Motivational biases in causal attributions of arousal.

Abstract

Snyder's attribute-ambiguity theory proposes that people sometimes seek ambiguity rather than clarity as to their behavior and the motives behind it. They do this to avoid learning something about themselves that they may not wish to i know, in other words, because of ego-defensiveness. Consistent with this reasoning, in the current research it was hypothesized that the desire to seek ambiguity as to the cause of a particular state of arousal will increase if either that arousal state or its source is potentially threatening to self-esteem. To test this hypothesis, two studies were run. In the first experiment, high- and low-sex-guilt male subjects were shown either an arousing erotic movie or a nonarousing movie; in the second experiment high- and low-guilt females were led to believe that they were very aroused by pictures of nude men. Ambiguity was introduced into both situations by means of a bogus, nonthreatening, alternative arousal source (a placebo). Results indicated that high-guilt subjects were actively involved in the process of determining which source was arousing them. More importantly, this involvement appeared to be motivated by ego-defensiveness. In both experiments, when high-guilt subjects were confronted by an erotic stimulus, they chose to attribute arousal to the bogus source—and thus create ambiguity as to the actual cause and nature of their arousal—more than did the low-guilt subjects.