Guilt following transgression: An attribution of responsibility approach.

People typically experience guilt when they violate sociomoral norms. Using Heider's (1958) attribution of responsibility model in the two experiments reported here, I examined the attributional mediators of posttransgression guilt. The basic design of both studies was a Level of Responsibility?×?Subject Role factorial. The first study used a role-playing methodology; in the second, subjects generated protocols describing their own past experiences. The second experiment also distinguished between attributions of responsibility, causality, and blame. In both studies, harmdoer guilt was higher following accidental as opposed to intentional transgressions. The discussion focuses on the dynamics of guilt development and reduction and on the importance of maintaining conceptual distinctions among the various attribution measures in future guilt research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental differences in the attribution of responsibility.

Investigated possible developmental differences in attributions of responsibility and causality for an interpersonal event. The procedure involved 240 male and female students from Grades 1, 3, 6, 8, and 65 college students watching videotaped scenes of a young female actress breaking a chair. Each S saw one scene from a set of 5 scenes, designed to represent F. Heider's (1958) levels of increasingly internal causation. After viewing the videotaped scene, each S was asked to make attributions of causality and "naughtiness" to the chair breaker. It was predicted that overall, Ss' attributions would show effects for Ss' grade, the level of the videotaped event, and the interaction of these 2 factors. These 3 effects were significant for the measure of causality, while for the measure of moral attribution, the 2 main effects were significant and the interaction approached significance (p?     

Motivational biases in the attribution of responsibility for an accident: A meta-analysis of the defensive-attribution hypothesis.

Reviews research concerned with motivational distortion in the attribution of responsibility for an accident. Results of a statistical combination of 22 relevant studies suggested a statistically significant but weak tendency to attribute more responsibility to an accident perpetrator for a severe than for a mild accident. An examination of interacting variables found that, consistent with K. G. Shaver's (see PA, Vol 44:6696 and 44:14405) defensive-attribution hypothesis, when observers were personally and situationally similar to the accident perpetrator, they tended to attribute less responsibility to the perpetrator when accident severity increased. The opposite was the case when the perceiver and the perpetrator were dissimilar. Experiments using stronger S-involving manipulations also appeared more likely to produce evidence in support of the defensive-attribution hypothesis than did experiments with low-involvement manipulations. Results provide an example of how perceiver's self-protective motives influence responsibility attributions. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negativity bias in attribution of external agency.

This research investigated whether people are more likely to attribute events to external agents when events are negative rather than neutral or positive. Participants more often believed that ultimatum game partners were humans rather than computers when the partners offered unusually unfavorable divisions than unusually favorable divisions (Experiment 1A), even when their human partners had no financial stake in the game (Experiment 1B). In subsequent experiments, participants were most likely to infer that gambles were influenced by an impartial participant when the outcomes of those gambles were losses rather than wins (Experiments 2 and 3), despite their explicitly equal probability. The results suggest a negative agency bias—negative events are more often attributed to the influence of external agents than similarly positive and neutral events, independent of their subjective probability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Timescale bias in the attribution of mind.

In this research, the authors found that people use speed of movement to infer the presence of mind and mental attributes such as intention, consciousness, thought, and intelligence in other persons, animals, and objects. Participants in 4 studies exhibited timescale bias--perceiving human and nonhuman targets (animals, robots, and animations) as more likely to possess mental states when those targets moved at speeds similar to the speed of natural human movement, compared with when targets performed actions at speeds faster or slower than the speed of natural human movement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of physical attractiveness on attribution of responsibility.

Previous research has shown that a stereotype favorable to physically attractive individuals seems to exist. The present study examined how this "what is beautiful is good" stereotype influences observers' attributions of responsibility to target persons. Ss were 72 male and 72 female high school students. A significant interaction was found between physical attractiveness and the outcome of the event. Physically attractive women were seen as more responsible for a good outcome than unattractive women, while unattractive females were seen as more responsible for a bad outcome than attractive females. Results are interpreted within a framework of balance theory. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributions of responsibility for helping and doing harm: Evidence for confusion of responsibility.

The social inhibition of helping has been explained in terms of the general processes of audience inhibition, social influence, and diffusion of responsibility. The present research adapted the paradigm used in studies of the attribution of responsibility for an accident to examine a specific audience-inhibition process that may contribute to the social inhibition of helping. Evidence from 2 experiments, with 356 undergraduates, shows that an S who adopted the perspective of a helper following an accident expected to be held increasingly responsible by arriving onlookers for the victim's plight as the number of extant bystanders increased. Results also indicate that there was an objective basis for this expectation: Ss who adopted the perspective of a newly arriving onlooker increasingly attributed responsibility for doing harm to the individual helping the victim in the accident as the number of bystanders described as already at the scene increased. The distinction between confusion and diffusion of responsibility is emphasized, and limitations to confusion of responsibility for accidents are discussed. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observer bias in perceptions of responsibility.

