We measure individual differences in the tendency to make correspondent inference, i.e., to infer stable dispositions from the behavior of others, and show their impact on blame and guilt attributions, performance evaluations, and investment decisions. Higher accessibility of situational information helps debiasing correspondent inferences

Kassam, K.

McCormick, E.

Min, L.

Morewedge, C. K.

Scopelliti, I.

City Research Online

Scopelliti, I., Morewedge, C. K., Min, L., McCormick, E. & Kassam, K. (2015). Correspondent Inferences and Consumer Decision Making. NA - Advances in Consumer Research, 43, pp. 686-687. City Research OnlineOriginal citation: Scopelliti, I., Morewedge, C. K., Min, L., McCormick, E. & Kassam, K. (2015). Correspondent Inferences and Consumer Decision Making. NA - Advances in Consumer Research, 43, pp. 686-687. Permanent City Research Online URL: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/16963/ Copyright & reuseCity University London has developed City Research Online so that its users may access the research outputs of City University London's staff. Copyright © and Moral Rights for this paper are retained by the individual author(s) and/ or other copyright holders.  All material in City Research Online is checked for eligibility for copyright before being made available in the live archive. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to from other web pages. Versions of researchThe version in City Research Online may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check the Permanent City Research Online URL above for the status of the paper.EnquiriesIf you have any enquiries about any aspect of City Research Online, or if you wish to make contact with the author(s) of this paper, please email the team at publications@city.ac.uk.     ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH  Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802   Correspondent Inferences and Consumer Decision MakingIrene Scopelliti, City University of London, UK Carey Morewedge, Boston University, USA Lauren Min, University of Colorado, USA Erin McCormick, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Karim Kassam, Carnegie Mellon University, USA  We measure individual differences in the tendency to make correspondent inference, i.e., to infer stable dispositions from the behaviorof others, and show their impact on blame and guilt attributions, performance evaluations, and investment decisions. Higheraccessibility of situational information helps debiasing correspondent inferences.  [to cite]:Irene Scopelliti, Carey Morewedge, Lauren Min, Erin McCormick, and Karim Kassam (2015) ,"Correspondent Inferences andConsumer Decision Making", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 43, eds. Kristin Diehl  and Carolyn Yoon,Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 686-687. [url]:http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1020164/volumes/v43/NA-43 [copyright notice]:This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or inpart, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.686 Advances in Consumer ResearchVolume 43, ©2015Correspondent Inferences and Consumer Decision MakingIrene Scopelliti, City University of London, UKCarey Morewedge, Boston University, USALauren Min, University of Colorado, USAErin McCormick, Carnegie Mellon University, USAKarim Kassam, Carnegie Mellon University, USAEXTENDED ABSTRACTPeople tend to make correspondent inferences when observing others. They infer stable personality characteristics from the behav-ior of others, even when the presence of external factors severely constrains the range of possible behaviors other persons might have exhibited. This general tendency leads observers to over-attribute be-havior of actors to their enduring dispositions and under-weight the inluence of situational factors, committing a correspondence bias (Ross, 1977; Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Jones, 1979; 1990; Jones & Harris, 1967).  Correspondent inferences are prevalent and conse-quential. Correspondence bias is exhibited by a majority of American adults and generalizes across demographic characteristics (Bauman & Skitka, 2010). These biased attributions affect a wide variety of social judgments such as performance that are relevant for consum-er behavior, such as performance evaluations (e.g., Moore, Swift, Sharek, & Gino, 2010), blame and guilt judgments (e.g., Kassin & Sukel, 1997), impression formation in social interactions (e.g., Gil-bert, 1998; Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977), and judgments of moral character (Bierbrauer, 1979; Miller, Gillen, Schenker, & Ra-dlove, 1974). In this paper we adopt a psychometric approach to the analy-sis of the propensity to make correspondent inferences. To examine whether the propensity to make correspondent inferences is a unique construct and a stable individual difference, we developed and vali-dated an instrument, the Neglect of External Demands (i.e., NED1) scale, which combines the four paradigms most commonly used to assess correspondence bias, taking into account different types of dispositions—attitudes, abilities, emotionality, and morality (Gaw-ronski, 2004). Our irst three studies (1A, 1B, and 2) develop a new individual-difference measure designed to assess the extent to which a person makes correspondent inferences