Do People Use Consensus Information in Making Causal Attributions ?

Nisbett and Borgida's failure to obtain effects for consensus information on person versus situation attributions was questioned regarding their operationalization of consensus. Nisbett and Borgida's finding was replicated, but an operationalization of consensus designed to reflect Kelley's conceptual criterion of perceived covariation and to represent more levels of consensus resulted in significant consensus effects on person versus situation attributions In Study 2, consensus information was found to affect specific traits judged to be relevant to the given behavior. In addition, the second study found significant effects for consensus information on the subjects' predictions of target persons' behavior. Included were discussions of (a) issues regarding operationalization of the consensus variable, (b) issues regarding operationalization of dependent variables in consensus research, and (c) the relationship between consensus research in the area of attribution and base-rate research in the area of the psychology of prediction (Kahneman & Tversky).