ATTRIBUTION THEORY AND ARAB IMAGES OF THE GULF-WAR

This article describes the results of an in-depth interview study of A rab elites in the wake of the Gulf war research that only partially su pports a crucial finding of research on actor-observer differences in social attribution. Although the aggregated explanations of these Arab respondents were consistent with the predictions of the theory, the a ttributions of iraq's behavior by Egyptian elites, and attributions of the Coalition's behavior by Moroccan and Tunisian elites were not ful ly consistent with the hypothesis. These results were interpreted to s uggest the importance of distinguishing, in applications of attributio n theory, between complex political situations and simple social situa tions, the perspective of actors versus observers, and cultural differ ences in discursive practices.