Interpersonal Attraction [microform] : The Influence of Similarity, Perceived Correctness, and Importance of Causal Understanding / Martha Hill and Gifford Weary

Despite recent emphasis on the communicative function attributions may serve, little is actually known about the reactions of observers to individuals' causal statements regarding their own or others' behavioral outcomes. To rule out perceived accuracy as an alternative explanation of the effects of concordance of causal understanding on interpersonal evaluations, 80 students participated in a study presumably concerned with jury decision making. The similarity, correctness, and importance of subjects' causal understandings were manipulated. The manipulation of importance consisted of telling subjects they would evaluate a real (high importance) or hypothetical (low importance) court case. After indicating on a 15-point scale the extent to which the individual in the case study was responsible for the accident described, subjects were told a second observer either agreed or disagreed with them, and that their judgments were consistent or inconsistent with previous subjects. Subjects then rated the observer-confederate. Results suggested that similarity of causal judgments and social correctness were successfully manipulated. No significant results were found for the check on the importance variable. The findings suggest that perceived social desirability or correctness of judgments cannot account for the effects of concordance of causal understanding. (JAC)