Is there a disposition to avoid the fundamental attribution error?

JOURNAL

OF RESEARCH

IN PERSONALITY

19, 436-456 (1985)

Is There a Disposition to Avoid the Fundamental Attribution Error? Lou E. HICKS Tulane University Two studies investigated the possibility that personality variables might relate to the magnitude of the cognitive attributional error. In the first, participants received either a pronuclear or anti-nuclear weapons essay, and were asked to rate the writer’s personal beliefs (attitude attribution). As expected, certain MyersBriggs Type Indicator indices of cognitive processing preferences did not predict variations in attribution in the Choice condition, but did so in the Constraint condition. In the Constraint condition, subjects expressing the Intuitive Thinking preference showed no significant attributional error (i.e., no tendency to rate in line with essay content). Other subjects in this condition showed the usual attributional error. These findings were generally replicated in the second study, which used the Constraint condition only. The Self-Monitoring scale was added as a predictor; it did not relate to the attributional error. It was suggested that measures of cognitive processing style may be more relevant to attribution than the various measures of sensitivity to environmental variation. 0 1985 Academic Press, Inc.

A widely studied cognitive error has been described as the tendency to overattribute causality to person’s dispositions when there are obvious situational constraints governing the judged behavior. In one of the simple, early demonstrations of this error, Jones and Harris (1967) showed that students who read either a pro or an anti essay on marijuana legalization or Fidel Castro inferred that the essay writer’s actual views corresponded to those appearing in the essay, even when it was made clear that the substance of the essay had been dictated by someone else. This attributional error has been demonstrated with a variety of contexts, materials, and issues; it may appear even when the constraints on the producer of the essay or other products are highly salient (Miller, Jones, dz Hinkle, 1981). Lee Ross (1977) was the first to label the error the “fundamental attribution error” and to interpret the error in terms of a pervasive-and deplorable (Nisbett & Ross, 1980, p. 32; L. Ross, 1977, pp. 186-187)-tendency for persons to interpret the behavior of others in terms of stable dispositions, ignoring causal situational factors. The author thanks Ed O’Neal for his help. Requests for reprints should be sent to L. E. Hicks, Department of Psychology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118. 0092-6566185 $3.00 Copyright AU rights

Q 1985 by Academic Press, Inc. of reproduction in any form reserved.

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It should, however, be noted that the experimental paradigm in which the attributional error is typically studied does not yield direct evidence that dispositional attributions lie behind the error. Researchers sometimes attribute dispositional attributions to subjects in such experiments (Ajzen, Dalto, & Blyth, 1979) and sometimes do not (Miller & Rorer, 1982). Miller and Rorer (1982, p. 42) suggest that “the attribution error need not reflect general misunderstandings about, or the low salience of, situational factors, but rather is based on the perceiver’s inclination to adopt a diagnostic judgmental set in the attitude attribution paradigm.” Jones and his colleagues, though initially inclined (Jones 8z Nisbett, 1972, p. 81) to list the attributional error as a piece of evidence for a general dispositionist appraisal fallacy, gradually began to develop explanations for the error that use the cognitive analytic terminology of the “anchor/adjustment model” (e.g., Jones, 1979; Miller et al., 1981; Quattrone, 1982). This heuristic provides a useful sequential organization of a number of variables that have been found to influence the magnitude of the error, such as subjects’ perception of the target’s constraint (Snyder & Jones, 1974; A. G. Miller, 1974), argument strength or extremity (Miller & Rorer, 1982), the target person’s appearance (A. G. Miller, 1976), and so on. An attempt to account for individual differences in attribution by using Rotter’s (1966) Locus of Control scale was apparently unsuccessful; only weak data trends appeared (Jones, Worchel, Goethals, & Grumet, 1971). Thus, the present anchor/adjustment model accounts for individual differences by post hoc concepts such as attention and attributional set. Such constructs do not permit one to predict ahead of time which subjects, when confronted with the same situation as those who commit the error, will fail to do so. The present study assumed that there are always subjects who will fail to commit the error, even when a powerful group attribution error appears, although the presence of these subjects is rarely reported and their cognitions rarely studied. In an exception, Miller, Mayerson, Pogue, and Whitehouse (1977) noted that a full 28% of their subjects-those who reported that their knowledge of the constraint influenced themdid not show the error that the others showed. Miller and Rorer (1982. p. 56) noted cryptically that a minority of their subjects discounted the essay content under constraint; they did not fully account for this discounting. The present attributional study focused on the neglected subject variables. A direct comparison of the favored cognitive stylistic approaches of those less inclined to the error and those more inclined would contribute to an understanding of the attributional process. The standard paradigm was linked here to two measures of individual differences, one from a deeply dispositional school of personality theory and one from the heartland of social psychology.

