Two studies examined the correspondence bias in attitude attributions of Koreans and Americans. Study I employed the classic attitude attribution paradigm of Jones and Harris and found that both Korean and American participants displayed the correspondence bias in the no-choice condition. This lack of difference might have been due to weak salience of the situational constraints. Study 2 was designed to make the situational constraints of the no-choice condition salient in two ways: (a) by asking participants to write an essay on a topic regardless of their genuine attitude toward the topic or (b) by also making it clear to participants that the essay by the target person was almost a copy of the arguments provided by the experimenter. The results showed that (a) American attributions were unaffected by the two salience manipulations, whereas Koreans' correspondence bias decreased with increasing salience of the constraints, and (b) Koreans were less susceptible to the actor observer bias.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ambady, N. , Koo, J., Lee, F., & Rosenthal, R.(1996). More than words: Linguistic and nonlinguistic politeness in two cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 996-1011.
2.
Aronson, E. , Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (1994). Social psychology: The heart and the mind. New York: HarperCollins.
3.
Brislin, R. W. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1, 185-216.
4.
Cha, J:H. , & Nam, K. D. (1985). A test of Kelley's cube theory of attribution: A cross-cultural replication of McArthur's study. Korean Social Science Journal12, 151-180.
5.
Choi, I. , Choi, K. W., & Cha, J:H. (1992). A cross-cultural replication of the Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study. Unpublished manuscript, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
6.
Choi, I. , & Nisbett, R. E., (1998). Implicit theories and causal attribution East and West. Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
7.
Cousins, S. D. (1989). Culture and self-perception in Japan and the U. S. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 124-131.
8.
Darley, J. M. , & Batson, C. D. (1973). From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 100-119.
9.
Dweck, C. S. , Hong, Y-Y., & Chiu, CY. (1993). Implicit theories: Individual differences in the likelihood and meaning of dispositional inference. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 644-656.
10.
Festinger, L. , & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-211.
11.
Fiske, A. P. , Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R, & Nisbett, R. E. (in press). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Linzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
12.
Fiske, S. T. , & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
13.
Gilbert, D. T. , & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21-38.
14.
Hilton, D. J. , & Slugoski, B. R. (1986). Knowledge based attribution: The abnormal conditions focus model. Psychological Review, 93, 75-88.
15.
Hiniker, P. J. (1969). Chinese reactions to forced compliance: Dissonance reduction or national character. Journal of Social Psychology, 77, 157-176.
16.
Jones, E. E. (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions. American Psychologist, 34, 107-117.
17.
Jones, E. E. , & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 219-266.
18.
Jones, E. E. , & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1-24
19.
Jones, E. E. , & Nisbett, R. E. (1972). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. In E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.) Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79-94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
20.
Jones, E. E. , Worchel, S., Goethals, G. R, & Grumet,J. F. (1971). Prior expectancy and behavioral extremity as determinants of attitude attribution. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7, 59-80.
21.
Krull, D. S. , Loy, M., Lin,J., Wang, C:F., Chen, S., & Zhao, X. (1996). The fundamental attribution error: Correspondence bias in independent and interdependent cultures. Unpublished manuscript, University of Missouri-Columbia.
22.
Kunda, Z. , & Nisbett, R. E. (1986). The psychometrics of everyday life. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 195-224.
23.
Latane, B. , & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 215-221.
24.
Lee, F. , Hallahan, M., & Herzog, T. (1996). Explaining real life events: How culture and domain shape attributions. Personality and Social a Psychology Bulletin, 22, 732-741.
25.
Leyens, J:P. , Yzerbyt, V., & Corneille, O. (1996). The role of applicability in the emergence of the over attribution error. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 219-229.
26.
Lloyd, G.E.R. (1990). Demnystifying mentalities. New York: Cambridge University Press.
27.
Markus, H. R, & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.
28.
Masuda, T. , & Kitayama, S. (1998). Correspondence bias in Japan. Unpublished manuscript, Kyoto University, Japan.
29.
McArthur, L. Z. (1972). The how and what of why: Some determinants and consequences of causal attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 733-742.
30.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.
31.
Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961-978.
32.
Miller, A. G. , Schmidt, D., Meyer, C., & Colella, A. (1984). The perceived value of constrained behavior: Pressures toward biased inferences in the attitude attribution paradigm. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47, 160-171.
33.
Morris, M. W. , & Larrick, R. P. (1996). When one cause casts doubt on another: A normative analysis of discounting in causal attribution. Psychological Review, 102, 331-355.
34.
Morris, M. W. , Nisbett, R. E., & Peng, K. (1993). Causal understanding across domains and cultures. In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal cognition: A multidisciplinary debate. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press.
35.
Morris, M. W. , & Peng, K. (1994). Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 949-971
36.
Nakamura, H. (1985). Ways of thinking of Eastern peoples. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1964)
37.
Needham, J. (1962). Science and civilization in China: VoL 4. Physics and physical technology. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.
38.
Newman, L. S. (1993). How individualist interpret behavior: Idiocentrism and spontaneous trait inference. Social Cognition, 11, 243-269.
39.
Newton, E. , Griffin, D. W., & Ross, L. (1988). Actual versus estimated impact of persona and situation in determining pro-social behavior. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
40.
Nisbett, R. E. , & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
41.
Nisbett, R. E. , & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 8, 231-259.
42.
Norenzayan, A. , & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). Social inference east and west. Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
43.
Peng, K. , & Nisbett, R. E. (1997). Cross cultural similarities and differences in the understanding of physical casualty. In M. Shield (Ed.), Proceedings of conference on culture and science. KY: Kentucky State University Press.
44.
Reeder, G. D. , Fletcher, G. J., & Kenneth, F. (1989). The role of observer's expectation in attitude attribution. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 168-188.
45.
Rhee, E. , Uleman, J. S., Lee, H. K, & Roman, RJ. (1995). Spontaneous self-descriptions and ethnic identities in individualistic and collectivisitic cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 142-152.
46.
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive scientist and his shortcomings. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology Vol. 10 (pp. 174-221). New York: Academic Press.
47.
Ross, L. , & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
48.
Schwarz, N. (1994). Judgment in a social context: Biases, shortcomings, and the logic of conversation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 26, 123-162.
49.
Shweder, R. A. , & Bourne, E.J. (1982). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In A. J. Marsella & G. White (Eds.), Cultural conceptions of mental health and therapy (pp. 97-137). Boston: Reidel.
50.
Snyder, M. , & Jones, E. E. (1974). Attitude attribution when behavior is constrained. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 585-600.
51.
Wright, E. F. , & Wells, G. L. (1988). Is the attitude attribution paradigm suitable for investigating the dispositional bias?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14, 183-190.
