BIAS AND ACCURACY IN ATTITUDE ATTRIBUTION - THE ROLE OF ATTRIBUTIONAL COMPLEXITY

This study examined the relation between Attributional Complexity and the correspondence bias: the tendency to assign dispositions that are congruent with behavior that is performed under powerful external constraints. Subjects read essays that were written by a separate group of subjects who had been randomly assigned to write essays that either supported or opposed the legalization of homosexuality. As predicted, attributionally complex subjects were significantly more accurate than simple subjects in judging the authors' real attitudes towards the legalization of homosexuality (assessed before the essays were written), but only when elaborate, in-depth processing of the essays was encouraged; when in-depth processing was restricted there was no difference in performance between the attributionally complex and simple subjects. Despite this increased accuracy in the in-depth processing condition, the attributionally complex subjects were overall somewhat more prone to correspondence bias than simple subjects. The results are discussed in relation to different explanations for the correspondence bias, and the conditions under which elaborate and complex attributional schemata will be an advantage to the naive psychologist. © 1990.