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The latter scale is Snyder’s (1974) Self-Monitoring scale. This complex instrument has undergone much reinterpretation (Briggs, Cheek, & Buss, 1980; Lennox & Wolfe, 1984). Snyder’s interpretations (Snyder, 1976; Snyder & Monson, 1973, however, have posited that high scorers on the scale are highly attentive to situational cues because they use such cues as guides for their own behavior. Low scorers are said to be less sensitive to situational cues. By this interpretation, the most obvious expectation would be that high self-monitoring subjects should be attentive to the situational constraints placed on the essay writer, should discount the essay content in making attributions about the writer, and should therefore exhibit relatively low attributional error. The low self-monitoring subjects would be expected to experience the reverse processes, showing a relatively large attributional error. Because the Self-Monitoring scale was developed in the context of social psychological situational/dispositional analyses, its application in the attributional context is fairly straightforward. The dispositional personality theory and scale to be used, however, are applied in a conceptually alien context. A more extended discussion is therefore needed. The dispositional theory here employed is Jungian typological theory (Jung, 1921/1971) in its American elaboration (McCaulley, 1981; Myers & Myers, 1980). Four bipolar variables compose the system. These variables are named extraversion-introversion (E-I), sensing-intuition (SN), thinking-feeling (T-F), and judging-perceiving (J-P).’ Although everyone is capable of displaying the functions or attitudes associated with any of the poles, it is believed that persons develop a directional preference for one of the poles of each of the bipolar variables. A satisfactorally reliable (Carlyn, 1977) psychometric instrument, the MyersBriggs Type Indicator (MBTI), is used to assess these directional preferences. All of the possible bipolar preferences can combine, both additively and interactively, yielding 16 distinctive types (see Hicks, 1984). the preferences and the typological configurations are believed to reflect stable dispositions that guide and modulate attention to, and processing of, stimulus information over a lifetime. The interacting variables deemed relevant to the present experimental paradigm are S-N and T-F. S-N is the most cognitive of the variables. Sensing (S) can be briefly defined as a cognitive preference for known facts, directly experienced; intuition (N) is defined as a preference for possibilities and relationships between facts. The empirical meaning of S-N has been most extensively explored in terms of performances on measures of ability and in terms of occupational preferences. N’s generally score higher on measures of intelligence and academic ability (McCaulley, ’ These variable abbreviations are also used to identify a person who possesses a particular set of bipolar preferences.

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1978; Myers, 1%2/1975; Webb, 1964), but are equalled by S’s on measures of practical skills (McCaulley & Natter, 1974). N’s are attracted to occupations that do not require prolonged, accurate attention to sense data; the reverse tendency is apparent for S’s (McCaulley, 1978). Carlson’s (1980) study might lead one to posit that S-N deals with preferences that overlap somewhat with the self-monitoring construct. She asked subjects to write an introductory letter to an imagined foreign correspondent. Letters were scored for instances of concrete self-description and imaginative participation. Imaginative participation involved references to the situation of the imagined foreign correspondent. As expected, S’s utilized concrete self-description more often, and N’s made more participatory references to the imagined other. To the extent that imagining the situation of a foreign correspondent is similar to imagining the constraint under which the absent essay writer labors in an attributional experiment, one would expect N’s to display a reduced attributional error, compared to S’s. And to the extent that S-N and Self-Monitoring both tap the same perceptual processes, they should correlate, despite their very different item content. It would seem that the thinking-feeling (T-F) variable should also figure importantly in the classic attributional situation. T’s are said to excel where objective, impersonal analysis is needed; their decisional criteria are whether something is valid or invalid, reasonable or unreasonable. F’s, on the other hand, are said to use as a criterion, “not whether something is valid or invalid, but whether it is important or unimportant, valuable or worthless, particularly in relation to human values and how they affect people” (Quenk & Quenk, 1982, p. 160). T’s are overrepresented in occupations like law and engineering that require objective analysis (McCaulley, 1976a; P. V. Miller, 1967). F’s dominate interpersonal occupations like counseling, teaching, and sales (Myers, 1962/1975; Myers & Myers, 1980). It was expected that a thinking preference might be associated with a reduced attributional error. It was also expected that an S-N x T-F interaction would occur, such that participants with the NT preference might reduce the attributional error beyond the reduction expected from the additive effects of the N and T preferences. The reasoning behind the predicted interaction goes as follows: As noted above, it is expected that both of the sensing groups, ST and SF, would be inclined to give insufficent weight to the constraints experienced by the imagined essay writer because their perceptual orientation does not foster participation in the situation of another who is not immediately present. It was considered possible, however, that the NF group might display an attributional error of a magnitude only somewhat less than that of the sensing types. Theoretically, the NF error would spring from different sources than the sensing group’s error. The NF humanistic interpersonal orientation (see Carlson, 1980; Carlson & Levy,

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1973) is focused on the uniqueness of the perceived other, fostering the “diagnostic judgmental set” suggested by Miller and Rorer (1982). These authors loosely define such a set as one based on an effort to “psych out” the essay writer, differentiating this target uniquely, rather than thinking in normative terms about how most people would respond, Such a normative analysis, appropriately intluenced by explicit or implicit base rates, should be undertaken to a greater extent by NTs than by non-NTs, yielding the predicted interaction. The type descriptions (McCaulley, 1976b; Myers, 1962/1975); the associated occupational preference validations, and academic achievement patterns (McCaulley & Natter, 1974) for the NT versus non-NT preferences all indicate a special NT attraction to scientific curricula, scientific occupations, and scientific information evaluation tactics. Zukier and Pepitone (1984) have shown that an instruction-based “clinical” or “scientific” set influences the use of base-rate information, with more use occurring when there is a scientific set. To the extent that a traditional attributional experiment offers implicit base-rate information in the form of normative and counternormative essays, more appropriate use of base rates should occur for the NT group, with commensurate attenuation of the attributional error. STUDY 1

This study sought to link score patterns on the MBTI S-N and T-F dimensions to the magnitude of the attributional error under Constraint and Choice conditions. Method

Subjects Introductory psychology students were scheduled for two I-hr sessions with 2 days intervening between sessions. An effort was made to acquire twice the number of subjects in the Constraint condition as in the Choice condition because interactions were expected in the former but not the latter. A total of 157 subjects (95 males, 62 females) in the Constraint condition completed both sessions. One subject was dropped prior to data analysis. Eighty subjects (54 males, 26 females) completed questionnaires in the Choice condition.

