indicating that at least 50% of the voters had to support the recall for it to succeed, or that this rule was 65%. The second independent variable was the decision rule used at the time of the second recall election, again either 50% or 65%. The third factor was the change in the percentage of voters in favor of the recalls, a change from 56% in the first election to 58% in the second, or from 58% in the first to 56% in the second. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. Stimulus materials. Subjects read a three-paragraph vignette that described two recall elections in Marco Island, which was described as a resort located off the coast of Florida. According to the vignette, Marco Island had a well-known boardwalk that in recent years had not been properly maintained by the island’s publicly elected Boardwalk Committee. As a result. an effort was made to recall the members of the Boardwalk Committee. The vignette stated that a petition containing 1500 signatures from concerned citizens put the recall issue on the Marco Island ballot in the 1984 November election. At this point the details of the vignette began to vary as a function of experimental condition. One half the subjects read that for this first recall attempt, 50% of the voters had to favor the recall for it to be successful. The other half read that this decision rule was 65%. Subjects were then informed of the results of the election. One half the subjects

464

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AND ALLISON

were told that 56% of the voters were in favor of the recall, while the other halt were informed that 58% voted for the recall. Thus, the subjects for whom the decision rule was 50% read that the recall was a success, while the subjects for whom the decision rule was 65% read that the recall was a failure. The subjects then read the following: “Soon after the election someone working in City Hall discovered the existence of a law that was passed in 1789 by the early settlers of Marco Island. According to the law, any attempt to recall city employees must appear on the ballot in two consecutive elections. The results of the two elections must be consistent (i.e., successful both times or a failure both times) in order to determine the final fate of those being recalled.” The vignette then described the second recall election, which took place in June of 1985. One-half the subjects were told that the decision rule for this election was 50%, whereas the other half were informed that the rule was 65%. Subjects who read that 56% of the voters favored the recall in the first election were now told that 58% of the voters favored this second recall. Similarly, subjects who read that 58% favored the first recall attempt were now told that 56% were in favor of the second. Subjects for whom the decision rule used in this second recall attempt was 50% then read that this second recall succeeded, while subjects for whom the rule was 65% were informed that it failed. The vignette did not say why the decision rule used in the second election differed from the one used in the first. Procedure. The subjects were run in groups of three to five persons each. Subjects were given the vignette and were told that they had five minutes to read it. When 5 min had elapsed, the subjects were given a one-page questionnaire that contained several manipulation check items as well as the dependent measures of interest. The subjects were given as much time as they needed to complete the questionnaire. Dependmt ~ariubfes. The major dependent variables were (a) subjects’ judgments of how much the attitudes of the citizens of Marco Island had changed from the time of the first recall election to the time of the second election; (bl subjects’ inferences about the attitude of the typical citizen at the time of the first recall election: and (c) subjects’ inferences about the attitude of the typical citizen at the time of the second recall election.

Results and Discussion Manipulation checks. Our manipulation check questions were designed to assess the accuracy of subjects’ memory of the facts pertinent to the two elections. For each election, subjects were asked to remember the decision rule, the proportion of voters in favor of the recall, and whether the recall attempt succeeded or failed. The results revealed that of the 105 subjects, 32 gave incorrect responses to at least one of these six manipulation check items. This attrition rate was approximately equal across all conditions in the experiment. We report two sets of analyses of the dependent measures below, the primary one including only the 73 subjects who passed all of the manipulation checks, and a secondary one in parentheses including all 105 subjects. Although the major concern of this study was to investigate perceptions of attitude change resulting from group attributions, our predictions concerning this dependent variable were based on the idea that subjects would focus more on the group outcomes than on the other information relevant to the elections, thus encoding “representative” or “central tendency” information rather than variability information about the group’s

