Abstract
The correspondence bias is the tendency to draw inferences about a person's unique and enduring dispositions from behaviors that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur. Although this tendency is one of the most fundamental phenomena in social psychology, its causes and consequences remain poorly understood. This article sketches an intellectual history of the correspondence bias as an evolving problem in social psychology, describes 4 mechanisms (lack of awareness, unrealistic expectations, inflated categorizations, and incomplete corrections) that produce distinct forms of correspondence bias, and discusses how the consequences of correspondence-biased inferences may perpetuate such inferences.
Keywords
PsychologyInferenceCognitive psychologySocial psychologySocial perceptionEpistemologyPerception
Related Publications
Egoistic and Moralistic Biases in Self‐Perception: The Interplay of Self‐Deceptive Styles With Basic Traits and Motives
The literature on personality traits and defense mechanisms suggests individual differences in two self‐favoring tendencies, which we label “egoistic bias” and “moralistic bias....
Status, communality, and agency: Implications for stereotypes of gender and other groups.
Four studies addressed the hypothesis, based on correspondence bias, that low- relative to high-status individuals are perceived as more communal and less agentic. Study 1 insta...
Incentive Systems: A Theory of Organizations
Organizations distribute incentives to individuals in order to induce them to contribute activity. Aspects of organizational behavior and change are explained by exploring the d...
Attention and weight in person perception: The impact of negative and extreme behavior.
Social perceivers process selected aspects of the stimulus array presented by another person. This article argues that such selectivity is based on the informativeness of person...
WELCOME TO THE MEN'S CLUB
This study focuses on multiple masculinities conceptualized in terms of sociality, a concept used to refer to nonsexual interpersonal attractions. Through male homosocial hetero...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1995
- Type
- review
- Volume
- 117
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 21-38
- Citations
- 1793
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
1793
OpenAlex
Cite This
Daniel T. Gilbert,
Patrick S. Malone
(1995).
The correspondence bias..
Psychological Bulletin
, 117
(1)
, 21-38.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21