Selection of a causal background: Role of expectation versus feature mutability.

Abstract

Two experiments test the hypothesis that people construct the causal background from features of the target episode as suggested by D. Kahneman and D. T. Miller's (1986) norm theory instead of adopting the usual or expected case as the preferred comparison. Results of Experiment I indicate that unsuccessful males are contrasted with successful males, regardless of the task, whereas unsuccessful females are contrasted with successful males for typically male tasks and unsuccessful females for typically female tasks. Results of Experiment 2 indicate that successful males are contrasted with unsuccessful males, whereas successful females are contrasted with unsuccessful females