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Preference, Expectations, and Attributional Bias: Two Field Studies 1
Author(s) -
Winkler Joachim D.,
Taylor Shelley E.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1979.tb00803.x
Subject(s) - attribution , psychology , preference , causality (physics) , social psychology , presidential election , test (biology) , outcome (game theory) , event (particle physics) , political science , economics , law , biology , microeconomics , paleontology , physics , mathematical economics , quantum mechanics , politics
Two quasi‐experiments were conducted to test the relationship among a perceiver's preference, expectations, and causal attributions for an event, when the outcome of the event ran for and counter to expectation and preference. Following the 1976 Superbowl, fans of Dallas and Pittsburgh and fans with no preference were asked to attribute causality for a series of game events, counterbalanced for (un)favorability for each team. Following the 1976 Presidential election, fans of Carter and Ford were asked to attribute causality for the election outcome and estimate its repeatability and mutability. Both studies revealed that fans exhibit a biased attributional pattern, offering more credit to their own side for their successes than to the opponents for their successes. Furthermore, fans see their side's successes as replicable and their side's failures as nonreplicable. The implications of the data patterns for real world manifestations of attributional bias are discussed.