CONSTRAINT AND TARGET EFFECTS IN ATTRIBUTION OF ATTITUDES

Human subjects viewed a person reading an essay on videotape and then attributed to him both an attitude related to the essay topic and attitudes toward issues peripherally related to this topic. The target person''s causal role in the behavior and his physical appearance were manipulated. Although the influence of the target person''s behavior was sharply reduced when he was under strong situational pressure to manifest the behavior, essay direction was still a significant determinant of attributions. The target person''s appearance affected attributions primarily in the condition of highest constraint, in which he was given no role in the composition of the essay he read. Attributions of attitudes on topics related to the essay topic decreased in extremity as their implicational distance from the target attitude increased; however, the effect of essay direction was influential throughout the series of judgments, even when the target person was under high constraint. Individual differences in judges'' perceptions of the convincingness of the essay presentation and the target person''s freedom were related meaningfully to attributions of attitude. Judges averaged the implications of the information available to them in arriving at their attributions, with the relative weights attached to information from different sources depending upon the situational constraints.