ILLUSION

OF GROUP

ATTITUDE

CHANGE

465

behavior. Therefore, it seemed reasonable that we should look closely at the responses that all 105 subjects made to our manipulation check questions to determine whether the two group outcomes were indeed more likely to be remembered correctly than the other four facts relevant to the two recall elections. We coded subjects’ responses to the six manipulation check questions in a binary fashion, as a “hit” or a “miss.” We then conducted a 2 (Rule at Time 1: 50%, 65%) x 2 (Rule at Time 2: 50%, 65%) x 2 (Vote Change: 56% to 58%, 58% to 56%) x 2 (Election: First, Second) x 3 (Type of Information: Decision Rule, Proportion in Favor, Election Outcome) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last two factors. The only significant effect to emerge from this analysis was a main effect for Type of Information, F(2, 194) = 12.68, p < .OOl. This result indicates that, across all experimental conditions and for both elections, subjects were more likely to correctly remember the success or failure of the recall elections (M = 0.98) than they were to remember the decision rules (M = 0.85) or the proportion of voters who favored the recalls (M = 0.88). Perceived attitude change. Subjects were asked to estimate the degree to which the attitudes of the island’s citizens changed from the time of the first recall attempt to the time of the second. Subjects were asked to circle a number from 1 to 7 on a bipolar scale, where I was labeled did not change at all and 7 was marked changed completely. If subjects’ judgments are based on changes in the proportion of voters in favor of the recall, then there should be no differences across conditions for this measure, because all subjects read that the proportion in favor changed by two percentage points, from either 56% to 58% or from 58% to 56%. However, if subjects are influenced by changes in the attributions they have made for the recall elections, then there should be greater perceived change when the outcomes of the recalls differ from one another than when the outcomes of the recalls are consistent. Subjects’ responses were analyzed in a 2 (Rule at Time 1) x 2 (Rule at Time 2) X 2 (Vote Change) ANOVA. The analysis revealed one significant effect, an interaction between Rule at Time 1 and Rule at Time 2, F(I, 65) = 21.04, p < .OOl (F(1, 97) = 25.54, p < .OOl for all subjects). The interaction indicates that subjects believed that the attitudes of the group changed more when the recall first succeeded and then failed or first failed and then succeeded than when the recall succeeded both times or failed both times. The means associated with this interaction for the subjects who passed the checks are shown in Table 1. It is clear from Table 1 that subjects in all conditions perceived only a moderate amount of attitude change within the group, as all of the means are less than 4, the midpoint of the scale. This implies that our subjects were aware, at least to some degree, that the percentage of voters in favor of the recall did not fluctuate markedly over time. However, the presence

MACKIE

466

AND ALLISON TABLE

1

PERCEIVED ATTITUDE CHANGE AND VARIANCES AS A FUNCTION OF THE DECISION USED IN THE Two RECALL ELECTIONS IN EXPERIMENT I

RULES

Decision rule in second election Decision rule in first election 50% 65% Mean

50%

65%

Mean

2.15 (0.83) II = 20 3.46 (2.19) n = 15 2.64

3.44 (2.11) n = 18 2.17 (0.77) n = 20 2.13

2.76 2.61 2.69

Note. High numbers indicate greater perceived attitude change. Variances are given in parentheses.

of the interaction between Rule at Time 1 and Rule at Time 2 provides cogent evidence that subjects believed that more attitude change occurred when the outcomes of the elections differed than when the outcomes were consistent. Attitude attributions. Other dependent measures allowed us to directly test whether subjects’ perceptions of attitude change were due to their committing the group attribution error at each election time. Subjects were first asked to estimate the attitude of the typical citizen at the time of the each recall election on a bipolar scale from I (complefely against the recall) to 7 (completely for the recall). Subjects were then asked the identical question concerning the typical citizen’s attitude at the time of the second recall election. Subjects’ responses to these two questions were analyzed in a 2 (Rule at Time 1) x 2 (Rule at Time 2) X 2 (Vote Change) x 2 (Election) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor. If subjects are attending only to the percentage of group members in favor of the recalls when drawing inferences about the average member, then there should be no main effects or interaction effects involving either of the two decision rules, because whether the rule is 50% or 65% at one time or another is irrelevant, we would argue, to the attitude judgments. But if subjects are influenced by the group outcomes when drawing inferences about the average member, then an interaction effect between the decision rule factors and the repeated measures factor, Election, was expected. Specifically, when the recall succeeds and then fails or fails and then succeeds, subjects’ attitude inference scores should decrease or increase, respectively. The ANOVA revealed a three-way interaction between Rule at Time 1, Rule at Time 2, and Election, F(1, 65) = 5.16, p < .03 (F( 1, 97) =

ILLUSION

ATTITUDE

Rule at Time

1

Rule at Time 2 50%

50%

65%

65%

50%

65%

65%

Note. Higher numbers or failure of each recall

A’lTITUDE

indicate is given

467

CHANGE

TABLE 2 AS A FUNCTION OF ELECTION AND THE DECISION THE Two ELECTIONS IN EXPERIMENT I

ATTRIBUTIONS

50%

OF GROUP

RULES USED IN

Election First

Second

4.60 (success) 5.11 (success) 4.38 (failure) 4.28 (failure)

4.82 (success) 4.30 (failure) 4.75 (success) 4.32 (failure)

a greater attributed in parentheses.

preference

for the recall.

