MORE EVIDENCE FOR THE ROBUSTNESS OF SALIENCE EFFECTS

Considerable research indicates that there is a strong tendency for pe ople observing a social interaction to perceive a given interactant as increasingly influential or causal as he or she becomes more visually salient. The present research examined two possible limits on such sa lience effects in causal attribution. In a situation where one interac tant is clearly more influential than another, we expected that greate r salience would increase the estimated causality of the high-influenc e interactant, but would decrease the estimated causality of the low-i nfluence interactant. We also anticipated that people who are inclined to process information in a careful and thorough manner (i.e., those high in need for cognition) would be unaffected by differential salien ce. Results revealed the typical salience effect pattern regardless of whether the observed interactant was highly influential or not, and w hether the observer was high or low in need for cognition. This resear ch, then, provides further evidence that salience effects in causal at tribution are quite robust and generalizable.