Comments on an article by A. Colman (see record 1992-07516-001) regarding admissibility of mitigating psychological factors in South African murder trials. Although the present authors assert that Colman has done a service by drawing attention to a new trend in legal deliberations, they suggest that psychologists who have a pecuniary interest in the outcome may not be the best persons to judge the desirability of such evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linguistic intergroup bias: Evidence for in-group-protective motivation.

Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) is the tendency to describe positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors more abstractly than negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. Two experiments investigated the role of in-group-protective motives, by varying threat to ingroup identity of hunters vs. environmentalists (Experiment 1, N?=?160) and northern vs. southern Italians (Experiment 2, N?=?212). Participants whose in-group had or had not been threatened described positive and negative behaviors of in-group and out-group protagonists. In both experiments, the LIB was greater under identity threat. Experiment 1 also showed that LIB was positively related to postexperimental but not to preexperimental individual and collective self-esteem. Results suggest that the magnitude of LIB depends on in-group-protective motivation and that in-group-favoring language may be functional to self-esteem maintenance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The bias phenomenon in attitude attribution: Actor and observer perspectives.

Research has shown that observers infer correspondent attitudes from behavior that is externally constrained. The present study, with 366 undergraduates, examined (a) the degree to which actors anticipated observers' (Os') manifestation of this bias, (b) the effect of presenting constraint information directly from the actor as compared to the experimenter's instructions, and (c) the relationship between constraint experienced by the actor and the persuasiveness of essays produced under different constraint levels. Essay writers clearly predicted that Os would infer correspondent attitudes even when the position had been randomly assigned to the writer. This was true, to a diminished extent, when the writer was under genuinely high constraint. When actors expected Os to have precise information regarding their actual constraint, they anticipated that Os would recognize the attributional implications of such information. Data from Os corroborated the actors' predictions. When Os were not given this information, their attributions were based solely on essay content and indicated no recognition of the different freedom levels experienced by the essay writers. Essays written under different constraint levels were judged by Os to be generally of similar and fairly respectable persuasiveness. It is suggested that the bias phenomenon may be a consequence of presenting Os with essays more persuasive than they expect from a writer who in fact disagrees with the assignment. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Denial of responsibility, videotape feedback and attribution theory: Relevance for behavioral marital therapy.

Notes that the methods currently used in marital therapy appear to be moderately effective; it is now time to identify the therapeutic components responsible for and the psychological and social processes that underlie change. As difficulties in communication, faulty social perception, mutual attribution of blame, and denial of responsibility tend to characterize many couples seeking marital therapy, this review concerns itself only with therapy for spouses with these particular problems. Studies bearing on the therapeutic effectiveness of one component of therapy, videotape playback, is examined from an attribution-theory framework. Relevant studies on self-confrontation, social skills training, and attribution theory are reviewed. (French abstract) (21/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An empirical test of Heider's levels in attribution of responsibility.

2 experiments were conducted to examine variables in attribution of responsibility (AR). In Experiment I, 41 children and 41 adults were presented 20 stories, 4 at each of 5 levels (2 with positive and 2 with negative outcomes). Each story included only the minimum factors necessary to elicit AR at a given level. Story content was relevant to the juvenile population. AR varied significantly with Populations, Levels, Outcomes, and their interactions (p     

Cognitive processing and trait anxiety in typically developing children: Evidence for an interpretation bias.

In this study the authors examined whether increases in children's levels of self-reported trait anxiety would be related to their interpretation of ambiguous stimuli. By using the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (C. R. Reynolds & B. O. Richmond, 1985), the authors obtained measurements of anxiety for 40 children ages 7 and 9 years. Interpretation of ambiguous stimuli was measured by using a pictorial homophone task, where homophones could be interpreted as either threatening or neutral. Results showed that children's interpretations of homophones was significantly predicted by level of anxiety. Increases in levels of trait anxiety were positively associated with threatening interpretations of homophones. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observer bias in the attitude attribution paradigm: Effect of time and information order.

