Attribution Bias

This article explores the evolving concept of criminal responsibility within the context of international criminal law, drawing on lessons from the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and various international tribunals. By examining the application of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in non-international armed conflicts, particularly through the case of Libya, the article delves into how international law has progressively expanded its scope to hold non-state actors accountable for serious crimes. The discussion reflects on the transition of individual criminal responsibility from natural law principles, as reintroduced by the Nuremberg Trials, to its solidification as positive law under the Rome Statute. The article also addresses the gradual erosion of the non-intervention principle and the rise of international regulation over conduct traditionally managed by domestic law. It highlights how international criminal law navigates complex jurisdictional issues and contextual elements to impose liability, regardless of the perpetrator's state affiliation, while recognizing the relevance of the actor's status in determining crimes such as Crimes against Humanity or war crimes involving Prisoners of War. The dynamic and adaptable nature of international law is showcased in its ability to respond to global shifts and values.

Adolescents who hold an entity theory of personalitythe belief that people cannot changeare more likely to report internalizing symptoms during the socially stressful transition to high school. It has been puzzling, however, why a cognitive belief about the potential for change predicts symptoms of an affective disorder. The present research integrated three modelsimplicit theories, hopelessness theories of depression, and the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threatto shed light on this issue. Study 1 replicated the link between an entity theory and internalizing symptoms by synthesizing multiple datasets (N = 6,910). Study 2 examined potential mechanisms underlying this link using 8-month longitudinal data and 10-day diary reports during the stressful first year of high school (N = 533, 3,199 daily reports). The results showed that an entity theory of personality predicted increases in internalizing symptoms through tendencies to make fixed trait causal attributions about the self and maladaptive (i.e., "threat") stress appraisals. The findings support an integrative model whereby situation-general beliefs accumulate negative consequences for psychopathology via situation-specific attributions and appraisals.

Background: Aberrant attributional styles are counted to a set of circumscribed cognitive biases that are implicated in the pathogenesis of (paranoid) psychosis. However, evidence for a specific profile (e.g., an exaggerated selfserving bias, other-blaming bias) has become equivocal over the years. More recently, one-sided (monocausal) attributions have been reported in patients with psychosis. Methods: We compared a large sample of patients with diagnosed schizophrenia (n = 145) to nonclinical controls (n = 30) on a revised version of the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire (IPSAQ-R). In this task, participants have to assign probability estimates to each of three potential causes (i.e., myself, others, circumstances) for a specific (negative or positive) event. Results: Participants with schizophrenia displayed an abolished self-serving bias and showed a significant preference for one-sided/monocausal attributions, which was neither correlated with jumping to conclusions nor overconfidence in errors. School education correlated with less monocausal attributions. We did not find any congruence between attributional styles with core delusional ideas. Conclusions: Our study corroborates earlier investigations showing that monocausal attributions may play a role in the pathogenesis of psychosis; this bias unlikely represents an epiphenomenon of established biases. Unexpectedly, attributional styles (e.g., external-blaming) did not shape delusional contents. The true prevalence of monocausal attributions in psychosis is perhaps underestimated in the study, as groups were equated on school education, which was correlated with monocausal attributions.

Background: Aberrant attributional styles are counted to a set of circumscribed cognitive biases that are implicated in the pathogenesis of (paranoid) psychosis. However, evidence for a specific profile (e.g., an exaggerated selfserving bias, other-blaming bias) has become equivocal over the years. More recently, one-sided (monocausal) attributions have been reported in patients with psychosis. Methods: We compared a large sample of patients with diagnosed schizophrenia (n = 145) to nonclinical controls (n = 30) on a revised version of the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire (IPSAQ-R). In this task, participants have to assign probability estimates to each of three potential causes (i.e., myself, others, circumstances) for a specific (negative or positive) event. Results: Participants with schizophrenia displayed an abolished self-serving bias and showed a significant preference for one-sided/monocausal attributions, which was neither correlated with jumping to conclusions nor overconfidence in errors. School education correlated with less monocausal attributions. We did not find any congruence between attributional styles with core delusional ideas. Conclusions: Our study corroborates earlier investigations showing that monocausal attributions may play a role in the pathogenesis of psychosis; this bias unlikely represents an epiphenomenon of established biases. Unexpectedly, attributional styles (e.g., external-blaming) did not shape delusional contents. The true prevalence of monocausal attributions in psychosis is perhaps underestimated in the study, as groups were equated on school education, which was correlated with monocausal attributions.

