INT’L. J. AGING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, Vol. 9(2), 1978-79
ATTRIBUTIONAL ERROR AND ATTITUDES TOWARD AGING: A VIEW OF THE NCOA NATIONAL ATTITUDE SURVEY
KELLY G. SHAVER The College of William and Mary
ABSTRACT
Attitudes toward aging obtained in the National Council on Aging national attitude survey are examined in light of recent developments in attributional theory. A specific principle drawn from each of the three major attribution theories is applied to findings from the survey. It is argued that (a) mandatory retirement policies may be attributionally preferable to retirement based on demonstrated incompetence, (b) opinions of older people are shaped by attributions made to the role, and (c) the attributional focus of the helping professions may perpetuate the negative view of aging. Suggestions are made for research on aging.
What is it like t o be old in America? The answer to this question, like the answers t o many questions of social importance, depends to no small degree upon whom you ask. This is dramatically illustrated by the results of the recent National Council on Aging attitude study conducted by the Harris organization [ l ] . Among the respondents under sixty-five “old age” is seen as a time of trial, fraught with problems of loneliness, uselessness, fear, and generally poor health. Similar perceptions of old age are held by respondents over sixty-five, who consider themselves lucky exceptions to the unhappy ruIe. But when people over sixty-five are asked to say how much they are personally affected by many of the ‘‘common” problems, the actual prevalence of difficulty is remarkably low. Indeed, a third of the respondents over sixty-five considered these t o be the “best years of their lives.” [l , p. 1551 This is not intended to minimize the very real social, physical, and psychological disabilities suffered by significant minorities of older people. But it does suggest, as the conclusions of the survey note, that “people in their 101 @ 1978,Baywood Publishing Co.. Inc.
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later years are not that much different from the way they were in their own youth and the way the young are now themselves.” [ I , p. 23 11 How does the public come to such a distorted perception of what it is like to be old, and how might those erroneous impressions be corrected? The purpose of the present paper is to bring to bear on these questions a recent development in social psychology and social perception: the area known as attribution theory. Attribution theory assumes that people are not content merely to observe human behavior, but rather they engage in active attempts to explain and predict the causes of action [2, 31. The principles of attribution theory suggest how these attempts at explanation and prediction might proceed. Consider some examples of attributional problems. Is another person complimenting me because I have behaved admirably, or is he flattering me because I have something he wants? Does the aspiring politician really believe his campaign slogans, or is he simply taking positions he thinks will be popular with the voters? Is a recently retired executive listless and uninterested in life because he is now a year older, or because his social situation has changed dramatically? In short, should each of these behaviors be attributed to an underlying disposition within the person, or to some factor in the external environment? A complete discussion of attribution theory is beyond the scope of this paper. What I shall do here is outline the attribution approach, mention some of the specific attributional errors that might be involved in misperceptions about aging, and outline some possible directions for future research. To my knowledge, there has as yet been no attributionally oriented research on aging, so I will use the NCOA attitude survey as a source of data. Consequently, what I say here should be regarded more as speculation based on theory than as conclusion drawn from tests of specific hypotheses. The Elements of Social Attribution
Whenever we search for the reasons behind an action (whether that action is another person’s, or one of our own), we engage in a cognitive process of social attribution. As I have pointed out elsewhere [3], this process consists of three fundamental stages-observation of action, judgment of intention, and the making of a dispositional attribution. In the first stage the action comes to the perceiver’s attention either through his firsthand observation or through the reports of intermediaries. These reports may not be entirely accurate, since each intermediate observer has viewed the action through the filter of his own motives and expectations. For our purposes here, however, it is possible to assume that the observations have been substantially correct. In the second stage of the attribution process, the perceiver must decide whether an action was intentionally produced by the stimulus person. This judgment may require consideration of the stimulus person’s ability and effort, and consideration of the environmental properties of task difficulty and luck
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[4, 51. The judgment of intentionality usually requires that alternative potential causes-accidents, habits, and reflexes-be ruled out, although in some cases a series of accidents can be the manifestation of what Heider called “unconscious intention.” [4] Since an attribution is a further inference made from an intentional action, the judgment of intention must be correct before the reliability of the attribution can be established. This is not to say that perceivers do not make attributions for accidental occurrences, only that such attributions cannot be demonstrated to be veridical. The final link in the chain of inference is the making of a dispositional attribution. Having observed, or received reports of, the action, and having traced that action to intention, the perceiver must now determine whether the intention should be attributed to environmental force or to an underlying personal disposition of the actor. Environmental force can be either irresistible reward or coercion; personal dispositions are motives or personality characteristics that are presumed to be relatively enduring aspects of the stimulus person’s psychological make-up. As an example, if we were attempting to discover the cause of a hostile action intentionally taken by the stimulus person, we might wonder whether it had been coerced by the environment (was the actor being threatened with harm by a third party) or had been a result of the actor’s hostile disposition. In a most fundamental sense, the dispositional attribution serves as the final answer to the question, “why?” Most of the attributions we make are accomplished so quickly that the various elements of the process are never in full view. But a growing body of experimental literature illustrates some of the antecedents and consequences of attributions, including those of causality and responsibility [6-91, of ability and motivation [5, 10, 113, of attitude [12, 131, and of emotional state [14-161. Three major theoretical models have been developed to account for the process of social attribution: the “naive psychology” of Heider [4], the “correspondent inference” theory of Jones and Davis [17], and the “covariation” theory of Kelly [18, 191. In the next section I will show how a selected principle from each of these theoretical orientations might be applied in the study of aging, concentrating on the issues of retirement and health. For a more thorough discussion of the three theories see Shaver [3], and for theoretical extensions of the original formulations see the collection of papers by Jones, Kanouse, Kelley, Nisbett, Valins, and Weiner [2].