across varied judgmental tasks and targets, evaluate the reliability and the dimensionality of the instrument, and perform a veriication of its factorial structure and discriminant validity. In Study 1A, we generated and tested nu-merous scale items drawn and cloned from existing items in the lit-erature, which then underwent a puriication process resulting in a 10-item scale with sound psychometric properties. In Study 1B, we veriied the factorial structure of the scale. In Study 2 we tested its discriminant validity in relation to several established scales measur-ing potentially related psychological constructs such as intelligence, cognitive ability, preference for cognitive processing, preference for control, and attributional style. In Studies 3, 4, and 5, we then tested the extent to which the pro-pensity to make correspondent inferences predicted consequential, conceptually related, but different judgments and behaviors. In Study 3, we examined the relationship between the propensity to make cor-respondent inferences and attributions of blame to actors for having accidentally caused harm. Participants characterized by a high pro-pensity to make correspondent inferences were more likely to make dispositional attributions to actors for harmful events when the harm 1 The scale is named after Edward E. “Ned” Jones, who irst found evi-dence for this tendency.was due to the negligence of the agent. Moreover, this relationship was even stronger when no harm was intended and the outcome was accidental—when participants should have discounted more for situ-ational factors that contributed to harm having been caused. In Study 4, we investigated whether propensity to make corre-spondent inferences is associated to a higher neglect of job dificulty when evaluating the performance of employees for promotion. The results show that propensity to make correspondent inferences af-fects the extent to which people incorporate information on job or task dificulty when evaluating the performance of others. Partici-pants characterized by high NED scores were more likely to evalu-ate to anchor their assessments on unadjusted performance, favoring candidates who beneited from an easier situation.In Study 5, we examined whether high propensity to make cor-respondent inferences induces consumers to neglect market forces when evaluating fund manager performances in both performance judgments and incentive-compatible investment decisions. The re-sults suggest that participants more prone to make correspondent in-ferences were more likely to make dispositional attributions for good and bad absolute performances and ignore the comparative value of those performances (a positive gain that was lower than the rise of the market and a loss that was less than the fall of the market) than participants less prone to make correspondent inferences. The con-sistency of this pattern across performance evaluations, preferences, and incentive-compatible choices made by participants provides fur-ther evidence of the predictive validity of the NED and of the per-vasive effect of correspondent inferences not only on judgments, but also on behavior.Finally, in Study 6 we examined a possible debiasing interven-tion to correct correspondent inferences, and show that making situ-ational information easier to access helps people more prone to make correspondent inferences making reduce the impact of dispositional attributions on their decisions. REFERENCESBauman, C. W., & Skitka, L. J. (2010). Making attributions for behaviors: the prevalence of correspondence bias in the general population. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32(3), 269-277.Bierbrauer, G. (1979). Why did he do it? Attribution of obedience and the phenomenon of dispositional bias. European Journal of Social Psychology, 9,67-84.Gawronski, B. (2004). Theory-based bias correction in dispositional inference: The fundamental attribution error is dead, long live the correspondence bias. European Review of Social Psychology 15.1, 183–217.Gilbert, D. T. (1998). Ordinary personology.  In D. T. Gilbert, S. T., Fiske, & G. Lindzey,  (Eds.) The handbook of social psychology (4th edition). New York: McGraw Hill.Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21-38.Jones, E. E. (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions. American Psychologist, 34(2), 107.Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 43) / 687Jones, E. E. (1990). Interpersonal perception. WH Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt & Co.Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1-24.Kassin, S. M., & Sukel, H. (1997). Coerced Confessions and the Jury: An Experimental Test of the “Harmless Error” Rule. Law and Human Behavior, 21, 27-46.Miller, A. G., & Rorer, L. G. (1982). Toward an understanding of the fundamental attribution error: Essay diagonsiticity in the attitude attribution paradigm. Journal of Research in Personality, 16, 41-59.Moore, D. A., Swift, S. A., Sharek, Z. S., & Gino, F. (2010). Correspondence bias in performance evaluation: Why grade inlation works. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 843-852.Ross, L. D., Amabile, T. M., & Steinmetz, J. L. (1977). Social roles, social control, and biases in social perception processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 485-494.

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