The Journal of Social Psychology, 2003,143(2), 202-208

Do Attributions Change Over Time When

the Actor's Behavior Is Hedonically
Relevant to the Perceiver?
DIDIER TRUCHOT
GWLADYS MAURE
SOMA PATTE
Departement de Psychologie
Universite de Reims, France

ABSTRACT. The tendency for observers to overattribute others' behavior to

dispositional variables and, correspondingly, to underestimate the importance of situational
variables has been well documented. Yet, the strength of this so-called fundamental
attribution error has been challenged by J. M. Burger (1991), who showed that this bias
disappeared over time. But does time cause an attribution shift when the other's behavior
is negative and hedonically relevant to the observer (e.g., the former is attacked by the
latter)? In an exploratory study, the authors showed that even in this case, attributions to
dispositional variables tended to diminish over time.
Key words: attribution for aggression, attribution theory, changes in attributions over time,
fundamental attribution error

IT IS NOW COMMONLY ACCEPTED among social psychologists that, when

determining another person's behavior, people have a tendency to overestimate the
importance of personal or dispositional variables and to underestimate situational or
environmental variables. For instance, in a classic experiment (Jones & Harris, 1967),
the participants assumed that the content of a short written speech (either for or against
the Castro government) reflected the author's genuine attitude even when the participants
had been told that the author was instructed to defend a specific position. Furthermore,
this phenomenon was observed even when the participants themselves were previously
required to write a counterat-titudinal essay (Snyder & Jones, 1974).

Address correspondence to Didier Truchot, Departement de Psychologie, Universite de

Reims-Champagne Ardenne, 57 rue P. Taittinger, 51 100, Reims, France; send e-mail to
didier.truchot@wanadoo.fr.

202
 Truchot, Maure, & Patte 203

This phenomenon, known as fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977)

or, less dramatically, as correspondence bias, has been proved pervasive and
robust in person perception research. Indeed, it has been empirically supported in
many experimental and field studies (Ross, 1977; Truchot, 1994). Broadly
stated, the social psychological literature offers two levels of explanation for
this phenomenon. Within the first, cognitively oriented level, the authors stated,
for instance, that the behavior of others is more salient than the situation. On the
basis of Hei-der's (1958) notion that behavior tends to engulf the field and that
the person and his or her act form a "causal unit," the observer concentrates
much more on the person than on the situation. The second level of explanation
is more culturally or socially oriented. In Western individualistic society,
internal explanations are more valued than external ones (Hewstone, 1989).
Then they are acquired and internalized through socialization. Indeed, the
fundamental attribution error is not found in Eastern society (Miller, 1984).
However, according to Burger (1991) and Burger and Pavelich (1994), the
strength of the fundamental attribution error may disappear over time. In the first
experiment, in which the classic Jones and Harris (1967) paradigm was i used
(Burger, 1991), the participants watched a videotape of an "extemporaneous
speech" on the issue of gun control given by a student. In the no-choice condi-
tion, the participants were told that the speaker was given no choice as to which
side of the issue he was to advocate. In the choice condition, the participants were
toMthat the speaker had chosen which side to support. Then the participants; were
asked to infer the student's genuine feelings about the issue of gun control.: This
task was performed either in an immediate condition or 7 days later, that is, in a
delayed condition. The results showed that in the immediate condition, the Jones
and Harris effect was replicated: In the no-choice condition, the participants esti-
mated that the real position of the speaker was congruent with the content of his
speech. However, in the delayed condition, the fundamental attribution ierror
diminished significantly. In a second experiment (Burger) replicating the inves-
tigation of Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977), the participants were assigned
to questioner or contestant roles in a quiz game. As in the initial experiment, the
contestants were found to attribute their difficulty during the game to their ^part-
ner's superior knowledge. However, this attributional error disappeared when the
participants gave their attributions 3 or 4 days after the game.
To ascertain the generalizability of the phenomenon, Burger and Pavelich
(1994) conducted two field studies. In the first, they compared the attributions
made by editorial writers for U.S. presidential elections from 1964 to 1984. To
replicate the immediate and the delayed conditions, they examined attributions
made either within a few days or in the 2nd and 3rd years following the election.
The results showed that, as in previous laboratory studies, the attributions shift-
ed over time: In the immediate condition, 65.6% of the explanations were per-
sonal, but the percentage was only 32.3% in the delayed condition. In the second
study, the researchers used a survey procedure to ask people their explanations
204 The Journal of Social Psychology________________________________________________