Sources of Attributional Error AFFECTIVE SIGNIFICANCE AND ATTRIBUTIONAL DISTORTION
The first discussion of social attribution was that of Heider [4]. Concerned with the phenomenology of the perceiver, Heider tried to construct a “naive psychology” that would explain how the layman would identify the causes of
,
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behavior. Personal factors such as the actor’s ability and effort, and environmental factors such as task difficulty and luck, were thought to enter into the perceiver’s calculations. The greater the personal forces relative to the environmental forces, the greater the personal responsibility for action attributed to the actor. Although Heider’s model emphasized the rational aspect of these deductions, it did include the possibility that attributions could be distorted by the perceiver’s personal needs [4]. If an attribution has affective significance (positive or negative consequences) for the perceiver, errors may be made. We are too slow t o take blame, too quick to take credit; we let our personal needs influence our judgments of others; we make attributions that will protect us from harm. In the research literature this effect can be seen in the research by Walster on self-protective attribution [ 9 , 201 ;in work by Lerner and his associates on beliefs in a just world in which people are thought to deserve what they get [21-241 ; and in studies of defensive attribution by Shaver and his associates [7, 25, 261. Lerner’s work, for example, shows that people will derogate a stimulus person who suffers through no fault of his own. By convincing himself that the victim deserved his bad outcomes, the perceiver can protect himself from similar occurrences (assuming, of course, that the perceiver has a high regard for himself). In a slightly different vein Shaver’s research indicates that perceivers will exaggerate the blameworthiness of the perpetrator of an accident having negative consequences unless they see themselves as similar to the actor, in which case they exaggerate the influence of chance factors. Here the perceivers appear to be trying to protect themselves from blame, as well as from the occurrence of negative outcomes. Each of these approaches suggests a slightly different attributional mechanism, but both demonstrate that affective significance can produce distortions in attribution. The process of aging has affective significance for us all, so it is likely that our attributions about the effects of aging might be in error. From every new ache, from every forced acknowledgement of how much of life has already passed, and from every sign of diminished physical capacity we obtain intimations of our own mortality. Let us consider how this affective impact of aging might color some of our attributions for circumstances associated with becoming older, using as an example the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five. Mandatory retirement is a good place to begin our attributional analysis. First, the question of retirement can easily be considered in attributional terms: What is the reason given for termination of employment? Second, retirement itself can be the basis for other attributions (even the NCOA survey uses sixty-five as the onset of “old age”). And third, a policy of mandatory retirement at a futed age may be even more important to the psychological well being of workers than it is to the efficiency of business decisions: It may be an attributional crutch.
