Attribution in conversational context: Effect of mutual knowledge on explanation‐giving

Slugoski, Ben R.; Lalljee, Mansur; Lamb, Roger; Ginsburg, Gerald P.

doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420230302

Cited by 73 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…This maxim encourages the provision of information that is new to the recipient and discourages the reiteration of information that the recipient already has. Consistent with the maxim of quantity, Slugoski, Lalljee, Lamb, and Ginsburg (1993) found that participants who were led to believe that their conversational partner shared only dispositional information about a target provided more situational explanations for the target's behavior. In contrast, those who believed that their partner shared only information about the situational background of the target gave somewhat more dispositional explanations.…”

Section: A Norenzayan and N Schwarzsupporting

confidence: 56%

“…Kelley, 1967), is in fact a process which is embedded in the social and communicative context in which it occurs (Hilton, 1990;Hilton & Slugoski, 1986;Slugoski, et al, 1993). More generally, our ®ndings contribute to the conclusion that the communicative context systematically aects social judgment and reasoning, and that participants bring the tacit assumptions that govern the conduct of conversation in daily life to the research situation (see Hilton, 1995;Kihlstrom, 1995;Schwarz, 1994Schwarz, , 1996.…”

Section: Participants Tailor Attributions 1017mentioning

confidence: 56%

“…First, the letterhead manipulation used in the present study did not convey information about dierences in the common ground. Although the researcher may know more about the murder case than is conveyed in the newspaper story, the exact nature of any knowledge dierences remains elusive, in contrast to the Slugoski et al (1993) study, where the recipient was known to share either situational or dispositional information. To render redundancy avoidance a salient concern under the present conditions, one should lead participants to reason,`as a personality psychologist, she certainly can think of personality explanations herselfÐso let me tell her about situational ones'.…”

Section: A Norenzayan and N Schwarzmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Telling what they want to know: participants tailor causal attributions to researchers' interests

Norenzayan

Schwarz

1999

Eur. J. Soc. Psychol.

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Based on a conversational analysis of experimental procedures and consistent with the principle of relevance, we predicted that participants' verbal responses will be in¯uenced by their tacit inferences about the researcher's epistemic goals, derived from their knowledge of the researcher's academic aliation. We tested this prediction in a core area of social-personality and cultural psychology, causal attribution. University students provided causal attributions about mass murder cases, while the questionnaire identi®ed the researcher either as a social scientist or a personality psychologist. The results indicated that attributions were overall more situational than dispositional, and as predicted, this main eect was quali®ed by an interaction between conversational cue and type of attribution. Thus, participants gave relatively more situational explanations when the letterhead of the questionnaire identi®ed the researcher as a social scientist compared to when the researcher was identi®ed as a personality psychologist. The reverse pattern emerged for dispositional attributions. Methodological and conceptual implications are discussed. Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A common research strategy in psychology is to ask participants to generate verbal answers in response to questions asked by the researcher. For example, participants may be asked to explain the behavior of a target person in a causal attribution task (e.g. Miller, 1984;Morris & Peng, 1994) or to describe themselves (e.g. Cousins, 1989;McGuire & McGuire, 1988). These responses are then content-analyzed based on some well-established categories, such as situational versus dispositional attributions or social versus psychological self-descriptions. Psychologists assume that this methodology allows them to probe into salient aspects of participants' attributional style or self-concepts. The present research demonstrates that participants' verbal

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Section: A Norenzayan and N Schwarzsupporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Participants Tailor Attributions 1017mentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: A Norenzayan and N Schwarzmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Telling what they want to know: participants tailor causal attributions to researchers' interests

Norenzayan

Schwarz

1999

Eur. J. Soc. Psychol.

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“…and preference the inclusion of this information in their message (e.g., Grice, 1975;Lyons & Kashima, 2003;Slugoski, Lalljee, Lamb, & Ginsburg, 1993). This would suggest that in stereotyperelevant communication, it is the stereotype-inconsistent information (information less consistent with the shared stereotype) that is more likely to be communicated-an explanation that is at odds with the widespread stereotype consistency bias in communication.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication.

