Attributional orientations and the prediction of behavior: The attribution–prediction bias.

Abstract

Consistent with the proposal that people rely on implicit causal theories that relate different types of attributions to behaviors that differ in valence, 3 studies showed that in addition to predicting more positive than negative behavior in the target, participants produced an attribution-prediction bias. This bias indicated that persons with a dispositional orientation predicted more negative and less positive behavior from the target than persons with a situational orientation. The authors produced these findings in Studies I and 2 by manipulating the perceived characteristic motives of a target (dispositional, situational). In Study 3 the authors used a cultural operationalization of attributional orientations by examining the responses of Western students (dispositionalists) and East Asian students (situationalists). Finally, in support of the underlying mechanism, Study 4 showed that activating dispositional or situational knowledge facilitated the encoding of negative and positive behaviors, respectively.