Studies on attribution biases in schizophrenia have produced mixed results, whereas such biases have been more consistently reported in people with anxiety disorders. Anxiety comorbidities are frequent in schizophrenia, in particular social anxiety disorder, which could influence their patterns of attribution biases. The objective of the present study was thus to determine if individuals with schizophrenia and a comorbid social anxiety disorder (SZ+) show distinct attribution biases as compared with individuals with schizophrenia without social anxiety (SZ-) and healthy controls. Attribution biases were assessed with the Internal, Personal, and Situational Attributions Questionnaire in 41 individual with schizophrenia and 41 healthy controls. Results revealed the lack of the normal externalizing bias in SZ+, whereas SZ-did not significantly differ from healthy controls on this dimension. The personalizing bias was not influenced by social anxiety but was in contrast linked with delusions, with a greater personalizing bias in individuals with current delusions. Future studies on attribution biases in schizophrenia should carefully document symptom presentation, including social anxiety.

Compared the self perceptions and attributions of attention deficit hyperactivity disordered (ADHD) and control boys. The ADHD boys viewed themselves as no worse than control boys on self-perceived competence and global self-worth, especially when internalizing symptomatology was taken into account statistically through covariance analyses. In terms of attributions, the ADHD boys were more likely to take responsibility for social successes and less likely to take responsibility for social failures than the control boys. Although the ADHD boys scored significantly higher on the Children's Depression Inventory, this difference was no longer significant when items dealing with behavior, school, and social problems were excluded. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding how the attributions and self-perceptions of ADHD boys may mediate their performance in challenging academic and social situations. Until recently, research examining cognitive-motivational variables in attention deficit hyperactivity disordered (ADHD) children, such as self-per-Manuscript

When comparing themselves with others, people often evaluate their own behaviors more favorably. This egocentric tendency is often categorized as a bias of attribution, with favorable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of one's own behavior and that of others. However, studies on information availability in social contexts offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent informational asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. Since biases of attribution and availability often co-exist and interact with each other, it is not known whether they are both necessary for the egocentric biases to emerge. In this study, we used a design that allowed us to directly compare the contribution of these two distinct sources of bias to judgements about the difficulty of an effortful task. Participants exhibited no attribution bias as judgements made for themselves did not differ from those made for others. Importantly, however, participants perceived the tasks they actively performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, and this bias was magnified as the overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that information asymmetries inherent to the difference between actively performing a task and observing it can drive egocentric biases in effort evaluations on their own and without a contribution from biases of attribution.

Considerable attention has been given to the study of various dynamics of aggressive behaviour and psychologists have come up with different causal mechanisms explaining aggression. Social scientists need to integrate previous findings and devise intervention plans for the dysfunctional aggression so that deterioration of society can be prevented. The present study was carried out with a purpose of reducing aggressive tendencies by applying social cognitive intervention (SCI). A total of 313 participants with the mean age of 13.60 years (SD = 1.03 years) were administered Aggression Questionnaire. Out of 313 participants, 126 participants scoring high on aggression were screened in and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The Experimental group was given a six-session SCI designed specifically to reduce aggression and hostile attribution of intent (HAI). The intervention mainly focused on modifying cognitions and information processing style of aggressive adolescents used by them in ambiguous social situations involving negative outcome. Significant reduction in aggression level and HAI was observed among participants in experimental group as compared with control group. For adolescents at risk, SCI may hold a promise to change information processing patterns and subsequent aggressive tendencies.