Materials

and Procedure

Subjects participated in groups of 11 to 30. They received the MBTI in the first session and, during the second session, a six-page booklet containing a two-page essay that was either strongly pro or anti nuclear weapons. Both in Constraint and Choice conditions the essay was prefaced by a page on which subjects were instructed that they would later be asked to make their best judgments about “a person’s characteristics, based on a brief writing sample.” In the Constraint condition, the preface continued, stating that the essay was produced by a sophomore student as a class exercise in political science, where both pro and anti nuclear weapons essays were required by the instructor. The final statement in the Constraint condition again emphasized the constraint. The essays themselves were Xeroxed, handwritten specimens devised by the experimenter with conventional, firmly

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stated pronuclear and antinuclear arguments based on those appearing in letters to the editor in the local newspaper. After reading the essay, participants made ratings on four scales that served as filler items. These solicited ratings of the writer’s intelligence, the subject’s similarity in belief to the essay writer, the essay’s logical coherence, and the essay’s factual substance; these filler items served primarily as a check on the credibility of the essays. The next rating was the attributional measure of interest: “Where would you rate this student’s personal beliefs on the nuclear arms issue?” The 11-point rating scale that was presented was anchored by the words Pro Nuclear Arms (low) and Anti Nuclear Arms (high). The final pages of the questionnaire contained open-ended filler items about the essay writer’s handwriting and queries about the bases of the subject’s rating of the essay writer’s intelligence and the writer’s attitude on nuclear arms. Review questions followed about the characteristics of the essay writer; these questions included as a postexperimental check, a question as to whether the essay was assigned, chosen, or whether this issue was not raised. The data for one subject in the Constraint condition who did not respond appropriately were discarded prior to data analysis. After the ratings were completed, the examiner verbally asked the students to write in the upper right comer of the front sheet the percentage of students on campus that they believed were opposed to nuclear weapons. It was judged to be undesirable to make this kind of normative consideration salient earlier by including it in the questionnaire.

Results Subsidiary Responses No systematic analyses were undertaken of most of the “filler” rating scales noted above except to examine frequency distributions. Few extreme ratings appeared, a finding congruent with the assumption that the essays were credible facsimiles of student opinion. Two of these items were of some interest. The open-ended question about the bases of the subject’s rating of the essay writer’s attitude on nuclear arms was examined by two judges. It was hoped that a dichotomous variable could be composed, so that the spontaneous report or nonreport of constraint could be related to other variables. There was 97% agreement between the two judges, but only 15, or 9.6%, of the participants in the Constraint condition explicitly reported that the fact of constraint had influenced their rating. This reporting rate is far below that found by Miller et al. (1977); it was not possible to use this variable in further analyses. The participants’ perception of the percentage of Tulane University students who are opposed to nuclear weapons was obtained, for contextual information. The estimates ranged from 50 to 90% with a mean of 68.2% (SD = 8.23). Thus the normative expectation of a student’s true attitude on nuclear weapons would probabilistically point to an antinuclear stance. MBTI Patterns Table 1 depicts the MBTI score patterns obtained by the 236 participating subjects. Compared to less academically capable samples, there is an

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LOU E. HICKS TABLE 1 FREQUENCYDISTRIBUTIONOF STUDY 1 SUBJECTS’ MBTI SCOREPATTERNS ISTJ 11 m 4f

ISFJ 7m 11 f

INFJ 4m 6f

INTJ 10 m 5f

ISTP 8m If

ISFP 3m 4f

INFP 7m 12 f

INTP 10 m 2f

ESTP 10 m 3f

ESFP 4m 5f

ENFP 8m 5f

ENTP 17 m 7f

ESTJ 21 m 7f

ESFJ 6m 9f

ENFJ 5m 12 f

ENTJ 10 m 2f

Note. The format of this table is standard for presentation of MBTI score patterns. The 16 possible patterns are combinations of preferences for introversion (I) or extraversion (E); sensing (S) or intuition (N); thinking (T) or feeling (F); judging (5) or perceiving (P). MBTI = Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; m = male; f = female; n = 236.

overrepresentation of N-preference subjects (51.7%). This preference appears among only about 25% of the students in public high schools (Myers & Myers, 1980) and about 35% of the sample in less academically selective colleges (Stricker & Ross, 1962, Table 56). A correlation between S-N and J-P (r = .22, p < .OOl) appeared in the data summarized in Table 1; such a relationship is typically found (e.g., Carlyn, 1977). (Scoring standards are such that I, N, F, and P are scored high.) The significant correlation between T-F and gender (r = .36, p < .OOl) that was found, such that F’s are more often females, is also common (Carlyn, 1977). Because the T-F preference enters into the predictions of this study, the gender relationship with the predictor variable is taken into account in later data analyses. MBTI and Attribution For ensuing data analyses, dichotomous scoring was used on MBTI data, so that only directional preference on each of the four MBTI variables was retained (e.g., E versus I). Although other scoring methods can be used (Myers, 1962/1975; Webb, 1964), have proved practical in some contexts (Carlyn, 1977; Myers, 1%2/1975), and may even be optimal for some purposes (see Weiss, Mendelsohn, & Feimer, 1982), it is dichotomous scoring that is appropriate to the bipolar assertions of the

