Better Safe than Sorry: Situational Correction in Interpersonal Competition

Abstract

We conducted two experiments to investigate whether situational correction occurs when interpersonal competitors make dispositional inferences from their opponent's situationally constrained behavior. In both experiments, participants who expected interpersonal competition, judged a target person's disposition after reading information about a constrained or not constrained behavior of their opponent or non-opponent. As predicted, we found that insufficient situational correction occurred when the situationally constrained behavior of the opponent reflected a disposition that implied a high threat level (competitiveness or high ability) but sufficient correction occurred when the behavior reflected a low threat-level disposition (cooperativeness or low ability). Finally, we discussed the relationship between risk-avoidance and situational correction in competition.