Attribution difficulty and memory for attribution-relevant information.

Abstract

This research compared the processing and retrieval of attribution-relevant information when the attributional inference is easy or difficult to make. Subjects attributed behavioral events to the person or to the situation, based on several items of context information. Each context sentence implied either the person or the entity as causal agent. When the attributional inference was difficult to make (an equal number of context sentences implied actor and entity as the causal agent), subjects recalled more of the behavioral events, recalled more context sentences, and were less confident in their attributions than when the attributional inference was easy to make (most context sentences implied the same causal agent). Subjects also recalled context information that was implicationally incongruent with the majority of the other context sentences with a higher probability than when that same information was implicationally congruent.