Abstract
L. A. McArthur's (see record) test of H. H. Kelley's hypothesis that people utilize consensus and distinctiveness information when making causal attributions revealed that distinctiveness information had more impact on attributions than consensus information. The present investigation, with 66 undergraduates, systematically tested McArthur's hypothesis that the differential efficacy of the 2 information variables was due to the fact that distinctiveness information had pertained to variations in an effect across things, while consensus information had pertained to variations across persons. Ss made causal attributions for events of the form agent verbs target, accompanied either by no information or by some combination of high- or low-consensus, high- or low-distinctiveness, and high-consistency information. Agents and targets were systematically varied so that consensus and distinctiveness information each pertained to persons for half of the events and to things for the remainder. Contrary to prediction, distinctiveness information influenced causal attributions more than consensus information, even though these information variables were not distinguished by the type of stimuli to which they pertained. Consensus information tended to be most effective when it pertained to persons, while distinctiveness information tended to be most effective when it pertained to things.