Parental gender socialization refers to ways in which parents teach their children social expectations associated with gender. Relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying gender socialization. An overview of cognitive and neural processes underlying parental gender socialization is provided. Regarding cognitive processes, evidence exists that parents’ implicit and explicit gender stereotypes, attitudes, and gendered attributions are implicated in gender socialization. Other cognitive factors, such as intergroup attitudes, gender essentialism, internal motivation for parenting without gender stereotypes, gender identity, and conflict resolution are theoretically relevant mechanisms underlying gender socialization, but need further investigation. Regarding neural processes, studies demonstrated that attentional processing, conflict monitoring, behavior regulation, and reward processing might underlie stereotypes and biased behavior. However, more research is necessary t...

Introduction: Metacognition is the ability to reflect on one's own cognitive processes, monitor and regulate them to enhance mental performance. Social cognition involves the capacity to perceive and respond to social cues from others. The study of metacognition and social cognition is an expanding research field in psychiatry. Both domains are related to neurocognition, symptoms and psychosocial functioning in schizophrenia. Understanding the relationship between social cognition and metacognition may be pivotal for enhancing the treatment of cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia. Methods: We conducted a PRISMA systematic review and meta-analysis on quantitative studies comparing metacognition to social cognitive outcomes in adult outpatients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Reports were retrieved from the Medline, ScienceDirect and PsycINFO databases up to July 13th, 2023. Risk of bias was assessed with the Cochrane tool. Results: Our review included 1,036 participants across 17 reports, with 12 reports included in the meta-analysis. We found a significant positive correlation (r = 0.28, 95% CI: [0.14, 0.41]) between social cognition and metacognition. Subgroup analyses indicated that metacognition was specifically associated with theory of mind, attribution, and emotion processing. Different patterns of correlations were observed according to the assessment of metacognition and its subdimensions. Conclusion: Despite discrepancies among the included studies, no publication bias was detected. The results suggest that metacognition and social cognition are distinct but related constructs. Those processes should be assessed and treated together, along with neurocognition, in schizophrenia.

Consistent with the proposal that people reiy on implicit causal theories that relate different types of attributions to behaviors that differ in valence. 3 studies showed that in addition to predicting more positive than negative behavior in the target, participants produced an attribution-prediction bias. This bias indicated that persons with a dispositional orientation predicted more negative and less positive behavior from the target than persons with a situational orientation. The authors produced these findings in Studies 1 and 2 by manipulating the perceived characteristic motives of a target (dispositional. situational). In Study 3 the authors used a cultural operationalization of attributional orientations by examining the responses of Western students (dispositionalists) and East Asian students (situationalists). Finally, in support of the underlying mechanism. Study 4 showed that activating dispositional or situational knowledge facilitated the encoding of negative and positive behaviors, respectively.

Numerous studies have assessed the socio-cognitive profile in Williams syndrome (WS) and, independently, in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS). Yet, a cross-syndrome comparison of these abilities between individuals with these two syndromes with known social deficits has not been conducted. Eighty-two children participated in four study groups: WS (n = 18), 22q112.DS (n = 24), age-matched individuals with idiopathic developmental disability (IDD; n = 20) and typically developing (TD) controls (n = 20). Participants completed four socio-cognitive tests: facial emotion recognition, mental state attribution, differentiating real from apparent emotions and trait inference based on motives and actions-outcomes. The current findings demonstrate that children with WS were better in labelling happy faces compared with children with 22q11.2DS, partially reflecting their exaggerated social drive. In the false belief task, however, the WS and IDD groups performed poorly compared with the 22...

People are not fully rational and their decisions suffer from errors and biases. Because behavioural finance research focuses on investor irrationality, additional attention should examine managerial decision-making. This study helps to fill this gap by addressing three objectives: (a) to identify whether owners of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India are prone toward behavioural bias; (b) to assess the impact of these biases on their decision-making; and (c) to determine whether age, experience, education, and gender affect their propensity to exhibit behavioural biases. Using responses from 154 Indian SME owners, the study uses logistic regression to assess how demographic variables affect behavioural biases. The evidence shows that SME owners are prone to self-attribution, overconfidence, and loss aversion, but not anchoring. Differences exist in the working capital management decisions of owners prone to behavioural biases. Gender, age, and experience significantly affect the propensity to exhibit behavioural biases.

