Effects of attribution and organization on person memory

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of attribution of a target person's behavior and organization of schema on memory of behavior incongruent with the initial impression of the target as well as on the change of impression of target. Forty-eight male college students were given the target's behaviors and attributions of behaviors were manipulated to be either dispositional or situational. Then, half of the subjects were asked to think about the target's personality and to write essays about the target in order to facilitate the organization of their schema for the target, while the other half were engaged in distraction tasks. After that, subjects were asked to rate their impression of the target and to recall the behaviors. The following are main results. First, the incongruent behavior attributed to dispositional causes was more likely to be recalled than that attributed to situational ones, only when the target schema became well-organized by thinking about the target. Second, the incongruent behavior had greater impact on the change of impression when attributed to dispositional causes. The role of organization as a mediator of the effects of causal attribution on recall was discussed.