Difference +0.22 -0.81 + 0.37 +0.04

The success

14.63, p < .OOl for all subjects). The means associated with this interaction for subjects who passed the checks are displayed in Table 2, where it can be seen that subjects clearly attended to the success or failure of the recalls when drawing inferences about the average group member. Turning first to subjects’ attributions at the first election, we find that the citizens of Marco Island were perceived to be more in favor of the recall when it succeeded (MS = .4.60 and 5.11) than when it failed (MS = 4.38 and 4.28), F(1, 71) = 11.59, p < .Ol. Similarly, if we analyze the attributions that subjects made at the second election separately, we also find that the citizens were seen as supporting the recall more when it succeeded (MS = 4.82 and 4.75) than when it failed (MS = 4.30 and 4.32), F(1, 71) = 10.76, p < .Ol. This result replicates Allison and Messick’s (1985) finding that people overweigh a group’s decision and underweigh the decision rule that influences that decision when drawing inferences about group members. What is more important for our purposes, however, is an examination of the direction and magnitude of the di@erences between attributions at the time of the first election and those at the time of the second election. On the basis of subjects’ perceptions of attitude change reported in Table 1, we would expect these difference scores to be greater when the outcomes of the recalls are inconsistent than when they are consistent. This is exactly what the data show in Table 2. When the recall succeeds and then fails, the mean difference in attributed attitudes is 0.81, and when the recall fails and then succeeds, this difference is 0.37. Moreover, consistent outcomes result in smalier difference scores: 0.22 for successful outcomes and 0.04 for unsuccessful ones. We computed a 2 (Rule at

468

MACKIE

AND ALLISON TABLE

ATTITUDE

ATTRIBUTIONS

THE CHANGE

Rule Time I

AS A FUNCTION

IN THE PERCENTAGE

3

OF ELECTIONS, OF SUPPORTING

THE DECISION THE RECALL

RULES

USED,

IN EXPERIMENT

Rule Time 2

Vote change

First election

Second election

50%

50%

56%-58% 58%-56%

50%

65%

560/o-58% 58%-560/o

65%

58%

560/o-58% 58%-56%

65%

65%

56%-58% 58%-560/o

4.68 4.50 (success) 4.90 5.38 (success) 4.29 4.50 (failure) 4.42 4.10 (failure)

5.09 4.50 (success) 4.70 3.81 (failure) 4.86 4.68 (success) 4.42 4.20 (failure)

AND

1 Difference +0.41 0.00 -0.20 - 1.57 + 0.57 +0.10 0.00

+0.10

Note. Higher numbers indicate a greater attributed preference of the recall. The success or failure of each recall is given in parentheses.

Time 1) x 2 (Rule at Time 2) x 2 (Vote Change) ANOVA on these difference scores and obtained the expected interaction between the two decision rule factors, F(1, 65) = 6.40, p < .02. Overall, the difference scores are greater when the election outcomes differed (M = 0.63) than when they were the same (M = O-13), t(72) = 2.65, p < .Ol. The repeated measures ANOVA of subjects’ attitude attributions also yielded an interaction between Vote Change and Election, F(l) 65) = 9.26, p < .Ol (F(1, 97) = 6.83, p < .02 for all subjects), as well as an interaction between all four factors, F(1, 65) = 4.69, p < .04 (Fl , 97) = 3.69, p < .06 for all subjects). The two-way interaction indicates that when voter support for the recall changed from 56% to 58%, subjects’ attitude inferences showed a correspondent rise (M = 4.58 to M = 4.74, F(1 37) = 4.49, p < .05), and when voter support decreased from 58% to 56%, inferences showed a correspondent decline (M = 4.59 to M = 4.25, F(1, 28) = 4.44, p < .05). The means associated with the four-way interaction for subjects who passed the checks are presented in Table 3. The extent to which attitude inference were influenced by the outcomes of the elections was affected by the changes in voter support for the recalls. Indeed, when the recall suceeded and then failed, subjects perceived a greater decline in support for the recall when the vote changed from 58% (M = 5.38) to 56% (M = 3.81) than when the vote changed from 56% (M = 4.90) to 58% (M = 4.70), F(1, 16) = 9.50, p < .Ol. Moreover, when the recall failed and then succeeded, there tended to be greater inferred support for the recall

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469

at the time of the second election when the popular vote increased from 56% (M = 4.29) to 58% (M = 4.86) than when the vote decreased from 58% (M = 4.50) to 56% (M = 4.60), F(1, 10) = 2.22, p < .17. Although the final group outcomes influenced the differences between attributions at the time of the first election and those at the time of the second, these findings suggest that these differences became polarized when the changes in the outcomes and in the popular vote coincided with each other. Relationship between perceptions of change and attributions. To further illuminate the relationship between subjects’ judgments of attitude change and their attitude attributions, we computed the correlation between subjects’ attitude change scores and the absolute value of the attitude attribution difference scores. The correlation was strongly positive and statistically reliable, r = .58, p < .OOl (r = .46, p < .Ol for all subjects). This finding provides further evidence that the more likely subjects were to attribute different attitudes to members at the two different times, the more likely they were to believe that the group’s attitudes had changed over that time period. To summarize the results of Experiment 1, the data confirmed our expectations that subjects would perceive more attitude change to have occurred in the group when the outcome of an election changed over time relative to when it did not. This occurred even when the actual behavior indicative of the attitude was comparable over time. This misperception of the amount of attitude change occurring appeared to be directly related to subjects committing the group attribution error. The outcome of each election was overused in attributing an outcome-correspondent attitude’ to the typical member of the group. Although the absolute amount of perceived change was never large, making an inference about attitudes corresponding to the group outcome at any one time facilitated the illusion that attitude change had occurred across time. Moreover, our subjects’ estimates of how much attitude change had occurred in the group were highly correlated with differences in the attitudes they attributed to the group following the two elections. EXPERIMENT

