Attribution in perception 1
Running head: Attribution in perception
Not as big as it looks: Attribution errors in the perceptual domain
Zachariah Sharek1
Sam Swift1
Francesca Gino2
Don Moore1
1
Carnegie Mellon University, 2 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of National Science Foundation Grant SES0718691, as well as the staff and facilities of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at
Carnegie Mellon University. Address correspondence to sharek@cmu.edu.
Attribution in perception 2
Extended Abstract
People routinely assume correspondence between acts and dispositions, a systematic
error prior research has labeled “correspondence bias.” Three laboratory studies investigate the
robustness and generality of this tendency, and suggest that it may be even more fundamental
than prior theories have supposed. Most of the research documenting the correspondence bias
uses paradigms in which the behavior is more salient and easier to assess than is the situation.
Our studies employ a new paradigm in which people have perfect information about both the
situation and the behavior. Using this paradigm across different settings, we find that the
correspondence bias generalizes to inanimate objects.
Participants in our first study evaluated the height of ten target individuals, some of
whom happened to be standing on cinderblocks. The height of the cinderblock was common
knowledge. Using this setting, we were interested in testing whether people made correspondent
inferences and reported believing that those standing on cinderblocks were taller than those who
did not. Such an effect could not easily be explained by the theories offered previously to
explain the correspondence bias.
Consistent with the correspondence bias, participants were more likely to select
candidates on blocks as among the five tallest candidates. Had participants always chosen the
five tallest candidates, then, on average, 2.5 of the five candidates they chose would have been
standing on cinderblocks. In fact, 2.8 of those chosen were standing on cinderblocks, a
significant difference, t (78) = 3.37, p = .001.
To examine the effect of the cinderblock on each candidate’s rated height, we conducted
a mixed model analysis of the ten repeated measures from each participant, including the
candidate’s actual height and the presence of a cinderblock as covariates. The results reveal that
Attribution in perception 3
each inch of actual height increased a candidate’s rated height by .26 units (t [652] = 25.02, p <
.001) and that the eight inches contributed by the cinderblock contributed an additional .15 units
(t [90] = 2.3, p = .02).
In this study, both the outcome of interest (height) and the situational effect (standing on
a cinderblock) were obvious and quantifiable. Unlike so many prior studies of the
correspondence bias, the situational was visible. Nevertheless, the correspondence bias persists.
Its effect is modest in size but still robust. We wondered, however, whether the effect we
obtained in Study 1 was somehow due to the fact that we had used a subjective response scale,
and whether people might be able to arrive at more accurate numerical judgments when forced to
estimate the exact height in feet and inches. Study 2 replicates Study 1 and varies the response
scale participants used. Given our interest in the quantifiability of judgments, we also wanted to
know how important the presence of the ruler was in the pictures participants saw in Study 1.
Like most research on the correspondence bias, our focus thus far has been on
attributions about people. But we wonder whether the correspondence bias might be more basic
and more general than these explanations suggest. This experiment put participants in the role of
a shopper who has to choose from a selection of products that vary in both packaging weight and
net weight of the product. Complicating the judgment was a significant variance in the weight of
the product packaging. This is a task which should put participants on guard against the ulterior
motives and potential manipulation of vendors for whom it is less costly to provide packaging
than product (see Fein, 1996; Fein, Hilton, & Miller, 1990). We used as stimulus materials a set
of similarly sized pint glasses of different weights, covered with colored construction paper and
lids, and filled with various quantities of M&Ms. The M&Ms were the focal product, while the
pint glasses of varying weights provided a situational influence.
Attribution in perception 4
Participants each made nine estimates of the net weight of the contents of the nine
products they were given. The 60 participants generated a total of 540 estimates, from which we
created a repeated measures mixed model with container weight and content weight predicting
participants’ estimates of content weight with random effects modeled on the participant level.
Both container weight and content weight were highly significant. A one gram increase in the
weight of the container led to a .206 gram increase in the estimated weight of its contents, t (179)
= 8.49, p < .001, and a one gram increase in the weight of the cup’s contents led to an increase of
.467 grams in its estimated weight, t (198) = 9.99, p < .001. Recall that an accurate estimate of
the contents’ weight requires that one completely factor out the weight of the container. The
highly significant predictive value of container weight suggests that participants failed to factor
out the weight of the container.
Gilbert and Malone’s (1995) analysis of the correspondence bias suggested four
contributing causes: (a) lack of awareness of the situation, (b) unrealistic expectations for
behavior, (c) improper categorizations of behavior, and (d) incomplete corrections. None of the
first three offer plausible explanations for the data we present in this paper. While each of these
may undoubtedly contribute to the correspondence bias in some contexts, none of them appear to
be necessary conditions for the presence of the effect.
It appears that our participants were committing a far more basic and rudimentary error,
one that Kahneman and Tversky (1972) attributed to a “representativeness heuristic” in human
judgment. The representativeness heuristic leads us to want the cause to look like—to be
representative of—the effect. The world is more orderly when smart people perform better on
quizzes, when tall people appear tall, and when heavy things feel heavy. Assuming that a smart
person will perform well on quizzes is reasonable, but the representativeness bias can lead
Attribution in perception 5
people to mistakenly assume the converse: that someone who performs well on a quiz is smart.
This does not follow, because even unintelligent people can perform well on easy quizzes.
Our results do, however, underscore the robustness and generality of the correspondence
bias. We found that the bias generalized to inanimate objects and persisted even in situations
where avoiding it amounted to a simple subtraction problem. We are prompted to remember that
in 1990, Ned Jones proposed the correspondence bias as “a candidate for the most robust and
repeatable finding in social psychology” (p. 138). We would tend to agree.
Attribution in perception 6
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