You were asked to infer the writer’s attitudes after reading an exam essay. If you were in the “Heads” condition, you read an essay arguing in favor of school vouchers; if you were in the “Tails” condition, you read an essay arguing against school vouchers. Arguably, in neither case was the essay indicative of the writer’s attitude because the course instructor was described as ASSIGNING the particular position the writer was told to defend. Presumably almost all students would have followed the teacher’s instructions and written a strong exam essay regardless of their personal views.
Did you nonetheless ascribe to the student a personal pro-voucher or an anti-voucher attitude depending on the assigned position taken in the essay response you read? Remember, the question you recently responded to was the following:
What do you believe the essay author’s actual attitude toward school vouchers is?
Strongly Negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Strongly Positive
If you read the pro-vouchers essay (Heads Condition), was your response to the above question over the middle value of 4? If you read the con-vouchers essay (Tails Condition), was your response below the middle value of 4?
Most people believe the essay writers actually favor the position they happen to have been assigned to take by the course instructor, either endorsing or opposing school vouchers. The chart below presents over 20 years of average responses of Carleton College students to these same materials and procedures.
Note: The summary “Overall” ratings reported at the bottoms of columns 3 and 4 are weighted means. Ratings were from 1 = Strongly Negative to 7 = Strongly Positive. This chart does not present statistical evaluations of the differences between the group means although all of the comparisons reported above were significantly different. The later Jones and Harris page (Part C, note 2) reviews the rationale for this approach to presenting key findings in the Module. The con and pro essay positions encountered in these two conditions were both presented as having been assigned for an examination by a course teacher.
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SUMMARY QUESTIONS FOR STUDENT CONSIDERATION:
1. Given that the middle value on the attitude scale was 4.0, what do the above responses suggest overall about the influence of the position taken in the essays on the readers’ judgments of the writers’ true attitudes? Was your judgment about the writer’s true attitude in keeping or not with the general pattern shown above?
2. According to past results, judgments about the writer’s true attitude were influenced by the position taken in the essay even though the writer was assigned the position to defend. Should perceivers have paid any attention to the position advocated in the essay given that the essayist was basically obligated to defend a particular view? Could there be cues in the essays that may have led perceivers to discern the writer’s true personal attitude? Alternatively, if perceivers take the essay to be irrelevant under these circumstances, what other grounds might there be for estimating the writer’s true attitude? Note: this is a question we’ll also return to in Part D4 when discussing explanations of the research finding.
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NEXT STEP: Understanding Correspondence Bias
What does Lady Gaga have to do with all of this? To find out and read about the social perception phenomenon demonstrated in this study, click here.
“Lady Gaga Marry The Night” by qthomasbower
is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