2

The results of Experiment 1 were largely supportive of our hypotheses. However, we were aware of the need to consider the possible effects on subjects’ judgments of having them make their attributions about the first group decision after they knew the outcome of the second decision. Knowing the outcome of the second election does not seem to have ’ When we use the term correspondence relative correspondence. For example,

in describing subjects’ inferences, we refer to our subjects who read of a failed outcome did not infer true correspondence because their attributions were slightly above 4, the midpoint of the scale. Nevertheless, these subjects’ attributions were pulled in the direction implied by correspondence, as were attributions made by subjects who read of a successful outcome.

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AND ALLISON

effected estimations of the first election in the conditions in which outcomes did not change. However, because this may have contributed to the polarization of attributions when the outcomes of successive elections differed, we dealt with this possible scource of ambiguity in a second experiment that focused only on conditions in which the outcome of the second election differed from the outcome of the first. In this next experiment, one half of the subjects made judgments about both elections at the end of the study, whereas the other half made judgments about the first election before learning of the outcome of the second election. The second goal of Experiment 2 was to illuminate the possible mediating role that perceptions of variability might play in producing the illusions of change found in Experiment 1. In addition to estimating the extent of perceived change in the group and judging the attitudes of the typical member on the recall issue, subjects were also asked to indicate how much variability they believed existed in the group’s attitudes about the recall issue. As mentioned in the introduction, the making of attributions may facilitate the perception of change if they focus attention on the central tendency of, rather than the variability in, behavior. If making attributions about the typical member’s attitude operates to reduce the perception of attitudinal variability in the group, then subjects’ variability estimates should be inversely related to attributional extremity. Method Subjects. The subjects were 130 male and female undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose participation fulfilled an introductory psychology course requirement. The subjects were run in groups of two to six persons each. Design. The experiment employed a 2 (Rule Change: 50% to 65%, 65% to 50%) x 2 (Vote Change: 56% to 58%, 58% to 56%) x 2 (Procedure: Judgments Separate. Judgments Together) factorial design. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. Stimulus materials. The same Marco Island vignette that was used in the first study was also used in this study. Subjects read about two recall elections. One half read that the decision rule was 50% in the first election but 65% in the second, while the other half read that the rule was first 65% and then 50%. Moreover, one half were informed that the percentage of voters supporting the recalls was first 56% and then 58%. whereas the other half were informed that these figures were 58% then 56%. As in the first study, subjects for whom the rule changed from 50% to 65% read that the recall first succeeded and then failed, while subjects for whom the rule changed from 65% to 50% read that the recall first failed and then succeeded. Procedure. One half of the subjects followed the same procedure as in Study 1 in that they were first given a vignette that described both recall elections and then were given a questionnaire that contained the dependent variables of interest for both elections. The other half of the subjects were initially given a vignette that described the first recall election after which they received a questionnaire pertinent to this election. These subjects were then given a second vignette that described the second recall election, after which they received a second questionnaire that contained measures relevant to the second election. Dependent variables. The dependent variables were identical to those employed in

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471

Experiment 1, but with an important addition. After subjects drew inferences about members at the time of each election, they were asked to estimate the variability of the citizens’ attitudes concerning the recall issue.

Results and Discussion Manipulation checks. As in the first study, we asked subjects to recall the six facts relevant to the two elections. Of the 130 subjects, 95 correctly remembered all six of these items. Analyses including the data from these 95 subjects (and all 130 subjects, in parentheses) are reported below. As in Experiment 1, an analysis of which of the six facts pertinent to the two elections were most likely to be remembered correctly revealed a main effect for Type of Information, F(2, 244) = 18.17, p < .OOl. This effect shows that subjects were more likely to correctly remember the final group outcomes (M = 0.97) than they were to remember the decision rules (A4 = 0.92, t(129) = 2.78, p < .Ol) or the percentage of voters favoring the recalls (M = 0.85, t(129) = 5.22, p < .Ol). The ANOVA also revealed a main effect for Procedure, F(1, 122) = 9.68, p < .Ol, which indicates that more facts were remembered about the elections when the elections were presented to subjects one at a time (M = 0.96) than when the elections were presented at the same time (M = 0.87). Attitude attributions. We measured subjects’ inferences about the typical member’s attitudes at the time of the first and second elections using bipolar scales that were similar to those used in Experiment 1. For each election, subjects were asked to place a slash mark on a IO-cm line with the labels Completely against the recall and completely for the recall anchored at the endpoints. These responses, later converted to scores ranging from 1 to 10, were subjected to a 2 (Rule Change: 50% to 65%, 65% to 50%) x 2 (Vote Change: 56% to 58%, 58% to 56%) x 2 (Procedure: Separate, Together) x 2 (Election: First, Second) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor. With regard to the question of whether subjects’ judgments varied as a function of the procedure used in the experiment, the answer appears to be no. There was no main effect for Procedure, nor were there any statistically reliable interactions associated with that factor. This suggests that the results of Experiment 1 do not appear to have been influenced by our subjects having known the outcome of both elections prior to their generating inferences. With regard to the question of whether we replicated the results of Experiment 1, the answer appears to be yes. If subjects are attending to the success or failure of the recalls when generating their attitude inferences, then attribution scores should decrease for subjects in the success-fail condition but should increase for subjects in the fail-success condition. This pattern should be manifested in a two-way interaction between Rule Change and Election, which the ANOVA did uncover:

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AND ALLISON TABLE

ATTITUDE

ATTRIBUTIONS

AS A FUNCTION

OF RULE

4 CHANGE

AND

ELECTION

IN EXPERIMENT

2

Election

Rule change 50%-65% 65%-50%

Second

Difference

6.96

6.02

- 0.94

(success)

(failure)

First

6.28

6.63

(failure)

(success)

+0.35

Note. High numbers indicate a greater attributed preference for the recall. The success or failure of each recall is in parentheses.

F(1, 87) = 13.49, p < .OOl (F(1, 122) = 14.96, p < .OOl, for all subjects). The means associated with this interaction for subjects who passed the checks are displayed in Table 4. Subjects in the success-fail condition believed that the citizens were more in favor of the recall at the time of the first election (M = 6.96) than at the second (M = 6.02, F(1, 47) = 6.47, p < .02), and subjects in the fail-success condition inferred that the citizens were somewhat more in favor at the second election (M = 6.63) than at the first (M = 6.28, F(1, 59) = 3.99, p < .06). For the 95 subjects who passed all of the manipulation checks, the ANOVA also yielded a marginally significant interaction between Vote Change and Election, F(1, 87) = 3.82, p < .06, indicating that subjects’ attributions were affected by the 2% change in popular vote. When the vote changed from 56% to 58%, subjects inferred slightly less support for the recall at the first election (M = 6.42) than at the second (M = 6.63, F(1, 45) = 2.21, p < .15), and when the vote declined from 58% to 56% there was slightly greater inferred support at the first election (M = 6.63) than at the second (M = 6.24, F(1, 44) = 1.85, p < .18). This interaction did not arise, however, in the analysis of the responses from all 130 subjects (F < 1). Relationship between perceived change and attributions. As in Experiment 1, subjects were also asked to indicate how much the typical citizen’s attitudes about the recall issue changed from the time of the first election to the time of the second. In the first study, we found that subjects inferred greater change when the outcomes of the elections differed from one another than when the outcomes were consistent. In this second study, however, there are no experimental conditions in which the outcomes are consistent, nor are there any conditions in which voter support for the recall changes by more or less than 2%. Therefore, no effects for the perceived attitude change measure were either expected or found. We did, however, wish to examine the correlation between

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perceived change and differences in attributions over time. Although this correlation was not statistically signficant for the 95 subjects who passed the manipulation checks (r = .lO), it did reach statistical significance for all 130 subjects (r = .17, p < .05). This result replicates our earlier finding that the more likely subjects were to attribute different attitudes to members at the two different times, the more likely they were to indicate that members’ attitudes had changed over that time period. Relationship between attributional extremity and perceived variability. Subjects were asked to indicate, for each election, how varied or diverse they believed the attitudes and opinions of Marco Island’s citizens were concerning the recall issue. Responses to this measure were again coded from 1 to 10 with higher numbers indicating greater perceived diversity of attitudes. For each election, we correlated these variability scores with the absolute value of subjects’ deviations from the midpoint (5.5) of the attributional scale. If attributing attitudes to group members reduces the perceived variability of the members’ attitudes, then we would expect this correlation to be negative. This is precisely what we obtained. For the first election, r = - .40, p < .OOl (r = - .38, p < .OOl for all subjects), and for the second election, r = -.22, p < .05 (r = -.23, p < .Ol for all subjects). Thus we have evidence that the greater the degree to which subjects imputed characteristics to group members, the more they believed that the group was homogeneous with respect to those characteristics. Relationship between perceived variability and perceived change. We also computed the correlation between the degree to which subjects believed that citizens’ attitudes were homogeneous with respect to the recall issue, and the degree to which they believed that attitudes had changed over time. This correlation was not significant for either election, r = -.09, ns., and r = .Ol, n.s., respectively (r = .03, n.s., and r = - .02, n.s.. for all subjects). Thus, although we have uncovered evidence of an inverse relationship between attributional extremity and perceived variability, and a positive correlation between attributional extremity and perceived change, there appears to be no direct relationship between the perception of reduced variability at each point in time and the perception of change over time. EXPERIMENT