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typological theory (McCaulley, 1981). The very fact that some information loss is occasioned by dichotomous scoring serves to subject the typological theory and the MBTI to their most skeptical challenge. When the attributional ratings under Constraint were analyzed as a function of MBTI patterns, the basic hypothesis of the study was clearly supported. The data were, however, first subjected to a 26 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA), where the cells consisted of Choice versus Constraint x E-I x S-N x T-F x J-P x Pro versus Anti Essay Stance. Because cell n’s were unequal, the unweighted means procedure was used (Horst & Edwards, 1982). The results of this analysis showed that, aside from the main effect for Essay Stance, F( 1, 172) = 200.16, p = < .OOl , the only other significant effect was that for Constraint versus Choice x Essay Stance, F( 1, 172) = 81.67, p < .001. Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics associated with this interaction. The pattern of results is a replication of the usual finding for attributional data where one of the essay’s attitudinal stances is the more popular one in the population sampled (see Jones & Harris, 1967; Jones et al., 1971). In this student group, the antinuclear attitude is normative; no differences appear in the attribution of the essay writer’s true attitude in the two antinuclear essay conditions for this nonorthogonal analysis. A significant difference appears for the pronuclear essays, with the knowledge of constraint signhicantly reducing the tendency to attribute the pronuclear attitude that appeared in the Choice condition. The attributional error is demonstrated in the Table 2 data by the significant difference in attribution of the essay writer’s attitude under Constraint, depending on the Essay Stance, whether pro or anti nuclear weapons. Because it had not been hypothesized that there would be effects related to the typological personality variables under Choice conditions, and because the sample sizes were quite discrepant in Constraint and Choice conditions, the data were divided and separate 2’ factorial (E-I x S-N x T-F x J-P x Essay Stance) ANOVAs were executed. The TABLE MEANS

AND STANDARD

DEVIATIONS

2

ON ATTITUDE ATTRIBUTION AND ESSAY STANCE

x CONSTRAINT

Constraint Essay stance Pro Anti

CONDITION

Choice

-

.~~

Mean

SD

n

Mean

SD

n

5.26, 8.86,

3.01 2.25

77 79

2.42, 9.03,

1.40 1.37

41 39

Note. Low attribution values indicate a relatively pronuclear weapons attitude judged to be present in the essay writer. Means with differently lettered subscripts are significantly different (p < .OS) by Duncan’s multiple range test for unequal n’s,

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Choice data showed no significant effects other than the powerful main effect for Essay Stance, F(1, 72) = 328.97, p < .0005. The comparable ANOVA for the data that were ratings of the Constraint essays revealed the predicted effect. In addition to the main effect for Essay Stance, F(1, 124) = 61.20, p < .005, whereby the attributional error is displayed, there was a significant triple interaction involving Essay Stance, S-N, and T-F, F(1) 124) = 7.70), p < .Ol. Further analysis indicated that the S-N x T-F interaction was highly significant for the pronuclear essay, F(1, 124) = 10.89, p < .OOl, and weakly significant for the antinuclear essay, F( 1, 124) = 5.64, p < .05. A graphic depiction of the interaction of MBTI pattern with Essay Stance appears as Fig. 1; Table 3 displays associated descriptive statistics. Within each of the two Essay Stances shown in Table 3, Duncan’s multiple range tests for unequal 12’s were used to contrast attributions made for each of the four MBTI patterns. The NT group differed @ < .05) within the antinuclear condition from each of the other three groups;

. Pro

Anti Essay

Stance

1. Judgment of essay writer’s attitude as a function of essay stance for Choice group and Constraint subgroups based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator scores. FIG.

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AND

TABLE MEANS

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ATTRIBUTION

3

AND STANDARD

DEVIATIONS ON ATTITUDE ATTRIBUTION x ESSAY STANCE AND MBTI PATTERN IN THE CONSTRAINT SUBGROUPS

MBTI pattern

Essay stance

Statistic

ST

SF

NT

NF

pr0

Mean

4.80 3.12 20 9.32 2.03 22

5.43 2.93 14 8.81 2.37 16

6.64 3.16 22 7.89 2.58 19

4.14 2.33 21 9.27 1.91 22

Note. MBTI = Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; ST = Sensing Thinking; Feeling; NT = Intuitive Thinking; NF = Intuitive Feeling.

