Choice and Attitude Attributions: The Influence of Constraint Information on Attributions Across Levels of Generality

Two studies were conducted to investigate the structure of inferences drawn in an attitude-attribution paradigm by examining attributions at different levels of generality and in several behavioral domains. Observers were exposed to an essay in which a target person took a consistent liberal or conservative position on five different national issues. The essay was supposedly written by the target person under conditions of either high, moderate, or low constraint. Observers of a target person with apparent high choice made correspondent attributions in line with the political orientation espoused, and these attributions were made at each of three levels of inferential generality. By contrast, observers of a target person with little or no apparent choice were more cautious, making correspondent political attributions only at a concrete level closely tied to the content of the essay itself. In the domain of conformity, only the observers of a target person with apparent moderate choice willingly inferred that the target person was generally, as well as concretely, conforming and submissive. These choice × generality effects are viewed as evidence of considerable observer sensitivity to constraint information.