3

In Experiment 3 we attempted to rule out a possible alternate explanation for the illusion of change that our subjects demonstrated in Experiments 1 and 2. Our subjects’ attribution of a new attitude to the group and their perception that attitude change had occurred if the outcome of the second election changed might be seen as products of their belief that the target group had desired or intended the second outcome. For example, it is conceivable that our subjects reasoned that the group had brought

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about the change of decision rule in order to bring about the different outcome of the second election, and that this change was indicative of a change in attitude. This suggests that if the decision rule change is itself attributed to the group, then attributing a change in attitudes to the group is quite reasonable. To further investigate this possibility, we manipulated the source of the rule change in an experiment that again focused only on conditions in which the outcome of a second election differed from that of the first. Subjects were told that the change in decision rule occurring between the first and second elections was either mandated internally by the group members themselves, or imposed on the group by an external agent. If subjects were inferring attitude change from a presumably intentional rule change, we expected to replicate our findings from Experiments 1 and 2 only when the rule change was internally generated and not when it was externally imposed. In this latter condition, it was in fact possible that the salience of the externally imposed rule change might reduce our subjects’ tendencies to make attitude inferences at all (although see Jones & Harris, 1967). If, on the other hand, our findings from the first two experiments were not dependent upon inferences about the intended nature of the rule change, we expected to find support for the election issue attributed to group members when the election succeeded, and opposition attributed to them when the election failed regardless of the source of the rule change. Method Subjects. The subjects were 147 male and female undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose participation fulfilled an introductory psychology course requirement. The subjects were run in groups of three to six persons each. Design. The experiment employed a 2 (Rule Change: 50% to 65%, 65% to 50%) x 2 (Source of Rule Change: Internal, External) x 2 (Vote Change: 56% to 58%, 58% to 56%) factorial design. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. Stimulus materials and procedure. The same Marco Island vignette that was used in the first two studies was also used in this study. Moreover, the same pattern of voter support, decision rules, and election outcomes that was used in Experiment 2 was also used in this experiment. Subjects read about both elections and were then given a questionnaire that contained the dependent measures of interest for both elections. In contrast to the previous two studies, the subjects in this experiment were also told what prompted the change in the decision rule. One-half of the subjects read that the people of Marco Island petitioned to change the percentage of voters needed for a successful recall. Because the impetus for the change in decision rule came from the citizens of Marco Island, this version of the story constituted the internal source of rule change condition. The other half of the subjects were informed that the rule change was imposed by the governor of Florida; these subjects were in the external source of rule change conditon. Dependendent variables. The dependent variables were identical to those employed in Experiment 1.

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Manipulation checks. As in the first two studies, we asked subjects to remember the six facts relevant to the two elections. Of the 147 subjects, 97 correctly remembered all six of these items. In addition, we asked subjects to recall the source of the change in the decision rule. Of the 147 subjects, 118 remembered this fact, and of the 97 subjects who passed the election checks, 79 remembered this fact. As in Experiments 1 and 2, the analysis of subjects’ memory of the six manipulation check items dealing with the elections uncovered a main effect for Type of Information, F(2, 278) = 13.26, p < .OOl. This effect shows that subjects were more likely to correctly remember the final group outcomes (M = 0.96) than they were to remember the decision rules (M = 0.92, t(146) = 1.81, p < .07) or the percentage of voters favoring the recalls (M = 0.82, t(146) = 4.46, p < .Ol). The ANOVA also revealed a main effect for Election, F(1, 139) = 8.20, p < .Ol, which indicates that more facts were remembered about the second election (M = 0.92) than were remembered about the first (M = 0.88). Attitude attributions. We measured subjects’ inferences about the average member’s attitudes at the time of the first and second elections using the same bipolar scales as in Experiment 1. The responses from the 79 subjects who passed all seven manipulation check items were then subjected to a 2 (Rule Change: 50% to 65%, 65% to 50%) x 2 (Source: Internal, External) x 2 (Vote Change: 56% to 58%, 58% to 56%) x 2 (Election: First, Second) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor. Our chief concern in this study was to determine whether the source of the decision rule change affected subjects’ attitude judgments. It did not. The analysis yielded neither a significant main effect for Source (F < 1) nor any statistically reliable interaction effects associated with that factor (all Fs < 1). Source effects also failed to materialize when all 147 subjects were included in the analysis. Because the source of rule change had no effect of subjects’ judgments, the analyses of the dependent measures reported below include the responses from the 97 subjects who passed the six election checks. Analyses including all 147 subjects are also reported in parentheses. It was also our intent in this study to replicate the attributional patterns demonstrated in Experiments 1 and 2. We did. The ANOVA revealed a Rule Change x Election interaction, F(1, 89) = 6.22, p < .02 (F( 1, 139) = 15. II, p < .OOi for all subjects). This interaction replicates those that emerged in the first two studies, showing that there was a significant shift in subjects’ attributed attitudes when the recall succeeded (M = 4.89) and then failed (M = 4.58), F(1, 47) = 8.43, p < .Ol. However, there was only a slight shift in attributions when the recall failed (M = 4.61) and then succeeded (M = 4.65), F < 1.