for the outcome of the 1988 U.S. presidential election. When they gave their
explanations within the 2 days following the election, 53.7% of the participants
made personal attributions and 38.8% made situational attributions. In another
group of people interviewed 1 year after the election, the percentages were 25.4%
and 44.8%, respectively.
According to Burger (1991), one of the explanatory variables is the vivid-
ness of information. Immediately after an event, information about the person,
which is more vivid and concrete, tends to take precedence over information
about the situation, which is more abstract. In that case, personal information may
"engulf the field" in memory (Nisbett & Ross, 1980) and is more easily accessi-
ble in memory. Then this personal information leads to dispositional attributions
and to the fundamental attribution error. But, as time passes, the vividness of per-
sonal information fades, and then the cognitive accessibility of this information
also diminishes (Burger, 1991). Consequently, the fundamental attribution error
diminishes over time.
But this shift may have some limitations. In their second field study, Burger
and Pavelich (1994) observed dispositional attribution changes only for those
people who had voted for the losing candidate. Those who had voted for the win-
ning candidate appeared to be motivated to explain their favorite candidate out-
comes as the result of his dispositions and actions, even 1 year after the vote. In
reference to what Heider (1958) called a positive unit relationship, the researchers
suggested that people are motivated to make, and to continue to make over time,
attributions that are flattering and ego enhancing when explaining the outcome
of friends or of persons they admire. Therefore, if, as time passes, the attributions
tend to shift from dispositional to situational explanations, then this shift may
be restricted to "neutral" events. Of course, the issue of gun control for which
Burger (1991) observed the attribution shift is not a priori a neutral one. But in
such an experimental context, we do not know to what extent this is a relevant
issue for participants.
Following this line of reasoning, one can assume that hedonic relevance
may represent another limitation to attribution shift over time. Jones and Davis
(1965) used the term hedonic relevance to refer to the positive-rewarding or
negative-punishing consequences of an actor's behavior for the perceiver.
According to the researchers, when the relevance of an act increases, the per-
ceiver will be more likely to make correspondent inferences. He or she will also
be more likely to make more extreme inferences. In that case, will attribution
change over time? It may be, for instance, that after an attack—a negatively rel-
evant act—the internal attribution to the aggressor will be more constant over
time. The vividness of the aggressor behavior presumably is less likely to fade
as time passes or at least to fade more slowly than the vividness of a neutral
event. Moreover, the internal attribution should be more constant in the case of
a severe act—one that is particularly negatively relevant—than in the case of a
minor attack.
 Truchot, Maure, & Patte 205

Our purpose in this exploratory study was to test whether the attribution shift
would also be observed in natural situations in which the behavior to be explained
had a negative hedonic relevance to the participants.

Method

Participants

Eighty firemen from a large fire brigade in northeast France participated. The
average age of participants was 37 years, with a range of 24-54 years (SD = 8.2).
The mean work experience was 15.2 years, with a range of 1-33 years (SD = 8.5).
In France, firemen are called not only in cases of fire. Very often they intervene
in cases of flood, pollution, rescue, and so forth, and when there are casualties
in a public place. In some of these circumstances, firemen may be victims of
either verbal or physical attacks.

Procedure

The participants were interviewed on site. They were informed that the
results would be made available on request. All solicited participants agreed to
respond to the questionnaire. This may be due to the fact that they were informed
that the questions were about "the attacks of which they were victims while on
duty," a particularly relevant topic.

Measures

We used the following measures to assess each participant:

Date of last attack. Each participant was asked to remember the "last attack," if
any, of which he had been victim while on duty. We then dichotomized the dis-
tribution of responses between attacks that had happened in the last 3 months (n
= 29) and those that had happened more than 3 months ago (n = 51).

Type of attack. Participants were then asked to qualify the attack. Three choices
were proposed: verbal attack, physical attack without injury, and physical attack
with injury.

Attributions for the act of the aggressor. Finally, participants were asked to
respond to questions assessing the perceived causes of the aggressor's behavior.
The internal and external attributions for the aggressor's behavior each were mea-
sured by two items (Cronbach's as = .64 and .77, respectively). These four items
were introduced as follows: "According to you, to what extent was the behavior
of your aggressor due to ... " The two internal items were "his/her intentions"
206 The Journal of Social Psychology_________________________________

and "his/her characteristics or personality." The two external items were "some
daily life problems or circumstances that made him/her nervous" and "the cur-
rent social climate of violence." Each of these four items was followed by a 7-
point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). For the internal as well
as the external items, we summed ratings across items to calculate a total score
for each participant.

