An Experimental Study of the Inferential Asymmetry in Attribution Judgment

性格归因与情境归因的区别在归因理论中被广泛接受。然而，先前的研究发现，在权衡每种类型的因果因素时不对称，这表明过度强调性格原因。基本归因错误是其表现之一。通过三个实验来阐明归因研究中发现的这种推断不对称。实验1考察了因果归因与行为预测的关系。参与者被告知几个人在特定情况下的行为，其中一些是暗示个性的行为，另一些是情绪。一组参与者被要求预测这个人在不同情况下的行为，另一组参与者被要求预测不同情况下的行为。结果表明，参与者对人的性格暗示行为的预测比对情景的预测更有信心，但对情景的情绪预测比对人的情绪预测更有信心。双向方差分析显示，预测方向与行为类型之间存在显著的交互作用。预测方向的主要影响也很显著，表明参与者倾向于从人而不是情境中更容易预测行为。在因果归因方面，参与者更多地将情绪归因于情境，而将暗示个性的行为更多地归因于人。实验2和实验3考察了知觉显著性对推理不对称性的影响。参与者观看两个人的对话录像（实验2）或四个字符的电脑图形（实验3）。对其中一个特征进行感知显著化处理，并测量其显著性对相应推理和优势度评定的影响。结果表明，每个人的实际话语是支配性评分的主要决定因素，感知显著性的影响可以忽略不计。需要更多的研究来进一步探索显著性效应。少

The distinction between dispositional and situational attribution has been widely accepted in attribution theory. However, previous research found asymmetry in weighing each type of causal factors, suggesting overemphasis upon dispositional causes. Fundamental attribution error is one of its manifestations. Three experiments were conducted to elucidate this inferential asymmetry found in attribution research. In Experiment 1, the relationship between causal attribution and prediction of behavior was examined. Participants were given information about several persons' behaviors in particular situations, some of which were personality-implying behaviors and others were emotions. One group of participants was asked to predict behavior from the person across situations and other participants predicted behavior from the situation across people. Results indicated that participants were more confident predicting personality-implying behavior from people than from situations but were more conf … More ident predicting emotions from situations than from people. Two-way ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between the direction of prediction and behavior types. The main effect of the direction of prediction was also significant, indicating that participants tended to predict behavior more readily from people than from situations. With regards to causal attribution, participants attributed emotions more to situations and personality-implying behaviors more to people. In Experiment 2 and 3, the effects of perceptual salience upon the inferential asymmetry were examined. Participants watched the video-recorded conversation between two persons (Exp.2) or computer graphics involving four characters (Exp.3). One of the characters was made perceptually salient and the effects of the salience upon correspondent inference and dominance rating were measured. Results indicated that the actual utterance of each person was the main determinant of dominance rating and the effect of perceptual salience was negligible. More research is needed to explore the salience effects further. Less