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The ANOVA also revealed the same interaction between Vote Change and Election as found in the previous studies, F(1, 89) = 20.36, p < .OOl (F(1, 139) = 12.67, p < .OOl for all subjects). Subjects’ attributions increased when the vote changed from 56% (M = 4.61) to 58% (M = 4.78), F(1, 42) = 3.47, p < .07, and their attributions decreased when the vote changed from 58% (M = 4.89) to 56% (M = 4.46), F(I, 47) = 21.11, p < .Ol. This finding shows that subjects were again sensitive to the seemingly trivial change in voter support for the recall. Unlike Experiment 1, but like Experiment 2, the extent to which this was true was not affected by the outcomes of the elections. Relationship between perceptions of change and attributions. We again examined the correlation between perceived change and differences in attributions over time. As in Experiments 1 and 2, this correlation was found to be high and statistically significant, r = .34, p < .OOl (r = .42, p < .OOl for all subjects), demonstrating that the more likely subjects were to attribute a different attitude at each election, the more likely they were to indicate that attitudes had changed over time. GENERAL

DISCUSSION

The results of the three experiments provide considerable support for the idea that insensitivity to context effects can create a situation in which varying attitude inferences are made about invariant behavior, producing the illusion that attitude change has occurred. In all three studies, subjects overattributed the existence of an attitude corresponding to an election outcome to a target group. When the election succeeded, subjects estimated that the typical group member was more in favor of the recall than when the election failed, despite the fact that voter support for the recall was approximately the same for both outcomes. Subjects the outcomes of thus made “group attribution errors ” in overattributing the elections to attitudes internal to the group, while underweighing the influence of the decision rules in producing those outcomes. When the outcome of two successive elections was experimentally manipulated, so that the election first succeeded and then failed despite comparable vote distributions, this overattribution of the correspondent attitude following each election led to the erroneous perception that the group’s attitude had changed. The third experiment showed that the overattribution of correspondent attitudes to the group, and the relation between these misperceptions and the estimation of attitude change, was replicated regardless of whether the cause of the outcome change was internally generated or externally imposed. Our results replicate and extend Allison and Messick’s (1985) demonstration that subjects attribute the outcomes of group behavior (the success or failure of the recall) more to internal qualities (the group’s attitude) than to external constraints (the decision rules). That is, like

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Allison and Messick’s subjects, our subjects weighed the outcome of the election heavily in inferring a group’s attitudes even when the group’s voting behavior and decision rule constraints were available to them. Our results showed that this inferential bias occurred twice in response to two group decisions, despite subjects’ sensitivity to very small changes in the actual proportion of members favoring the measure. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects’ judgments were significantly affected by the seemingly trivial change in popular vote across elections, but these effects were independent of the impact of the group outcome on attributions and on perceptions of change. In Experiment 1, the most polarized attributions were made when the direction of the vote change was consistent with the outcome change (Table 3); however, when the direction of the vote change conflicted with the direction of the outcome change, the shift in subjects’ attributions tended to be consistent with the change in the outcome. Subjects’ simultaneous sensitivity to what we intended as an inconsequential change in voter support for the recall decisions, and their undersensitivity to the decision rules that produced a change in those decisions, are indeed intriguing. Our results also provide initial clues as to the mechanisms underlying the illusion of attitude change. For example, the kinds of errors made by subjects who failed the manipulation checks indicated that subjects were more likely to remember the final outcomes of the recalls than they were to remember the decision rules or the proportion of members supporting the recalls. Estimations of change could have therefore been based on a comparison of outcomes over time. An alternative possibility is that judgments of change were based upon a comparison of inference judgments across time, and our data were supportive of this alternative. Estimations of change in the group’s attitude were directly related to the strength of the group attribution errors made at the time of each election outcome. The more strongly an internal attribution was made about the typical member at each point in time, the greater the perception of change over time. If subjects were comparing the results of two inference processes, this suggests that inferences about the typical member might serve as a memorable and salient summary judgment of all the decision information available. We have no way of knowing if, especially after some time has elapsed, the inference made may have been retained even more strongly than recall of the outcome (Carlston, 1980). A definitive answer to the question of whether our results were dependent on a comparison of the outcomes alone, or if the making of an inference was a necessary condition for the illusion of change, awaits a paradigm in which outcomes can be manipulated but the making of inferences can in some conditions be impeded. The results of Experiment 2 were also consistent with the idea that correspondent inferences operate to reduce perceived variability in the