SF = Sensing

SD n

Anti

Mean SD n

none of the other groups differed significantly from each other. Within the pronuclear essay condition, the NT group differed (p < .05) from the NF and the ST group, but not the SF group. Again, the ST, SF, and NF groups did not differ significantly from each other. A second set of Duncan’s multiple range contrasts was executed as a way of comparing the four slopes depicted in Fig. 1. The pro to anti difference was not significant for the NT group; this difference was significant (p < .OOl) for each of the other three MBTI groups. Thus, only the NT group fails to exhibit the attributional error. Rating Distributions An effort was then made to determine the way in which ratings distributed for the four MBTI groups. It would be of interest to see whether the relatively neutral average attributional ratings of the NT group resulted from a central tendency toward neutrality, or whether group differences reflect active reversals of rating direction from that expected when the attribution error is displayed, yielding what will be termed “oppositional attribution.” The rating scale was arbitarily divided into three segments, with Points 5, 6, and 7 on the 11-point scale representing “neutral” ratings. The four MBTI groups did not differ significantly in the frequency of neutral attributions under Constraint. The ST, SF, NT, and NF groups contained 26.2, 15.0, 19.5, and 18.6% neutral raters, respectively. The Choice data yielded markedly lower percentages, ranging from 2.5 to 3.7%; again no between-group difference appeared. It was when oppositional attributions were examined that group differences appeared. Oppositional attribution was defined as a rating of 4 or less (pro direction) when an antinuclear essay was received, or a rating of 8 or greater (anti direction) when the pronuclear essay was

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received. For the Constraint data, 9.5% of the STs, 15.0% of the SFs, 36.6% of the NTs, and 4.6% of the NFs displayed oppositional attribution. The x2 for these data is significant, (1, n = 27) = 9.48, p < .005. Because of the between-group distribution differences, skew values for the rating distributions are positive for all groups except the NTs on the pronuclear essay; the NT skew is notably less negative than the others on the antinuclear essay. For all subjects, however, most of the instances of oppositional attribution (77.8%) occurred when the counternormative pronuclear essay was received. No oppositional attribution was displayed by any of the subjects in the Choice condition. It appears that differences between the four MBTI patterns may be largely due to the greater tendency for NTs to display oppositional attribution when interpreting an essay written under constraint. One unexpected effect appeared in the Constraint data. There was a main effect for the judging-perceiving variable on overall attributional polarity, F(1, 124) = 4.50, p < .05. The direction of this relatively weak effect was such that the P group rated the essay writer as more antinuclear than did the J group. Gender and Thinking-Feeling

A final set of analyses for the Constraint data centered on efforts to distinguish the T-F variable from gender. Two analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were performed, first with Sex used as a covariate for the four MBTI predictors and Essay Stance, and then with T-F used as a covariate for an E-I x S-N x Sex x J-P x Essay Stance analysis. The results of these two analyses suggest that T-F and Sex operate somewhat similarly, but not at all interchangeably, in the attributional situation. The ANCOVA in which T-F was the covariate yielded two complex statistical effects that related MBTI patterns to general rating polarity. Because these effects did not replicate in Study 2, they are not elaborated here. The anticipated triple interaction of S-N, Sex, and Essay Stance also appeared, F(1, 123) = 10.14, p < .005. The pattern of the interaction was similar to that for S-N x T-F x Essay Stance noted above, with male N’s, in this case, displaying a smaller attribution error, differing from the other groups more strikingly in the pronuclear condition. The second ANCOVA, in which gender was used as a covariate with the MBTI predictors and Essay Stance, yielded the following effects. The regression of Sex on the attribution dependent variable was significant, F(1, 123) = 5.60, p < .05. The J-P main effect found with the basic ANOVA reappeared, F(l, 123) = 5.96, p < .05. The triple interaction of interest between S-N, T-F, and Essay Stance also was maintained, F(1, 123) = 6.20, p < .05. Finally, an interaction between T-F and Essay Stance appeared, F(1, 123) = 5.12, p < .05, such that T’s rated

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the essay writer as more antinuclear, F(1, 123) = 4.54, p < .05, only when the pronuclear essay was under consideration. STUDY 2 This study employed two partially overlapping samples to investigation of the MBTI, Snyder’s (1974) Self-Monitoring attribution of attitude under the Constraint condition only. An made to replicate the Study 1 procedures relating the MBTI T-F preferences to attribution, while relating Self-Monitoring the same attributional situation.

initiate an scale, and effort was S-N and scores to

Method For one group, all three of the measures were administered; for an additional group, only the two predictor measures were administered. Data from the first group permit tests of the hypotheses from Study 1, as well as allow investigation of the possibility that SelfMonitoring scores are related to causal attribution. For the 61 introductory psychology students (35 males, 26 females) in the first group, questionnaire sessions were held as described for Study 1, except that the Self-Monitoring scale was added in the second session. Additional subjects were needed later to more fully explicate the relationship between MBTI and Self-Monitoring scores. The MBTI and the Self-Monitoring scale were later administered in a single session to an additional 35 introductory psychology students (IO males, 25 females).

Results MBTZ and Attribution For the sample in the first group, there were significant correlations between S-N and J-P (r = .32, p < .Ol) and between T-F and gender (r = .32, p < .Ol), as in Study 1. The antinuclear stance was again seen as normative in the campus population: 67.2% of the students were seen as antinuclear (SD = 11.2). It was decided that an appropriate analysis of these data would consist of a 23 factorial ANOVA, using unweighted means, with S-N, T-F, and Essay Stance as the factors. The resulting average cell n for such an analysis is slightly higher than that employed in Study 1 for the 26 ANOVA used there. Table 4 presents data for the present analysis. The Essay Stance (attributional error) effect under Constraint was again significant, F(1, 53) = 38.10, p < .0005, but the triple interaction involving S-N, T-F, and Essay Stance that had been significant in Study 1 fell short of significance, F(1, 53) = 3.59, p = .06, NS. The four MBTI groups composed by the bipolar S-N and T-F variables responded indistinguishably to the normative antinuclear essay, F(1, 53) = 0.85, NS, but in the expected way to the pronuclear essay, F(1, 53) = 5.49, p < .05. In Study 1, the S-N x T-F interaction had been much more pronounced for the pronuclear than for the antinuclear essay, so the pattern of the present results could be said to verify those of the first study.