Exposed 79 undergraduates to an essay taking either a pro or anti stand on the use of minority quotas. They were informed either before or after reading the essay that the writer had or had not been permitted to choose which side of the issue to support. Ss returned for a 2nd session 1 wk after the 1st, and their attributions of true attitude to the essayist were again measured. Results replicate previous attitude attribution findings, but the tendency to attribute an essay-consistent attitude when the essay was written under high constraint was much greater when the constraint information appeared after exposure to the essay. There was no hint of a sleeper effect and, therefore, no evidence that constraint cues were discounted over time. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internal-external control and the attribution of responsibility under questionnaire and interview conditions.

Examined the effects of locus of control on attributional behavior in certain feedback situations by assigning 32 undergraduates to success or failure feedback conditions and asking them to complete a questionnaire and interview. A median split was performed on scores obtained from Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, using H. L. Mirels' (1970) factors of personality internality to identify Ss as internals or externals. Results indicate that externals attributed more responsibility to impersonal external sources than did internals. This pattern was consistent across conditions. Measures of satisfaction and return for a 2nd interview suggested that the Ss were ego-involved in the task. The importance of attributional processes for counseling research and practice is stressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributions of responsibility for group tasks: The egocentric bias and the actor–observer difference.

In each of 3 experiments it was demonstrated that under certain conditions individuals who work on a task in a dyad will tend to attribute greater responsibility for a positive outcome to their partners than to themselves. In Exp I 56 college students, who had qualifying scores on the Beck Depression Inventory, working in dyads on a crossword puzzle attributed more responsibility to their partners than to themselves for an outcome they were led to believe was quite good, thus contradicting the expected "egocentric bias" effect. This was true across depression categories. In Exp II, 100 college students working in dyads on the puzzle attributed more responsibility to their partners than to themselves for a positive outcome when asked immediately after the task to make the attribution. However, Ss attributed greater responsibility to themselves than to their partners when asked to make the attribution 3 days later, thus replicating the egocentric bias effect. Half of the 30 dyads in Exp III believed they were being videotaped while working on the puzzle, whereas the other half did not. "Videotaped" Ss attributed more responsibility for the positive outcome to themselves than to their partners, whereas the nonvideotaped Ss attributed more responsibility to their partners than to themselves when both groups were asked to give their attributions immediately after the task. The relationship between the egocentric bias effect and the actor–observer difference phenomenon is discussed. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social anxiety, self-presentation, and the self-serving bias in causal attribution.

Two experiments with 160 undergraduates studied the contribution of self-presentation concerns to the self-serving bias in causal attribution (individuals' tendency to assume more personal responsibility for a success than for a failure) and its occasional, but systematic, reversal. In Exp I, high- but not low-social-anxiety Ss (selected by scores on the Social Anxiety subscale of the Self-Consciousness Scale) presented themselves in a far more modest light when a committee of high prestige others was to join the experimenter in evaluating their behavior than when the committee evaluation was canceled. In Exp II, this reversal of the self-serving bias among high-social-anxiety Ss was replicated, and it was also found that both high- and low-social-anxiety Ss portrayed the causes of their behavior in a more modest fashion when they responded via the "bogus pipeline," a measurement technique designed to reduce distortion and dissimulation in verbal responses, than when they responded in the traditional paper-and-pencil format. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Not for attribution: Reply to Bonta.

Addresses issues raised by J. Bonta (see record 1986-20536-001) in response to the discussion by the present authors (see record 1985-28931-001) of prison crowding research. Comments are offered in reply to Bonta's concern about coping strategies, variables other than density, misconduct and violence, individual differences and moderator variables, and conditions associated with density. It is suggested that a longitudinal study of inmates and moderator variables may be fruitful in answering the questions remaining in the area of prison crowding. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparative study of drug-related attentional bias: Evidence from Iran.

The Addiction-Stroop test has been widely used to investigate the attentional correlates of alcohol and drug abuse; however, the majority of the studies have been conducted with European and American participants. The present study tested whether Iranian drug abusers show higher attentional bias for drug-related stimuli. Participants included drug abusers (N = 53; 100% male), with a clinical history of opium and heroin abuse, who were in a Methadone Maintenance Therapy program. Only nonabusers (N = 71; 71, 54% male) with a history of having never abused of drugs or alcohol participated in the study as controls. All participants completed a computerized Persian version of classic and addiction Stroop tests. The results of a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that drug abusers had a higher attentional bias for drug-related stimuli than nonabusers, after the effects of age and education had been controlled. The results of repeating the MANCOVA (a) limited to men only, and (b) to men and women in the nonabuser sample showed that the observed difference in the drug-related attentional bias of drug-abusers and nonabusers was not an artifact of gender imbalance. Our findings support the idea that drug-related attentional bias is culture-free. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)