Individual Differences in Correspondence Bias: Measurement, Consequences, and Correction of Biased Interpersonal Attributions

Across consequential attributions of attitudes, ability, emotions, and morality, people make correspondent inferences. People infer stable personality characteristics from others' behavior, even when that behavior is caused by situational factors. We examined the structure of correspondent inferences and report the development and validation of an instrument measuring individual differences in this correspondence bias (a Neglect of External Demands scale, or 'NED'). The NED is internally consistent and distinct from scales and measures of intelligence, cognitive ability, cognitive reflection, general decision-making ability, preference for control, and attributional style. Individual differences in correspondence bias predict blaming people for harmful accidents, believing coerced confessions, correcting for job and task difficulty when making performance evaluations and incentive-compatible personnel selections, and separating market and fund performance when making incentive-compatible investments. Fortunately, the tendency to commit correspondence bias can be reduced. Making situational information easier to process debiases those most prone to correspondence bias. History: Accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making. Funding: This work was supported by an award to C. K. Morewedge and K. S. Kassam from IARPA via the AFRL [Contract FA8650-11-C-7175], Supplemental Material: Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2668. Keywords: correspondent inferences * correspondence bias * fundamental attribution error * dispositional attributions * individual differences * judgment and decision making
Introduction People make correspondent inferences when observing others. They infer stable personality characteristics from the behavior of others, even when the presence of external factors severely constrains the range of [...]