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LOU E. HICKS TABLE

MEANS

AND STANDARD

DEVIATIONS

MBTI

4

ON ATTITUDE ATTRIBUTION PATTERN, IN REPLICATION

x ESSAY STANCE AND

MBTI pattern

Essay stance

Statistic

ST

SF

NT

NF

PI-O

Mean

3.67 2.96 9 9.50 1.93 8

5.00 3.20 9 9.12 2.70 8

7.17 3.19 6 9.00 1.73 5

4.44 2.83 9 9.85 1.86 7

SD

Anti

n Mean SD

n

Note. MBTI = Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; ST = Sensing Thinking; SF = Sensing Feeling; NT = Intuitive Thinking; NF = Intuitive Feeling.

Within the pronuclear essay condition, Duncan’s multiple range tests for unequal 12 were conducted on the means for the four MBTI groups. The ST and the NF groups differed significantly (both < .005) from the NT group; the SF versus NT difference fell just short of significance (p = .06). When the pro to anti “slopes” of the means for the four MBTI groups displayed in Table 4 were evaluated by Duncan’s multiple range tests, only the NT group’s pro versus anti essay rating is nonsignificant at the .05 level; this difference is significant at the .05 level or higher for the other three MBTI groups. It must be noted that the fact that the cell n’s are the smallest for the NT groups weakens this last set of findings somewhat. An ANCOVA was conducted in which gender was partialed from the dependent variable. Sex was again significantly related to the dependent variable, F(1, 52) = 13.51, p < .OOl. Under this analysis the S-N x T-F x Essay Stance interaction remains significant, F(1, 52) = 6.64, p < .05. The differences between the four MBTI groups remain significant, F(1, 52) = 7.81, p < .Ol, for the pronuclear essay only. Finally, an analysis was conducted to check the stability of the unexpected effect for the J-P variable that appeared in Study 1. J-P was added as a fourth factor to the ANOVA design; the effect did not replicate in this second sample. In summary, these data essentially replicate the findings of Study 1 for the pronuclear questionnaire. Duncan’s multiple range analyses of the pro to anti essay rating differences replicated the finding of significant attributional differences, or attributional error, for all groups except the NT group. Although significance was correlated with sample size, necessitating interpretive caution, the pro to anti difference was clearly the smallest for the NT group here, as in Study 1.

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AND

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ATTRIBUTION

and Attribution

Self-Monitoring (SM) scores were initially analyzed using the median split method (Snyder & Monson, 1975). Division at the median, 12.5, yielded 31 low-SM and 30 high-SM students. The attributional data were then analyzed using an SM x Essay Stance factorial design. The only significant effect was the usual effect for Essay Stance, F(1,57) = 35.80, p < .0005. As Table 5 indicates, the trends of the data are opposite to those expected under the two-part hypothesis that low-SM people are relatively more inattentive to situational cues, and the attributional error results from such inattentiveness. Because the difference between the pronuclear and antinuclear essay means is (nonsignificantly) greater for the high-SM group, the trend of the data in Table 5 is apparently counter to the hypothesis that links the attributional error to situational sensitivity. The three factor scales within the SM scale were examined: Acting, Extraversion, and Other-Directedness (Briggs, Cheek, & Buss, 1980). None of the three factor scores interacted with Essay Stance (i.e., related to the attribution error). One of the scales, Extraversion, was related to attributional polarity without regard to essay content, F(1, 57) = 3.91, p < .05. MBTI

and Self-Monitoring

An additional 35 sets of MBTI and SM scores were pooled with the previous 61 sets, and the relationship between the two predictors was examined for clues about why SM scores fail to relate to the attributional error. SM was used as the dependent variable for a 24 factorial ANOVA with the MBTI classifications used as the predictors. The analysis yielded two effects, a main effect such that E-preference subjects on the MBTI’s E-I scale had higher SM scores, F(1, 79) = 6.60, p < .05, and a T-F x J-P interaction, F(1, 79) = 7.17, p < .Ol, such that within the Ppreference group, TPs had higher SM scores than did FPs, F(l) 79) = TABLE

5

MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS ON ATTITUDE ATTRIBUTION x ESSAY STANCE AND SELF-MONITORING SCXIRE GROUP

Statistic Selfmonitoring High

Essay stance pro

Anti Low

pro

Anti

Mean

SD

n

4.3 9.61 5.71 9.38

3.40 1.71 3.36 2.33

15 15 16 15

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4.35, p < .05. The MBTI scales that had related to the attributional error (S-N x T-F) did not relate to SM scores. F tests subsequent to a multivariate ANOVA indicated that both the SM Extraversion, F(l, 79) = 9.58, p < .005, and the Acting, F(1,79) = 4.84, p < .05, factor scores contributed to the total SM score relationship to the E pole of the MBTI E-I scale. The T-F x J-P interaction for total SM scores operated through the Other-Directedness factor scores, F(1, 79) = 5.52, p < .05. DISCUSSION Constraint