BackgroundPoor social cognition is prevalent in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Some authors argue that these effects are symptom-specific and that socio-cognitive difficulties (e.g. theory of mind) are strongly associated with thought disorder and symptoms of disorganisation.AimsThe current review tests the strength of this association.MethodWe meta-analysed studies published between 1980 and 2016 that tested the association between social cognition and these symptoms in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.ResultsOur search (PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Web of Science) identified 123 studies (N = 9107). Overall effect size as r = −0.313, indicating a moderate association between symptoms and social cognition. Subanalyses yielded a moderate association between symptoms and theory of mind (r = −0.349) and emotion recognition (r = −0.334), but smaller effect sizes for social perception (r = −0.188), emotion regulation (r = −0.169) and attributional biases (r = −0.143).ConclusionsThe associati...

Previous studies of attributions for success and failure have relied upon a theoretically derived set of causal attributions, either luck versus skill (derived from Rotter, 1%6) or ability, effort, luck, and task difficulty (Weiner et al., 1971; Weiner, 1972). The same tendency of relying upon a set of logically derived cues has been evident in investigations of information-processing in making attributional judgments for success and failure (e.g., Fontaine, 1972; Frieze & Weiner, 1971). Two studies were conducted which employed an open-ended format to determine the relevance of the causal categories and information which have been utilized in previous studies. Results of these studies supported the validity of Previously employed causal categories and information cues as well as establishing other important but previously ignored causes and sources of information. These studies served as partial fulfillment for the requirements for the Ph.D. The author would like to thank all the members of her committee and particularly Bernard Weiner for all his help and suggestions relating to this study and others. Also, she would like to acknowledge the support provided by USPHS Training Grant lTlMH11,6%.

Aim-A biased attributional style, in which negative events are attributed to external and personal causes, is associated with paranoid delusions in schizophrenia. It is not known whether this biased attributional style also characterizes individuals at clinical risk for psychosis, or if it is associated with their emergent paranoia. Methods-33 clinical high-risk patients and 15 age-and gender-similar controls were assessed with the Internal, Personal, and Situational Attributions Questionnaire for externalizing and personalizing attributional biases and for potential correlates with suspiciousness and other symptoms. Results-Both patients and controls had a similar external-personalizing attributional style, which was unrelated to symptoms, including suspiciousness. Conclusions-Consistent with other studies, a biased attributional style was not associated with subthreshold paranoia. Therefore, a biased attributional style is likely not a trait that contributes to emergent paranoid delusions, but instead a state-dependent correlate of paranoid delusions.

The goal of the current study is to clarify the relationship between social information processing (e.g., visual attention to cues of hostility, hostility attribution bias, and facial expression emotion labeling) and aggressive tendencies. Thirty adults were recruited in the eye-tracking study that measured various components in social information processing. Baseline aggressive tendencies were measured using the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AQ). Visual attention towards hostile objects was measured as the proportion of eye gaze fixation duration on cues of hostility. Hostility attribution bias was measured with the rating results for emotions of characters in the images. The results show that the eye gaze duration on hostile characters was significantly inversely correlated with the AQ score and less eye contact with an angry face. The eye gaze duration on hostile object was not significantly associated with hostility attribution bias, although hostility attribution bias wa...

In many settings, economic outcomes depend on the competence and effort of the agents involved, and also on luck. When principals assess agents’ performance they can suffer from attribution bias by gender: male agents may be assessed more favorably than female agents because males will be rewarded for good luck, while women are punished for bad luck. We conduct a laboratory experiment to test whether principals judge agents’ outcomes differently by gender. Agents perform tasks for the principals and the realized outcomes depend on both the agents’ performance and luck. Principals then assess agents’ performance and decide what to pay the agents. Our experimental results do not show evidence consistent with attribution bias by gender. While principals’ payments and beliefs about agent performance are heavily influenced by realized outcomes, they do not depend on the gender of the agent. We find suggestive evidence that the interaction between the gender of the principal and the agent play...

