Empathy and attribution: Turning observers into actors.

A laboratory experiment was conducted to test Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation of the often-observed tendency for individuals (actors) to provide relatively more situational and less dispositional causal attributions for their behavior than those provided by observers of the same behavior. According to this explanation, aspects of the situation are phenomenologically more salient for actors, whereas characteristics of the actor and his behavior are more salient for observers. To test this explanation, the phenomenological perspective of observers are altered without making available any additional information. Subjects watched a videotape of a get-acquainted conversation after instructions either to observe a target conversant or to empathize with her. As predicted, taking the perspective of the target through empathy resulted in attributions that were relatively more situational and less dispositional than attributions provided by standard observers. The results support Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation of actor-observer attributional differences, and shed additional light on the process of empathy.