ALLISON, MACKIE, MULLER, & WORTH (1993):
How do perceivers respond to inconsistent dispositional information?

• Method:
  
  
  • Subjects: Eighty-nine male and fifteen female University of Richmond students taking an introductory psychology course.
    
    
  • Procedure:
    
    
    • Subjects were given a short essay to read that was described as having been prepared by another undergraduate, Harris Jones, in a "creative writing course" and that their task as subjects was to make "judgments of another's personality and attitudes on the basis of very limited information."
      
      
    • Half of the subjects were told Jones was compelled to write a pro-Castro essay and half were told Jones was forced to write an anti-Castro essay. Thus essay direction constituted one independent variable.
      
      
    • After making the standard dependent judgments of Jones's true attitudes, subjects were presented with a second essay from Jones, supposedly written for the same course 9 months later at the end of the academic year. The rub was that for half of all subjects (but not the other half), the position assigned for these later essays was the one opposite assigned for the first essay. Thus, for half the subjects, whatever position Jones advocated in the first essay was reversed in the arguments of the second essay.
      
      
    • Subjects again judged Jones's true attitude at the time of the second essay and also indicated how much they believed Jones's attitudes had changed over the course of the 9 month period.
      
      
  • Note that the dependent measure (ratings of Jones's true attitudes) could vary from 1 to 7 with higher scores indicating greater support for Castro.
    
    
• Results:
  
  
  • Repeated Position Conditions (all positions assigned):
    
    
    • Pro/Pro-Castro Essayists:
      
      
      • time 1 = 4.24
      • time 2 = 5.26
        
        
    • Anti/Anti-Castro Essayists:
      
      
      • time 1 = 1.18
      • time 2 = 1.86
        
        
  • Different Position Conditions (all positions assigned):
    
    
    • Pro/Anti-Castro Essayists:
      
      
      • time 1 = 3.67
      • time 2 = 2.13
        
        
    • Anti/Pro-Castro Essayists:
      
      
      • time 1 = 2.45
      • time 2 = 4.17
        
        
• Discussion (Consider each of these in turn):
  
  
  1. Do these findings demonstrate correspondence bias?
     
     
  2. What happens when perceivers encounter two seemingly inconsistent and situationally-demanded "performances"? How might this reflect on the Heche case?