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group. Extremity of attribution was found to be negatively correlated with perceived attitudinal diversity within the group. However, the perception of reduced attitudinal variability was not found to be related to perceptions of attitude change (cf. Silka, 1981, 1983). Although the direction of causality is not clear from our correlational data, the pattern is consistent with the idea that reduced variability and strength of attitude inference are related, and that judgments of change are then based on a comparison of these inferences made over time. Virtually all of the statistical analyses that we conducted included only those subjects who passed all of the manipulation checks. This was done because we wished to be as conservative as possible in our reporting of the data. However, when we included in the analyses the responses from subjects who missed one or more manipulation check items, the same or stronger correspondent attributional pattern arose. Why our results often became stronger when subjects who failed the checks were included may stem from our finding that people were more likely to remember the decisions that Marco Island residents made than they were to remember the decision rules and other constraints that produced those decisions. There are at least two reasons why our subjects may have found the outcomes of the recall elections easier to remember than the other items associated with those outcomes. First, it is possible that the binary form in which the outcome information was presented to subjects (i.e., the success or failure of the recalls) may have rendered that information more memorable relative to the other facts about the outcomes (the decision rules and the voting percentages), which were presented to subjects in a continuous (O-100%) form. A second possibility centers on the relative importance of outcome information. Of all the information pertinent to any given election, the outcome of that election is the most important in terms of the implications it has for those experiencing the outcome. For this reason the outcome may be more carefully attended to or more elaborately encoded in memory. Although we have no data to support either explanation for our memory results, our attributional findings do appear to hold for all subjects, regardless of their memory for the facts. Even when we included in the analyses only the responses from those subjects who remembered everything about the elections, including the decision rule constraints placed on the group, these constraints tended to be discounted while the election outcomes themselves were overweighed when attitudes were attributed to the island’s citizens. While our data only speak to the issue of how people may come to hold erroneous beliefs about group attitude change, similar effects might be expected at the individual level. For instance, Jones and Harris’s (1967) subjects believed that an individual target asked to write a proCastro essay was pro-Castro. If the same target had two weeks later

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agreed to write an anti-Castro essay, would subjects now infer an antiCastro attitude and, in addition, believe that the target had undergone a change in attitude about Castro? The possibility that this tendency could be used to facilitate stereotype change should also be considered. If a group’s behavior is internally attributed regardless of external constraints, then creating situations in which a later example of behavior might be attributed to a stereotypeinconsistent internal characteristic may increase the perception that the group’s internal qualities had changed. To illustrate, suppose that a group or community were seen as being stereotypically liberal. Subjects receiving information about two elections in which the decision rule first produces a liberal outcome and then produces a conservative outcome should, according to our results, perceive a significant change in the beliefs of the group. However, there is some evidence that there is resistance to making stereotype-inconsistent internal attributions (Granberg, 1984; Pettigrew, 1979). This suggests that the extent to which prior expectations are held about a group’s attitudes, and the extent to which the group’s decisions are consistent with those expectations, may affect how much attitudes are perceived to have changed. It is clear, however, that the role of processes underlying the overestimation of change promises to be a productive area of future research. REFERENCES Allison, S. T., & Messick, D. M. (1985). The group attribution error. Journal ofExperimental Social Psychology, 21, 563-579. Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley. Carlston, D. E. (1980). The recall and use of traits and events in social inference processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 303-328. Granberg, D. (1984). Attributing attitudes to members of groups. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 85- 108). New York: Springer-Verlag. Hamill, R., Wilson, T. D., & Nisbett. R. E. (1980). Insensitivity to sample bias: Generalizing from atypical cases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 578-589. Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal ofExperimental Social Psychology, 3, I-24. Mackie, D. M. (1986). Social identification effects in group polarization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 720-728. Pettigrew, T. F. (1979). The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5, 461-476. Quattrone, G. A., & Jones, E. E. (1980). The perception of variability within ingroups and outgroups: Implications for the law of small numbers. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 38, 141-152. Silka, L. (1981). Effects of limited recall of variability on intuitive judgments of change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 1010-1016. Silka, L. (1983). “You just can’t count on things anymore”: Perceptions of increased variability in the present. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9, 621-628. Silka, L. (1984). Intuitive perceptions of change: An overlooked phenomenon in person perception? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 180-190. Tajfel, H., Sheikh, A. A., &Gardner, R. C. (1964). Content of stereotypes and the inference

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of similarity between members of stereotyped groups. Acta Psychologica, 22, 191201. Turner, J. C. (1985). Social categorization and the self-concept: A social-cognitive theory of group behavior. In E. J. Lawler (Ed.), Advances in group processes (pp. 77-121). Greenwich, CT: Jai. Wilder, D. A. (1977). Perceptions of groups, size of opposition, and social influence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 253-258. Wilder, D. A. (1978). Perceiving persons as a group: Effects on attributions of causality and beliefs. Social Psychology, 1, 13-23. Wilder, D. A., & Cooper, W. E. (1981). Categorization into groups: Consequences for social perception and attribution. In J. Harvey, W. Ickes, & R. Kidd (Eds.), New directions in aftribution research (Vol. 3). Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum. Worth, L. T., Allison, S. T., & Messick, D. M. (in press). Impact of a group’s decision on the perception Psychology.

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