Decision makers in positions of power often make unobserved choices under risk and uncertainty. In many cases, they face a trade-off between maximizing their own payoff and those of other individuals. What inferences are made in such instances about their choices when only outcomes are observable? We conduct two experiments that investigate whether outcomes are attributed to luck or choices. Decision makers choose between two investment options, where the more costly option has a higher chance of delivering a good outcome (that is, a higher payoff) for the group. We show that attribution biases exist in the evaluation of good outcomes. On average, good outcomes of decision makers are attributed more to luck as compared to bad outcomes. This asymmetry implies that decision makers get too little credit for their successes. The biases are exhibited by those individuals who make or would make the less prosocial choice for the group as decision makers, suggesting that a consensus effect may be shaping both the belief formation and updating processes. Keywords Decision-making under risk • Beliefs about others' decisions • Attribution biases • Social preferences • Consensus effect • Experiments Previous versions of this paper were circulated under the titles "By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others' outcomes" and "Attribution biases in leadership: Is it effort or luck?". We would like to thank the Editor and three anonymous reviewers,

Self-serving biases in attribution, while found with relative consistency in research with Western samples, have rarely been found in Japanese samples typically recruited for research. However, research conducted with Japanese participants to date has tended to use forced choice and/or reactive paradigms, with school or university students, focusing mainly on academic performance or arbitrary and/or researcher-selected tasks. This archival study explored whether self-serving attributional biases would be shown in the real-life attributions for sporting performance made by elite Olympic athletes from Japan and Australia. Attributions (N = 216) were extracted from the sports pages of Japanese and Australian newspapers and rated by Australian judges for locus and controllability. It was hypothesised that Australian, but not Japanese, athletes would show self-serving biases such that they attributed wins to causes more internal and controllable than the causes to which they attributed losses. Contrary to predictions, self-serving biases were shown to at least some extent by athletes of both nationalities. Both Australian and Japanese men attributed wins to causes more internal than those to which they attributed losses. Women, however, attributed wins and losses to causes that did not differ significantly in terms of locus. All athletes tended to attribute wins to causes that were more controllable than the causes to which losses were attributed. Results are inconsistent with a large body of research suggesting that Japanese do not show self-serving biases in attribution, and are discussed in the light of differences in methodology, context and participants that may have contributed to these effects.

People are not fully rational and their decisions suffer from errors and biases. Because behavioural finance research focuses on investor irrationality, additional attention should examine managerial decision-making. This study helps to fill this gap by addressing three objectives: (a) to identify whether owners of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India are prone toward behavioural bias; (b) to assess the impact of these biases on their decision-making; and (c) to determine whether age, experience, education, and gender affect their propensity to exhibit behavioural biases. Using responses from 154 Indian SME owners, the study uses logistic regression to assess how demographic variables affect behavioural biases. The evidence shows that SME owners are prone to self-attribution, overconfidence, and loss aversion, but not anchoring. Differences exist in the working capital management decisions of owners prone to behavioural biases. Gender, age, and experience significantly affect the propensity to exhibit behavioural biases.

This research examined naturally occurring causal attributions in sexual assault trial judgments and their consequence (i.e., sentence). Causal attributions were reliably identified and analyzed for how they functioned in the narrative of the judgment. Whether the attributions discursively placed the cause within (internalizing attribution) or separate from the offender (externalizing attribution), described the cause as enduring and pervasive (saturating attribution) or as occurring within a particular context (situating attribution), and described the cause as owing to something violent (eg., a decision to be violent) or nonviolent (eg., being drunk). Results indicated that judges frequently made causal attributions, and the function of the attribution was significantly correlated with sentence (e.g., violent attributions were associated with higher sentence).

Dehumanization has the potential to account for different abusive behaviors because it involves making negative judgments of others that make it easier to harm them. However, research has not resorted to this mechanism to analyze teen dating violence (TDV) perpetration, nor has it examined its association with the broader representations of others linked to attachment. The first objective of this study was to analyze whether dehumanization of one’s partner (lesser perceived agency and experience) and attribution of evilness were associated with a higher level of TDV perpetration and specific attachment styles. The second objective was to develop a structural equation model (SEM) that allowed integration of the links between all these factors. Participants in this cross-sectional study were 1799 adolescents who completed a survey in high schools. The results showed that those who were classified as high in TDV perpetration did perceive lower agency, lower experience, and higher eviln...

