Motivated augmentation and reduction of the overattribution bias.

Abstract

Three experiments investigated whether the need to have (or avoid) cognitive closure affects observers' tendency to display attributional bias. Results of each experiment indicate that the overattribution bias was magnified under high need for cognitive closure and attenuated under high need to avoid closure. In Experiments 1 and 3, the relevant motivational state was manipulated situationally, whereas in Experiment 2 an individual-differences measure of the closure motivation was used. These divergent operationalizations yielded convergent results. Furthermore, when in Experiment 3 the task consisted of attributions to the situation, high need for closure augmented, and high need to avoid closure reduced, situational rather than dispositional overattributions. The results imply general motivational boundary conditions for inferential biases across judgmental contents.

Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.

“…The need for closure, whether varied situationally or measured dispositionally, has been associated with tendencies to engage in social stereotyping (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983), to succumb to primacy effects in impression formation (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983;D. M. Webster & Kruglanski, 1994), to exhibit correspondence bias in attitude attribution (D. M. Webster, 1993), to resist persuasive influence (Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 1993), and to reject opinion deviates (Kruglanski & Webster, 1991). If the theory of lay epistemics is correct, there are situational and dispositional factors that may encourage a general cognitive-motivational orientation toward the social world that is either open and exploratory or closed and immutable .…”

When Plans Change: Examining How People Evaluate Timing Changes in Work Organizations

“…First, the hastening of an outcome can introduce time compression, the experience of which can lead to responses similar to those associated with time pressure (see Svenson & Maule, 1993;Moore, 2000 for reviews). Under pressure to complete complex tasks quickly, individuals have been found to experience anxious emotional reactions (Hockey, 1986) and sub-perform cognitively; i.e., they "freeze" on early information and rely on sub-optimal processing heuristics (e.g., de Dreu, Koole, & Oldersma, 1999;Kruglanski & Webster, 1996;Webster, 1993;Kaplan, Wanshula, & Zanna, 1993). Thus, when hastenings produce an experience of time compression, research on time pressure suggests that negative cognitive and emotional costs may be evoked.…”

Reflexion and reflection: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to attributional inference

“…In these cases, the system engages in pseudodiagnostic processing of the evidence such that only the probability of the behavior occurring given the hypothesized disposition, p(B/D), is calculated in order to assess the actor's disposition ( Trope & Liberman, 1993Trope & Gaunt, 1999). Although this is not strictly a pattern-matching function, pseudodiagnostic processing will produce outcomes similar to those produced by the X-system, namely, affirming the consequent and generating a correspondence bias (Corneille, Leyens, Yzerbyt, & Walther, 1999, Tetlock, 1985Webster, 1993).…”