and the Attribution

Error

A striking feature of attributional data that interested investigators from the outset was the fact that heightening the salience of the constraint on the target had surprisingly small effects on the magnitude of the fundamental attributional error (Jones, 1979). When constraint is made more noticeable, the error may be attenuated, but not nullified. Miller et al. (1981) provided one of the most dramatic demonstrations of the robust attributional error in a study where the experimental design caused every subject to perceive target constraint by virtue of experiencing it. Subjects in groups were randomly assigned the task of writing essays presenting themselves as extremely extraverted or introverted. Immediately afterward, essays were exchanged and subjects were asked, after reading the essay they received, to estimate the writer’s self-rating of introversion or extraversion. Despite the salience of the recently experienced constraint on the essay writer/raters, the attributional error was clearly demonstrated. On the other hand, an experiment that successfully reversed the attributional error, producing overattribution to the situation (Quattrone, 1982), did not do so by heightening constraint salience, but by sensitizing subjects to the possibility of subtle experimenter inlluences on psychological studies. Because constraint salience may not be the focal variable that determines the presence or absence of the attributional error, efforts to assess individual differences in sensitivity to environmental constraint may pursue a variable that is only modestly related to the attributional process. Jones et al. (1971) speculated that subjects with an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966) are relatively more sensitive to environmental constraint. Internal subjects displayed only a nonsignificantly reduced attributional error. The present investigation found that the attributional error did not relate to individual differences in SM, a measure whose complex construct is intended to include sensitivity to situational variability and cuing. The theoretical assumptions that guided the development of the SM scale not only drew on an assumption that differences in sensitivity to environmental constraint are related to the attribution error, but also employed the situational/dispositional metaphor. If classic analyses (Ross, 1977) of the attributional error are correct in attributing the error to a dispositional

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analytic bias, then the more situationally influenced subjects (see Snyder & Monson, 1973, the high-SM subjects, should show less attribution error than dispositionally influenced low-SM subjects. The expectation was not verified. Neither the Extraversion scale of SM (Briggs et al., 1980) nor the extraversion-introversion scale of the MBTI (Myers, 1962/1975) related to the magnitude of the attributional error in the present investigation. Extraversion is a venerable dispositional variable that describes an array of correlated behaviors (Morris, 1979) in terms of a tendency to orient to the environment, perceive environmental variation, and react to the environment. The results of past and present investigations suggest that, though sensitivity to environmental variation may be measured by several instruments, this construct does not mediate the extent of the attribution error. Occasional researchers have eschewed broad measures of situational sensitivity or environmental variation and instead simply obtained subject estimates of the target’s constraint, or the effect of target constraint, in the concrete experimental situation. The index of perceived constraint used by A. G. Miller (1974) related to a combination of situational variables, but not to overall attributional error. On the other hand, Miller et al. (1977) found that the minority of subjects who reported that the target’s constraint influenced their attributions showed no attributional error. It appears that perception of target constraint and appropriate weighting of such constraint when attributing attitudes are distinctly different cognitive acts. The present study attempted to replicate the inquiry used by Miller et al. (1977). Unfortunately, only 9.6% of the subjects reported that the constraint factor influenced their attributions, too few to permit further analyses based on this report. The failure to replicate Miller et al. (1977). though surprising, does not seem particularly serious. The fact of target constraint might have seemed too obvious to mention to the subjects in the present study. It should be emphasized, however, that the openended question that was used by Miller et al. (1977) was a postattributional inquiry that could not aid in predicting ahead of time which subjects were likely to commit the error. Further, the bare report that constraint influenced attribution gives little in the way of suggestions about the cognitive processes that led some subjects to select perceived constraint as a significant attributional weighting factor when most subjects did not. Typology

and Attribution

Predictions were made relating attribution to the Jungian S-N and TF variables. The known correlates of these two variables relate in no way to perception of the environment, to perception of situational variability, or to perception of constraint. These two dimensions are termed

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“functions” in Jungian theory to indicate that they are active cognitive processing variables, to be distinguished from the “attitudinal” variables, E-I and J-P, that do bear upon orientation to external and internal stimuli and sequencing preference for those stimuli (see Myers & Myers, 1980). S-N and T-F are independent, factorially replicable (J. Ross, 1966; Stricker & Ross, 1962) functions that are believed to combine interactively (as well as additively) to produce characteristically different cognitive stances and interest patterns. The present study’s addition to the evidence for the existence of typological patterns is of intrinsic interest. The MBTI

and Typology

There have been earlier reports of S-N x T-F interactions against cognitive criteria, but sometimes the effect was not expected (Hicks, 1984) or was not fully explicated (McCaulley & Natter, 1974; Peters, 1982). The present results document a divergence of the NT group from the other three function groups. This interaction remains reliable when gender differences are removed. This reliable interaction has implications for the structure of typological theory, as well as for causal attribution. A logical requirement of any typological structure is that interactions be proposed among the variables composing the system (Mendelsohn, Weiss, & Feimer, 1982). Without evidence of interactions, it is misleading to compose a matrix of ostensibly unique “types” or “styles” that is based on combinations of the single variables. One should simply list the single variables and form additive combinations of them. Empirical reports of interactions obtained with the MBTI have been unusual, at least partly because interaction-sensitive data analytic methods have rarely been used (Hicks, 1984). The present investigation used factorial ANOVA, a data analytic method that is isomorphic to the typological theory, and obtained an expected interaction. The MBTI and Attribution Potential main effects associated with the S-N and T-F variables did not reliably appear. The guess that T-preference subjects might show a smaller attributional error was supported only when gender differences were removed in Study 1. The effect did not replicate in Study 2. The possibility that N-preference subjects might generally display a reduced attributional error was not supported. The NF group’s attributional error when the essay was written under constraint was the largest of any of the four Jungian function groups in Study 1 and sizable in Study 2, abolishing the possibility of a main effect for the N preference. Many possibilities need to be explored in order to delineate the cognitive processes used by those with the NT preference in order to avoid the attribution error. The available data do not, however, suggest that the NT preference is associated with a particular perceptual sensitivity to

