Attributions of cause for vehicular accidents were studied by means of a questionnaire presenting fictional accident vignettes involving a main character (the actor). The randomly assigned questionnaires presented either Instructions for Identification with the actor or for Nonidentification. Each questionnaire randomly presented six vignettes, two vignettes randomly drawn from each of three Information Levels (Low, Medium, and High). Participants were undergraduates, 24 men and 26 women, who gave the cause of each accident in writing and rated that cause on three dimensions using 7-point scales for Internality–Externality, Stability, and Globality. Identification Instructions were associated with more External ratings than were Nonidentification Instructions. The High Information Level was associated with more Internal and higher Globality ratings than the lower Levels. In interactions for participants' sex, women under Identification Instructions gave more External ratings and lower Stability ratings than women given Nonidentification Instructions or men in the Identification condition.
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