Abstract
Two studies examined the role that observers' expectations play in producing correspondence bias in the attitude attribution paradigm. In the first study, subjects participated in groups of five. In each session, four subject observers witnessed a fifth subject (the writer) being assigned an essay topic and recorded their expectations about the likely extremity and quality of that essay. Later, the writer read her essay aloud and observers made judgments about the (actual) essay and the writer's attitude. Results indicated that observers had earlier underestimated the extremity and quality of the writer's essay. Partially as a result, observers then overestimated the extent to which the writer's personal postessay attitude corresponded to the direction of the essay. This correspondence bias appears to be the result of two faulty assumptions. First, observers assumed that the preessay attitude of the writer tended to correspond to the direction of the essay. Second, observers assumed that the writer's attitude became more extreme in the process of composing the essay. A final experiment manipulated observers' expectations and demonstrated their effect on correspondence bias. The results are discussed in terms of a schematic model of interpersonal perception.
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