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the environmental constraints under which others may labor. Known MBTI correlates also seem to rule out the related possibility that NT attribution error avoidance results from a global capability to imagine situations that is specific to NTs. Imaginative facility is associated with both of the N-preferences, not just the NT pattern (Helson, 1%5; Carlson, 1980). The kind of imaginativeness is modulated by the T versus F preference. NFs are overrepresented among novelists and creative writers; NTs are overrepresented among creative scientists (Myers, 1%2/ 1975, p. 32). The NT preference is the dominant one among chess players (Kelly, 1984). NTs are particularly attracted to scientific curricula: As one moves from a state university (Padgett, Cook, Nunley, & Carskadon, 1982) to selective liberal arts colleges (Myers & Myers, 1980, p. 40) to National Merit Finalists and Cal Tech students (Myers & Myers, 1980, pp. 37-42) the percentage of NT students increases from 9% to 57.6%. Thus the specific cognitive characteristics of the “scientific” stance would seem to be the route to pursue in order to better understand avoidance of the attributional error. The scientific stance is rarely considered to include a sensitivity to constraint, except, of course, the constraints that operate upon data. Such a sensitivity is suggested when a person takes objective base rates into account before formulating a judgment, particularly when surface data may be misleading. Zukier and Pepitone (1984) report a study in which a “scientific” or a “clinical” set was induced in college students by instructions and later in medical students by duration of medical training. Subjects given a clinical set and subject who were first-year medical students tended to underutilize base-rate information compared to those given a scientific set, and medical residents. It would be interesting to extend the Jungian preference theory to the base-rate problem, where the “scientific” stance of the NTs (McCaulley, 1976b) should enhance the use of base-rate information, and the “clinical” NF approach should reduce such use. Differential use of base-rate information may have occurred in the present study. Perhaps the NT group found the antinuclear essay content to be a plausible instance of what was perceived to be the prevailing antinuclear attitude on the campus. The pronuclear essay would then be seen to violate this normative trend, and the NT group may have taken this perceived base-rate information more seriously than the other MBTI groups, often ignoring the pronuclear essay content entirely when making ratings about the writer’s attitude. The speculative account of NT processing of base rate information would adequately account for the pattern of response in Study 2, because the S-N x T-F interaction appeared only for the pronuclear essay in that study. In Study 1, however, the NT group also differed significantly from the other MBTI groups when the writer of the normative antinuclear essay was judged. Because a dispassionate base-rate evaluation would

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not produce relatively pronuclear ratings in the antinuclear condition, one might also consider the possibility of active opposition to discerned experimental expectations as the determinant of NT rating behavior. If NTs are oppositional in other contexts, perhaps oppositionality in ratings could be expected. The MBTI type descriptions (Myers, 1962/1975, Appendix A) do convey skepticism, criticality, and sometimes outright oppositional&y for the four NT types. A type description for the ENTP notes playful oppositionality: “argues for fun on either side of any question” (Myers, 1%2/1975, p. 71). There are insufficient data to permit examination of the separate rating distributions of each MBTI score pattern, but it is interesting to note that, of the 15 oppositional attributions made in the Constraint Condition by the 40 NTs in Study 1, there were 9 produced by students with the ENTP score pattern. An explanation of NT behavior in terms of oppositionality depends neither on a posited sensitivity to constraint nor on proposed rationality in base rate usage. It suggests that there are individual differences in receptivity to the kind of manipulations by which Quattrone (1982) successfully obtained (oppositional) reversal of the attribution error. That is, it suggests that the classic attributional situation may be an “obvious” experiment to NT subjects so that the devices by which Quattrone alerted all of his subjects to experimenter influence may be unnecessary for NTs. Although suggestive trends appear in the present data, they do not permit a determination of the processes by which the NT group avoids the attributional error. Direct variations of base-rate salience or obvious and nonobvious experimental manipulations for the MBTI groups should do much to clarify the matter. At any rate, it seems likely that the use of the cognitive style variables assessed by the MBTI in a variety of attributional contexts might help to strengthen the bridge between attributional theory and cognitive psychology. REFERENCES Ajzen, I., Dalto, C., & Blyth, D. (1979). Consistency and bias in the attribution ofattitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1871-1876. Briggs, S. R., Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. H. (1980). An analysis of the Self-Monitoring Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 679-686. Carlson, R. (1980). Studies of Jungian typology. II: Representations of the personal world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 801-810. Carlson, R., & Levy, N. (1973). Studies of Jungian typology. I: Memory, social perception, and social action. Journal of Personality, 41, 559-576. Carlyn, M. (1977). An assessment of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Journal of Persona& Assessment, 41, 461-473. Helson, R. (1%5). Childhood interest clusters related to creativity in women. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 29, 352-361. Hicks, L. E. (1984). Conceptual and empirical analysis of some assumptions of an explicitly typological theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 1I 18-l 13 1.

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