Interestingly, actors and actresses are often thought to possess the qualities they portray in their roles. For example, Corbin Bernson, who portrayed a lawyer on the television show L.A. Law a few years ago, reported that he once was approached on a plane by a man seeking his opinion on a legal brief! Benson quipped, "I had to explain to this man that I'm not really a lawyer. I'm just glad he wasn't a brain surgeon and I wasn't on 'St. Elsewhere' [a popular medical show at that time]." How might this illustrate correspondence bias?
Of course, advertisers exploit this fallacy of public perception when they employ actors who play or have played medical roles on television or film to act as spokespersons for medicines. Can you think of other advertising examples that demonstrate this?
An interesting twist on this perceptual tendency is provided in the quote below, which was taken from an article on Anne Heche. Heche is an actress who was, at the time, playing a heterosexual romantic lead in the film "Six Days, Seven Nights". (She is stranded on a deserted island with a cargo pilot played by Harrison Ford. You can fill in the details!) At the same time, Heche's openly gay private life was widely discussed in the media due to her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. Would people fail to respond to Heche's movie portrayal given what was known about her private life? What do you think the implications of correspondence bias are for this?
See a report on the research study by Allison, Mackie, Muller, and Worth (1993) for some findings that may address these questions.
It's not uncommon for attorneys (e.g., members of the American Civil Liberties Union) who defend the rights of unpopular groups (e.g., the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party) to march in support of their causes to be labeled Klan or Nazi lovers. How might this be explained by correspondence bias?
Defense attorneys for clients accused of notorious crimes often face the same kind of response. Here is how the defense attorney Gerry Spence, writing in the July 1997 Harper's Magazine, described his pat response to the question frequently put to him, "How can you defend those people?" [I am paraphrasing from the original below]
-
"Well, do you think the
defendant should have a trial before we hang him? If so, should
it be a fair trial? If it is to be a fair trial, should the
accused be provided with an attorney? If he is to be provided
with an attorney, should the attorney be competent? Well, then,
if the defense attorney knows that the defendent is guilty,
should he try to lose the case? If not, should he do his best
to make the prosecution prove its case beyond a reasonable
doubt? And if he does his best, and the prosecution fails to
prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and the jury acquits
the guilty accused, who[m] do you blame? Do you blame the
defense attorney who has done his job, or the prosecutor who
has not?"