RELATING COVARIATION INFORMATION TO CAUSAL DIMENSIONS THROUGH PRINCIPLES OF CONTRAST AND INVARIANCE

This paper examines the proposition that covariation information guide s judgments about the dimensionality of attributions on the basis of c ausal principles of contrast and invariance, which are derived from Mi ll's methods of difference and agreement respectively. It is argued th at the standard attribution categories specified in earlier research ( e.g. person, occasion and stimulus) represent just one extreme of the attributional dimensions and require the principle of contrast, wherea s additional attributional categories reflecting the opposite extreme of the dimensions (e.g. external, stable, general) require the princip le of invariance. In three studies, subjects were given covariation in formation, and were asked to rate the properties of the likely cause a long the dimensions of locus, stability, globality and control. In lin e with the predictions, consensus with others, consistency in time, di stinctiveness between stimuli and contingency of one's actions showed the strongest effects on judgments of locus, stability, globality and control respectively. Similar results were obtained in a fourth study, where subjects had to judge the influence of eight causes with varyin g dimensional properties. Moreover these judgments were rated somewhat higher given causes requiring the principle of invariance rather than the principle of contrast.