HUMAN JUDGEMENT EXPERIMENT
The age old saying "People are what they do" has long been ingrained in the psyche of every individual in every culture. It is even stated in the Bible, regarded by many as the book of truth, that "every man should be seen in the light of his actions". In other words good people only do good deeds, while evil people only perform evil deeds. However, the world in which we live in is not that clear cut. As we all know a killer can also be a kind and loving father to his children as in the case of Nazi officers during World War Two. This mistake of judging a book by it's cover is referred to as the correspondence bias. The correspondence bias refers to the tendency of individuals to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the role of dispositional factors in other peoples behaviour (Ross, 1977). Another term for the correspondence bias is fundamental attribution error. In other words individuals tend to underestimate the importance of situational factors and to overestimate the degree to which an action and its outcomes reflect on the actors' disposition. The term fundamental comes about due to empirical findings that seemingly suggests that the tendency to underestimate the impact of situation
In an earlier study done by Jones and Harris (1967) subjects were asked to evaluate an author's attitude toward Fidel Castro after reading either a pro- or anti- Castro essay written by the authors. It was found that participants in this study attributed to the authors an attitude that corresponded to the content of the essay even when the essay was written under a no-choice conditions. This present experiment also tries to examine this phenomenon, only this time it is with regard to the level of need for cognition an individual usually possesses. components of the social inference process. In J.S. Uleman & J.A. Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: D'Agostino & Fincher-Keifer, (1992) studied the effects of the level of an individual's cognitive expenditure or level of how much and individual enjoys expending more cognitive effort (need for cognition) in relation to them making any attributional errors. Need for cognition refers to an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortfull cognitive activity (Petty & Cacioppo, 1982). A scale was used to measure whether an individual was a high or low need for cognition individual. The participants were asked to answer questions on whether they enjoyed to expend more cognitive resources than normally required on any job. High need for cognition subjects expend more effort in the processing and integration of inconsistent information and are less prone to the primacy effect (D'Agostino & Fincher-Keifer, 1992). They are more likely to carefully process and elaborate the arguments of persuasive messages and are less likely than low cognition subjects to rely on cognitive heuristics (rules of thumb) and other peripheral cues to asses the validity of these messages. As a result high need for cognition subjects are more responsive to argument quality (Petty & Cacioppo, 1982). experimental Social Psychology. 3, 1-24.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Mean Lower, Canterbury University, World War, D'Agostino Fincher-Keifer, Fidel Castro, Cognition Scale, Materials Experimental, Cacioppo Petty, Petty Cacioppo, Christchurch Zealand, attribution error, correspondence bias, cognition individuals, cognition scale, low cognition, cognitive resources, fundamental attribution, fundamental attribution error, cognition subjects, answer questions, manipulation check, d'agostino fincher-keifer 1992, low cognition individuals, situational factors overestimate, 7 likert scale,
Approximate Word count = 2588
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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