Background: Hostile Attributional Bias (HAB) has been related to conduct problems. The common and unique associations between the different dimensions of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) symptoms, specific components of HAB, sex and types of aggression (overt and relational) in a community sample of 491 7-year-old children are investigated. Method: Teachers rated the children's ODD symptoms and aggression and the children self-reported about HAB. Multiple linear regressions showed that ODD dimensions were directly associated with both types of aggression. Results: Boys were more overtly aggressive and girls more relational. Emotional distress was directly associated with relational aggression. The relational component of HAB uniquely moderated the influence of the oppositional dimension on relational aggressive behaviour. Conclusions: The assessment of social cognition variables is necessary to approach specific interventions in the presence of ODD symptoms, as this may help to identify a subset of children prone to aggressive reactions.

When comparing themselves with others, people often perceive their own actions and behaviour favourably. This phenomenon is often categorised as a bias of attribution, with favourable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of one’s own behaviour and that of others. However, studies on availability biases offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent sensory asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. In this study, we used a paradigm that allowed us to directly compare these two distinct sources of bias. Participants perceived the tasks they performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, but demonstrated no bias driven by favourable self-evaluation. Furthermore, the degree of overestimation of the difficulty of performed tasks was magnified as overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that egocentric biases are in part derived from sensory asymmetries inherent to the first-person perspective.

The aim of this article is to take into account the explanations given by people involved in road accident (drivers, passengers and witnesses) so as to consider preconisation susceptible to improve road safety. Testimonies from 205 reports of the French "Gendarmerie Nationale" were analysed. The results show the existence of actor (driver)/observer (passenger and witness) asymmetry in attribution. In fact, observers give as many internal explanations as external explanations, when actors give more external explanations than internal explanations. This result can be interpreted in term of self-serving bias (in so far as we note an effect of the severity of the outcomes on the drivers' explanations) and also can be interpreted according to the theory of defensive attribution (even if we fail to show that observers' explanations can be influenced by accident severity). Actors and observers explain events with different categories (actor/observer asymmetry bias), but u...

The present research examined children’s anger proneness, emotion understanding, and maternal sensitivity during toddlerhood as predictors of children’s hostile attribution bias (HAB) during the later preschool years. At 2.8 years (N = 128), maternal sensitivity (e.g., child‐centered behavior) was observed during mother–child play and snack, and parents reported on children’s anger proneness. At 3.3 years, emotion understanding (i.e., ability to identify emotional expressions accurately) was measured via an interactive puppet interview. At 4.8 and 5.4 years, children's HAB was assessed via child responses to hypothetical vignettes of ambiguous peer provocations. Path models revealed that maternal sensitivity predicted fewer hostile attributions. In addition, emotion understanding and maternal sensitivity emerged as buffers against the negative effect of anger proneness on HAB. Specifically, greater anger proneness was associated with more frequent hostile attributions, but only ...

Considerable attention has been given to the study of various dynamics of aggressive behaviour and psychologists have come up with different causal mechanisms explaining aggression. Social scientists need to integrate previous findings and devise intervention plans for the dysfunctional aggression so that deterioration of society can be prevented. The present study was carried out with a purpose of reducing aggressive tendencies by applying social cognitive intervention (SCI). A total of 313 participants with the mean age of 13.60 years (SD = 1.03 years) were administered Aggression Questionnaire. Out of 313 participants, 126 participants scoring high on aggression were screened in and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The Experimental group was given a six-session SCI designed specifically to reduce aggression and hostile attribution of intent (HAI). The intervention mainly focused on modifying cognitions and information processing style of aggressive adolescents used by them in ambiguous social situations involving negative outcome. Significant reduction in aggression level and HAI was observed among participants in experimental group as compared with control group. For adolescents at risk, SCI may hold a promise to change information processing patterns and subsequent aggressive tendencies.

