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Attributional Bias in Counselors' Diagnoses: The Effect of Resources 1
Author(s) -
Batson C. Daniel,
Jones Craig H.,
Cochran Pamela J.
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.tb00810.x
Subject(s) - attribution , situational ethics , psychology , referral , attribution bias , perception , social psychology , agency (philosophy) , medical diagnosis , test (biology) , applied psychology , medicine , paleontology , philosophy , family medicine , epistemology , pathology , neuroscience , biology
Three experiments were conducted to test a model of attributional bias in counseling diagnosis. The model predicted that (a) available helping resources influence diagnostic attributions and (b) this effect is mediated by the effect resources have on the diagnostician's perception of his or her helping role. In each experiment, undergraduates served as diagnosticians in a simulated referral agency. Referral resouces for half of the subjects were oriented toward dealing with personal problems; resources for the other half were oriented toward dealing with situational problems. In referring each client, subjects indicated whether they perceived the problem to lie with the client (a dispositional atrribution) or with his social environment (a situational attribution). As predicted, subjects with person‐oriented resources were more likely to perceive clients' problems to be dispositional than were subjects with situation‐oriented resources. Results of Experiment 3 indicated that this effect was mediated by the influences resources had on subjects' perception of their helping role.