The generality of negative hierarchically restrictive behaviours

Previous research has shown that when an actor engages in a negative hierarchically restrictive behaviour, a strong correspondent trait attribution is made and this behaviour is expected to generalize across situations (Trafimow, 2001). This paper discusses three experiments that examined the effects of extreme situations and perceived morality of the actor on the way in which participants make trait attributions, and the extent to which those behaviours are expected to generalize to other situations. Findings from Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that even negative hierarchically restrictive behaviours do not always lead to strong correspondent inferences if the situation in which the initial behaviour was performed was sufficiently extreme. Experiment 3 served to support these findings and cleared up questions from the first two experiments. Findings supported the hypothesis that some situations inhibit negative trait attributions and behaviour generalizations. Furthermore, findings indicate that the perception of the morality of the actor determines whether or not a negative hierarchically restrictive behaviour will lead to a negative trait attribution and generalization.