The role of plausibility in influencing environmental attributions

Abstract

The aim of the study was to examine how plausibility influences attributions about the cause of perceived arousal. Subjects watched one of three arousing (humorous, sexual, aggressive) or a nonarousing televised program under conditions of appropriate or inappropriate interpersonal spacing. The subjects then completed a questionnaire indicating how crowded they felt and rating the movie on a number of dimensions. The results indicated that under close interpersonal distances, subjects felt less crowded while watching the arousing movies than while viewing the nonarousing movie. There were no differences in the experience of crowding between the movie conditions under the far interpersonal distance conditions. In addition, subjects rated the arousing movies as more arousing under close as opposed to far interpersonal distance conditions. Further, the humorous movie was viewed as more funny, and the violent movie was rated more violent under the close as opposed to the far conditions. Finally, there was a tendency to enjoy the arousing movies more under the close conditions, while the reverse effect was found for the nonarousing movie. It was argued that the arousing movies reduced the experience of crowding under close interpersonal conditions because subjects attributed their arousal to the movies rather than to the spatial restrictions. It was further suggested that the results showed that individuals will attribute their arousal to salient stimuli in their environment that could plausibly be sources of arousal. The results not only offer support for an attribution model of crowding, but they also show that depending on the individual's attribution, spatial conditions that can give rise to crowding may increase enjoyment of events in the environment.