"Measurement, Consequences, and Debiasing of Correspondent Inference Making"

Abstract

Across consequential attributions of attitudes, ability, emotions, and morality, people make correspondent inferences-infer stable personality characteristics from others’ behavior, even when their behavior was caused by situational factors. We examined their structure and report the development and validation of an instrument measuring individual differences in the propensity to make correspondent inferences (the Neglect of External Demands-NED -scale). The instrument is internally consistent and distinct from measures of intelligence, cognitive ability, cognitive reflection, general decision making ability, preference for control, and attributional style. It predicted attributions of blame for accidental harm, the weight attributed to confessions obtained under coercion, the consideration of job difficulty in performance evaluations, and the ability to separate market and fund performance when making incentive-compatible investments. We found that making situational information accessible debiased the judgments of people most prone to make correspondent inferences.