The perceiver as perceived: Everyday intuitions about the correspondence bias

This research examined people's intuitions about the correspondence bias, o r the tendency to favor dispositional rather than situational explanations of behavior. In 3 studies, constrained actors overestimated the magnitude o f observers' correspondent inferences. Additional studies indicated that th is overestimation is due to people's oversimplified theories about the attr ibutional processes of others. In one, Japanese participants, whose culture places greater emphasis on situational explanations of behavior, did not o verestimate the correspondent inferences of observers. In other studies, pa rticipants indicated that they thought others' attributions are more influe nced by an actor's behavior than by the factors constraining the behavior. Discussion focuses on whether people believe others are more prone to the c orrespondence bias than they are themselves and on the consequences of over estimating the correspondence bias in everyday interaction.