Two field studies examined the attributions made for the historically negative behaviour of a group as a whole, depending on whether the actions were committed by the ingroup or an outgroup. In the first study, Jewish people assigned more internal responsibility to Germans for their treatment of Jewish people during the Second World War than Germans assigned to their own group. In the second study, people attributed the negative historical actions of another nation more internally (and less externally) than similar negative historical actions committed by their own nation. This pattern of intergroup attributional bias was more pronounced among people who highly identified with their national ingroup. Outgroup homogeneity and perceptions of differences between the groups were also significantly predicted by ingroup identification. Links between social identity theory and the intergroup attribution bias are considered. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The aim of this study was to better understand the role of hostile attribution bias (HAB) in the relationship between cluster B personality traits and reactive aggression. Sixty-three French-speaking adults were asked to complete online questionnaires assessing their personality traits, hostile attribution bias, and aggressive behaviors. While brain activity was recorded, they were asked to read scenarios involving daily life interactions and to imagine why the characters (whose intentions were ambiguous) behaved in a provocative manner toward them. Following each scenario, we analyzed the N400 component of the event-related brain potential associated with the presentation of unexpected hostile or nonhostile intentions after each scenario. Results showed a stronger N400 amplitude during the presentation of unexpected nonhostile intentions (hostile expectancy violations) in the centro-parietal regions. There was no mediating effect of hostile or nonhostile expectancy violation in the relationship between cluster B personality characteristics and reactive aggression. Further studies are needed to better understand the psychological processes underlying aggressive behaviors in cluster B personality disorders.

Studies on attribution biases in schizophrenia have produced mixed results, whereas such biases have been more consistently reported in people with anxiety disorders. Anxiety comorbidities are frequent in schizophrenia, in particular social anxiety disorder, which could influence their patterns of attribution biases. The objective of the present study was thus to determine if individuals with schizophrenia and a comorbid social anxiety disorder (SZ+) show distinct attribution biases as compared with individuals with schizophrenia without social anxiety (SZ−) and healthy controls. Attribution biases were assessed with the Internal, Personal, and Situational Attributions Questionnaire in 41 individual with schizophrenia and 41 healthy controls. Results revealed the lack of the normal externalizing bias in SZ+, whereas SZ− did not significantly differ from healthy controls on this dimension. The personalizing bias was not influenced by social anxiety but was in contrast linked with delusions, with a greater personalizing bias in individuals with current delusions. Future studies on attribution biases in schizophrenia should carefully document symptom presentation, including social anxiety.

The role of suspicion in the dispositional inference process is examined. Perceivers who are led to become suspicious of the motives underlying a target's behavior appear to engage in more active and thoughtful attributional analyses than nonsuspicious perceivers. Suspicious perceivers resist drawing inferences from a target's behavior that reflect the correspondence bias (or fundamental attribution error), and they consciously deliberate about questions of plausible causes and categorizations of the target's behavior They are, however, quite willing to make strong correspondent inferences about the target if they learn additional contextual information that renders alternative explanations for the target's behavior less plausible. Implications of these findings for current multiple-stage models of the dispositional inference process are discussed, and the need for these and other models to give more consideration to the social nature of social perception is asserted.

Background: Poor social cognition is prevalent in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Some authors argue that these effects are symptom-specific and that socio-cognitive difficulties (e.g. Theory-of-Mind) are strongly associated with thought disorder (TD) and symptoms of disorganisation. Aims: The current review tests the strength of this association. Method: We meta-analysed studies published between 1980 and 2016 that tested the association between social cognition and these symptoms in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Results: Our search (PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Web of Science) identified 123 studies (N= 9107). Overall effect-size (ES) was r=-0.313, indicating a moderate association between symptoms and social cognition. Sub-analyses yielded a moderate association between symptoms and ToM (r=-0.349), emotion recognition (r=-0.334) but smaller ES for social perception (r=-0.188), emotion regulation (r=-0.169) and attributional biases (r=-0.143). Conclusions: The association is interpreted within models of communication that highlight the importance of mentalisation and processing of partner-specific cues in conversational alignment and grounding.

