Effects of person and situation expectations on explanation seeking and causal attributions

To examine the effects of person and situation expectations on explanation seeking and causal attributions, subjects in the present experiment observed a situation‐expected or ‐unexpected negative act which was person‐expected or ‐unexpected. The results indicated that explanation seeking was instigated by violations of person and situation expectations although the former exerted little influence when the behaviour was situation‐unexpected. In addition, regardless of situation expectations, behaviour which confirmed a person expectation was attributed to the actor's dispositions, whereas behaviour which disconfirmed a person expectation was attributed more to the situation. The latter attribution, however, appears to be a provisional judgement which is made pending additional information which would enable a more confident judgement. The results are discussed in relation to the existing models of the attribution process.