Clark

Kashima

2007

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

135

127

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Communicators tend to share more stereotype-consistent than stereotype-inconsistent information. The authors propose and test a situated functional model of this stereotype consistency bias: Stereotypeconsistent and inconsistent information differentially serve 2 central functions of communicationsharing information and regulating relationships; depending on the communication context, information seen to serve these different functions better is more likely communicated. Results showed that stereotype-consistent information is perceived as more socially connective but less informative than inconsistent information, and when the stereotype is perceived to be highly shared in the community, more stereotype-consistent than inconsistent information is communicated due to its greater social connectivity function. These results highlight the need to examine communication as a dynamic and situated social activity.Keywords: stereotype consistency bias, stereotype communication, informativeness, social connectivity, situated-functional modelThe stereotype consistency bias is the tendency to communicate more stereotype-consistent information than stereotypeinconsistent information in a message, and it has been well established in the stereotype communication literature (see Kashima, Klein, & Clark, 2007, for a review). In dyadic conversation, communicators spend more time discussing stereotypeconsistent information, expressing agreement with stereotypeconsistent statements, and focusing questions and discussion on stereotype-consistent information (see Ruscher, 1998, for a review). When stereotype-relevant stories are passed along a chain of communicators, a stereotype consistency bias emerges in the communicated message as stereotype-consistent information is retained and inconsistent information left out (see Kashima, et al., 2007, for a review).However, a central question remains: Why should stereotypeconsistent information have this communicative advantage over stereotype-inconsistent information? The aim of this research was to test a situated functional account of the production of a stereotype consistency bias in particular contexts. In this view, communication is a socially situated activity (Smith & Semin, 2004) Informational and Relational Functions of CommunicationCommunication serves at least two central functions, sharing novel information and the regulation of social relationships. The first central function is that of information sharing. It is widely accepted that information is transmitted to inform people about things that they do not already know, thus adding to the existing common ground. In order to ensure that their message to a communication partner is optimally informative, communicators are likely to attend to the potentially novel features of the information

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“…Several scholars studied how this initial model imparts on communication, namely because it can easily be manipulated. For instance, Slugoski, Lalljee, Lamb & Ginsburg (1993) pretended to the subjects that their (fake) partner has or not received the same information. They observed that the subjects adapt to their partner by focusing the explanation on the items that (s)he is supposed to ignore.…”

Section: Mutual Modeling In Collaborative Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partner modeling is mutual

Sangin

Nova

Molinari

et al. 2007

Proceedings of the 8th Iternational Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning - CSCL'07

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Abstract. Collaborative learning has been hypothesized to be related to the cognitive effort engaged by co-learners to build a shared understanding. The process of constructing this shared understanding requires each team member to build some kind of representation of the behavior, beliefs, knowledge or intentions of other group members. This contribution reports interesting findings regarding to the process of modeling each other. In two empirical studies, we measured the accuracy of the mutual model, i.e. the difference between what A believes B knows, has done or intends to do and what B actually knows, has done or intends to do. In both studies, we found a significant correlation between the accuracy of A's model of B and the accuracy of B's model of A. This leads us to think that the process of modeling one's partners does not simply reflect individual attitudes or skills but emerges as a property of group interactions. We describe on-going studies that explore these preliminary results.

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Attribution in conversational context: Effect of mutual knowledge on explanation‐giving

Abstract: (Hilton and Slugoski, 1986), that the common sense criterion of causality is that of an 'abnormal condition' rather than constant conjunction as instantiated in the A N 0 V A model of causal attribution (Kelley, 1967(Kelley, , 1973.

Cited by 73 publications

References 39 publications

Telling what they want to know: participants tailor causal attributions to researchers' interests

Telling what they want to know: participants tailor causal attributions to researchers' interests

Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication.

Partner modeling is mutual

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