Demographic characteristics. The questionnaire also included two

demographic characteristics: age and seniority.

Results

Of the 80 participants, 21 reported a verbal attack, 41 a physical attack with-

out injury, and 18 a physical attack with injury.
We conducted preliminary analyses to determine if any demographic vari-
ables were related to attribution scores. There was no difference detected
among participants on the basis of age or seniority. We then examined the
hypotheses through a 3 x 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) with type of attack
(verbal, physical without injury, and physical with injury) and time of the attack
(less than 3 months vs. more than 3 months ago) as between-groups variables.
The dependent variables were the internal and external attributional scores.
Concerning the internal attribution, the ANOVA revealed no interaction
between type of attack and time of the attack. Neither did we find a main effect for
the type of attack, F(2,74) = 1.67, p < .2. However, we found a main effect for time
of the attack, F(2,74) = 9.81, p < .003. In line with Burger's (1991) and Burger and
Pavelich's (1994) findings, the internal score was higher in the immediate condi-
tion (M = 5.14, SD = 1.08) than in the delayed condition (M = 3.70, SD = 0.63).
Concerning the external attribution, the ANOVA revealed, mutatis mutandis,
the same pattern of results. We found no interaction or main effect for type of attack.
However, we found a main effect for time of attack, F(2,74) = 7.46, p < .008. When
the judgment concerned a recent attack, the external score was lower (M = 3.23,
SD = 0.89) than when the judgment concerned a distant attack (M - 4.76, SD =
0.96).

Discussion

The results of the present research give credence to the idea that the funda-
mental attribution error shifts over time. Indeed, if attributions made for the recent
attack were internal, then those made for an earlier attack became less internal
and, concurrently, more situational. Therefore, this result adds to the generaliz-
ability of the attributional shift over time.
Moreover, our results revealed that this shift was not affected by the hedonic
relevance of the explained behavior. Indeed, although the behavior considered
had, a priori, hedonic relevance for the participants, the dispositional attribution
 Truchot, Maure, & Patte 207

made within the 3 months following the attack was not retained by those who
judged an equivalent behavior more than 3 months after it occurred. Yet, they
could have been motivated over time to maintain a dispositional attribution. Fur-
thermore, the magnitude of the attack made no difference. Whatever the attack
(verbal, physical without injury, or physical with injury)—that is, whatever the
magnitude of the relevance of the considered behavior—we observed the attri-
butional shift. One potential explanation, of course, is that the vividness of the
attack diminished over time.
These results also have practical implications. In many social contexts,
people are engaged in relationships that imply a delayed judgment. In trials, for
instance, people may be judged differently for the behavior they are charged: with,
depending on whether they are judged immediately or long after the behavior for
which they are charged.
Of course, our results must be qualified. In particular, we do not know the
events that occurred between the judged attack and the time we collected the data.
It may be that some events (e.g., a colleague recently was a victim of an attack)
affected the participants' attributions, for instance, because these events added
vividness to new information. The fact that our data are verbal reports based on
memory adds to the limitations of this study: The participants themselves indi-
cated the category and the time of the attack. Furthermore, our work builds directly
oo the classical internal versus external (or person vs. situation) dichotomy.
Some authors have criticized this broad distinction, suggesting that it does not
give a satisfactory account of the ways people explain behavior (Buss, 1978;
Malle, 1999). For example, Malle demonstrated empirically that people clearly
distinguished between cause explanations (i.e., explanations of unintentional
behavior) and reason explanations (i.e., the agent's reasons for acting intention-
ally). Therefore, further research should distinguish between these two types of
explanations.
In conclusion, the fundamental attribution error, one of the flagships of social
psychology, could be limited to immediate judgments and disappear over time.
The present study provided support for Burger's conceptualization and demon-
strated that hedonic relevance did not retain the attributional shift. Nonetheless,
this field study should be regarded as a preliminary attempt to assess the role of
hedonic relevance in the attributional process over time. In particular, further
research should distinguish clearly between the motivation that can lead, theo-
retically, to a maintenance of the fundamental attribution error and the motiva-
tion that can lead to a shift of this bias.

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Received May 11,2000

Accepted November 6, 2001
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