Dispositional and situational attribution of COVID-19 risk: A content analysis of response typology (Version: 1)

Pre-Peer Review Version 1: In the current COVID-19 pandemic, there have been official health recommendations of social distancing, thorough handwashing, and self-isolation to prevent the spread of the virus. However, compliance with these recommendations has been mixed. We suggest that non-compliance may be justified by one’s (mis)perception of their own COVID-19 risk. In this paper, we explore the dispositional and situational attribution of self-reported COVID-19 risk, as per Heider’s Attribution Theory. We conducted a content and framework analysis of responses to an online survey, in which participants (N = 114) were asked to rate their likelihood of contracting the COVID-19 virus, before providing textual responses to explain their rating. Overall, we observed that generally, participants who rated their risk to be low made more dispositional attributions (i.e. attributing their risk to factors such as age and own personal hygiene) whereas higher risk participants made more situational attributions (i.e. attributing COVID-19 risk to government decision-making and other people’s cleanliness). A finalised framework of five response typologies including intrinsic, behavioural, balanced, contextual, and disengaged responses was systematically applied to the data. These results will be discussed in the context of attribution theory and risk perception, whilst providing future recommendations for research that tackles non-compliance of COVID-19 behaviours.

The Luck of the Draw: How Attributions for Poverty Shape Support for Economic Inequality

Despite growing economic inequality the American population remains relatively un-motivatedto tackle this issue–why? In six studies (n = 34,198), I aimed to answer this question byexploring the link between both dispositional and situational attributions for poverty andsupport for economic inequality. In Study 1 I used cross-national data from 34 countriesto examine the relationship between attributions for poverty and support for economic inequality.I found that people demonstrated less support for economic inequality in countrieswhere the majority of respondents provided situational (as opposed to dispositional) attributionsfor poverty. In Study 2a I had participants complete an immersive online povertysimulation or play Monopoly. I found that relative to Monopoly, the poverty simulationled to an increase in situational attributions for poverty and turn diminished support foreconomic inequality and increased support for redistribution. In Study 2b I conducted ahigh-powered pre-registered replication and extension of these results. In Study 3a, I presentedparticipants with evidence counter to the stereotype that the poor are lazy by havingthem interact with a low-status (versus average-status) status confederate. I found that thecross-status interaction led to a decrease in dispositional attributions for poverty which inturn decreased support for economic inequality. In Study 3b I conducted a high-poweredpre-registered replication which strengthened the design of the previous study and largelyreplicated these results. Lastly, in Study 4, in order to determine the specificity of relationshipbetween causal attributions and support for economic inequality I conducted a fieldquasi-experiment in undergraduates enrolled in various introductory psychology classes. Icompared attributions for poverty and support for economic inequality over the course of asemester in students who were taking a class that explicitly highlights the situational causesof behaviour versus a series of classes without this explicit framing. I found that taking acourse centred around demonstrating the impact situational factors have in influencing behaviourdid not shift support for economic inequality relative to students in various controlclasses. Overall, this dissertation presents the first experiments showing how attributions forpoverty can shape broader economic attitudes, such as support for economic inequality andhow various simple and low-cost interventions can be leveraged to promote greater socialequality.

Spontaneous Mentalizing Predicts the Fundamental Attribution Error

When explaining the reasons for others' behavior, perceivers often overemphasize underlying dispositions and personality traits over the power of the situation, a tendency known as the fundamental attribution error. One possibility is that this bias results from the spontaneous processing of others' mental states, such as their momentary feelings or more enduring personality characteristics. Here, we use fMRI to test this hypothesis. Participants read a series of stories that described a target's ambiguous behavior in response to a specific social situation and later judged whether that act was attributable to the target's internal dispositions or to external situational factors. Neural regions consistently associated with mental state inference—especially, the medial pFC—strongly predicted whether participants later made dispositional attributions. These results suggest that the spontaneous engagement of mentalizing may underlie the biased tendency to attribute behavior to dispositional over situational forces.