Aggression among youth is a public health problem that is often studied in the context of how youth interpret social information. Social cognitive factors, especially hostile attribution biases, have been identified as risk factors for the development of youth aggression, particularly across the transition to middle school. Parental behaviors, including parental aggression to children in the form of corporal punishment and other aggressive behavior, have also been linked to aggressive behavior in children at these ages. Despite the important role played by these two risk factors, the connection between the two has not been fully studied in the literature. This study examined the link between parental aggression and children’s hostile attributions longitudinally among a diverse sample of 123 boys as they entered middle school. Results support acceptance of a model in which parental aggression to children prior to entering middle school predicted children’s hostile attributions after ...

This study investigated whether and how deficits in executive functioning and distortions in appraisal processing are related to subtypes of aggressive behavior. The sample included 83 boys assessed using multi-informant reports and performance measures. Deficits in two executive functions, response inhibition and planning ability were related primarily to reactive aggression. Hostile attributional biases moderated relations between planning ability and proactive and reactive aggression subtypes, with minimal relations between planning deficits and aggression at low levels of hostile attributional bias. As the level of hostile attributional bias increased, the relation between planning deficits and reactive aggression became increasingly large in a positive direction whereas the relation between planning deficits and proactive aggression became increasingly negative. Additionally, hostile encoding moderated the relation between behavioral inhibition and reactive aggressive behavior. Results also suggested a mediational role for response inhibition in the relation between planning ability and reactive aggression.

Background: Why is it that certain violent criminals repeatedly find themselves engaged in brawls? Many inmates report having felt provoked or threatened by their victims, which might be due to a tendency to ascribe malicious intentions when faced with ambiguous social signals, termed hostile attribution bias. Methods: The present study presented morphed fear-anger faces to prison inmates with a history of violent crimes, a history of child sexual abuse, and to matched controls form the general population. Participants performed a fear-anger decision task. Analyses compared both response frequencies and measures derived from psychophysical functions fitted to the data. In addition, a test to distinguish basic facial expressions and questionnaires for aggression, psychopathy and personality disorders were administered. Results: Violent offenders present with a reliable hostile attribution bias, in that they rate ambiguous fear-anger expressions as more angry, compared to both the control population and perpetrators of child sexual abuse. Psychometric functions show a lowered threshold to detect anger in violent offenders compared to the general population. This effect is especially pronounced for male faces, correlates with self-reported aggression and presents in absence of a general emotion recognition impairment. Conclusions: The results indicate that a hostile attribution, related to individual level of aggression and pronounced for male faces, might be one mechanism mediating physical violence.

As the U.S. becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, interactions between Black people and other minority groups have become increasingly common. The present research examined how a perpetrator’s group membership affects judgments of employment discrimination against a Black victim. Four experiments (combined N=1,016) tested predictions derived from the prototype model of discrimination. Participants reviewed a case file where a Black, Latino, Asian, or White manager rejected a Black job applicant. Attributions to discrimination were much stronger for a Latino, Asian, or White manager compared to a Black manager. Attributions to discrimination were slightly stronger when for a White manager compared to an Asian or Latino manager; however, effect sizes for these differences were small. Attributions to discrimination were similar for the Asian and Latino managers. Whether the perpetrator had outgroup standing relative to the victim was the strongest factor influencing attribution...

This study examined differences in reporting hostile attributional bias (HAB) between court-referred Chinese immigrant batterers and a nonviolent community sample. It measured social desirability (SD) in their reporting of HAB by including an SD measure and a covert indirect measure of HAB. Further, it explored the relationship between HAB and childhood exposure to violence. The batterers scored lower on the overt measure but higher on the covert measure of HAB. Their scores on the overt measure were negatively correlated with their SD scores. Childhood exposure to violence was positively correlated with HAB among the batterers but not among the nonviolent men. The role of HAB in intimate partner violence needs more research, and future studies and batterer interventions need to consider SD in assessing and addressing HAB.