Causal Attribution of Success and Failure as a Function of Authoritarianism and Sex

Abstract

We predicted that authoritarian actors would engage in defensive attribution, and authoritarian observers would derogate the other, to a greater extent than egalitarian perceivers. 48 male and 48 female college students were run in pairs of same sex and authoritarianism. A set of easy anagrams was given to subjects in success conditions and difficult anagrams to those in failure conditions. Each subject rated own outcome and other outcome in terms of internal factors of ability and effort, and external factors of task and luck. We found that authoritarian actors were more internal than egalitarian actors only in the condition own success-other's failure. Authoritarian observers, as compared to egalitarians, were more external for other's success and more internal for other's failure only when own outcome was successful. It seems that authoritarian perceivers exaggerate their abilities and derogate the other only when they are clearly in a superior position vis-a-vis the other. There were no sex differences as a function of outcome and authoritarianism.

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