Effect of Memory Perspective on Retrospective Causal Attributions

Two studies examined whether people's retrospective causal attributions might be mediated by the visual perspective from which events are recalled. In Study 1, pairs of Ss participated in "get-acquainted" conversations and made a series of attribution ratings for their performance. They returned 3 weeks later to rerate their performance on the same attribution scales and to indicate the perspective from which they remembered their earlier conversation. Ss reported either "observer" memories in which they could "see" themselves from the outside or "field" memories in which their field of view matched that of the original situation. Study 2 was identical to Study 1 with the exception that Ss' memory perspectives were manipulated via verbal instructions. In both experiments, conversations that were recalled from an observer's perspective were attributed more dispositionally. These results suggest that the different perspectives from which events can be recalled function much like the divergent visual perspectives available to actors and observers in immediate, everyday experience. Discussion of these results focuses on how they further understanding of the contradictory findings reported in the literature on temporal shifts in attributions.