Problems of Dispositional Inference in Person Perception Research

Abstract

This paper explores the inferential process of assigning causality to observed social action. Major theoretical positions and typical designs for research studies in this area are critically examined. Role conflict situations are recommended to furnish a research paradigm adequate to explore fundamental theoretical questions that have been ignored in previous investigations. Data are presented which suggest that observers attribute situational desires and motives to an actor, even when it is possible to account for his behavior in terms of external pressures. Furthermore, perceivers systematically went beyond attitudes that were sufficient to explain the specific action they oabserved, imputing to the actor attributes of trans-situational generality. When a person willingly incurs negative sanctions to pursue his aims, he seems to become a source of causal dynamism, a locus of causality, in the eyes of others. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. A central theme of Fritz Heider's work (1958) is the inferential assignment of causal processes to the everyday occurrences of life. Heider argues that we seek to fit events into an interpretive framework that orders the routine world of experience and renders it meaningful and predictable. In his view persons have a unique quality as sources or loci of causal potential, as primary origins of activity. Hence, a perceiver is very concerned to anticipate and predict others' behaviors. When they deviate from expected regularities, it is upsetting. For this potentially threatens the orderly anticipation of future activities by the deviant and it may also call into question the perceiver's basic schema for interpreting experience itself. This theoretical perspective suggests interesting and important questions