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Given our economic and social preoccupations with success, the question “When will I no longer be fit t o hold a job?” could be a very threatening one indeed. Mandatory retirement provides a safe answer. We wonder about an individual‘s competence and motivation only when his employment terminates before mandatory retirement age. Is the executive who leaves his job at fiftyfive quitting while he is ahead, or is he being eased out by his employer? And if the latter, is it to save the cost of his salary, to make room for younger people, or t o remove an employee who has lost his usefulness? We may have strong opinions on the answer, but we can never be absolutely certain. In contrast, when a person retires at the mandatory age, only one attribution is salient. This attribution to age (a factor over which the person obviously has no personal control) conveniently avoids the less flattering alternatives and allows the person t o leave his occupation without stigma. Some tentative evidence for this interpretation can be seen in two different aspects of the NCOA survey. First, it is interesting to note that while 49 per cent of the public supports a mandatory retirement age for ease of administration, only 37 per cent of the personnel decision-makers believe that such a policy makes sense [ l , p. 2131. The difference may not be statistically significant, but the direction of the difference is just the opposite of what we might otherwise have expected. The second bit of evidence in favor of the attributional interpretation is ttie substantial overestimation of the prevalence of physical handicap among people over sixty-five. Not only does the under-sixty-five public dramatically overestimate the extent of poor health among the elderly, the over-sixty-five respondents share this opinion, even though it contrasts with their own personal experience. Just as age is a non-threatening attribution for retirement, physical disability is a non-threatening attribution for mandatory retirement policies. This is not to minimize the very real health problems faced by many older people, but only t o suggest a reason why those problems are thought to be more widespread than they actually are. If this line of reasoning is correct, those who argue for removal of the mandatory retirement rules might do well to contemplate some of the attributional consequences of individualized retirement systems. If we are not careful, the number of years worked beyond “official” retirement age might equal or replace final salary as the corporate symbol of competence and success. EXPECTATIONS AND INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS
In an extension of Heider’s [4] formulation, Jones and Davis suggest a way for the perceiver to take into account not only the action that was performed, but other actions that might have been taken [17]. And here the perceiver’s expectations, rather than his motives, may influence the attribution that is made. According to Jones and Davis every action can be seen as the
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consequence of a choice, even though the choice may only be between action and inaction. Further, each of the possible choices has certain effects that can be examined in order to infer the person’s reasons for choosing the action he did. Some effects will be common to both choices, but others will be unique to a single choice. These noncommon effects are at the core of Jones and Davis’s theory. Making the plausible assumption that only noncommon effects reveal reasons for acting, Jones and Davis suggest two ways in which such effects can enter into attribution. First, the number of noncommon effects can simply be counted for each choice. If an action that is taken produces only a single noncommon effect, the person’s goal is obvious; if the action taken produces a large number of noncommon effects, it is difficult to determine just which of these may have influenced the actor’s decision. Second, the noncommon effects can be characterized in terms of assumed social desirability for the actor. One way to communicate the idea of assumed desirability is t o ask “what would most people do in the same situation?” The answer to that question (restricted, of course, to a comparable set of people) identifies the alternative of assumed high desirability. If the choice actually made leads to nothing but highly desirable effects, it does not reveal anything of interest about the psychological characteristics of the particular actor. Only if the choice is not the one we would expect, do we learn about the unique dispositions of the actor. Both the number and assumed desirability of the noncommon effects determine the correspondence of the perceiver’s inference about the actor. Correspondence can be thought of as the likelihood that the disposition inferred from an action really matches it. When there are few noncommon effects and all of these are of low desirability, the perceiver can be certain that the action taken truly reflects an underlying disposition of the actor. For example, there is no doubt that a politician who advocates cuts in social security means what he says if his call for reductions is prominent in an address to a gathering of retired persons. The general conclusion from correspondent inference theory is that unexpected or out-of-role behavior is more informative about the personal characteristics of the actor than is expected or in-role behavior. Broadly conceived, this proposition has been supported in a number of experimental studies [27-291 including one in which the informational value of the two kinds of behavior was directly compared 1301. This sort of attributional reasoning can be applied to the typical perceiver’s conception of what it is like to be old. At several points in the NCOA survey, the authors note that the general public does not seem to be sensitive to the individual differences that exist among older people [ l , pp. 129, 1721. It is possible, of course, that this apparent insensitivity is an artifact of the questions posed in the survey: Most of the questions did refer to the category of “people over 65” as if it were a unitary entity. But at the same time, the
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survey revealed that half of the respondents used a fixed age, rather than a judgment of functional impairment, as the criterion for “when a person becomes old.” [ l , p. 221 It is reasonable then, to believe that many respondents would fail to distinguish among older people regardless of how the specific questions might be asked. Negative stereotypes of various ethnic groups persist in part because they are self-fulfilling-we simply don’t have much t o do with members of ethnic groups we hold in low esteem, and we cannot imagine ourselves in their position. But nearly all of us have had contact with older people, if only our parents and grandparents, and we know very well that some day we will be in their shoes. So why does the negative impression persist? Part of the answer to this question may lie in the way our expectations influence the attributional information we process. In popular wisdom the lot of older people consists of failing health, financial problems, and loneliness [ 1, p. 201 , and the older people themselves are considered “closed-minded, unproductive members of society.” [ 1, p. 471 So what happens when we meet a closed-minded old codger who constantly complains about his financial and health problems? Aha, we say, that is what happens to you when you get old! We attribute his behavior to his age and ignore the possibility that he might have been just as cranky when he was thirty. Now suppose we encounter a vivacious, open-minded octagenarian who is still physically and professionally active? This behavior does not agree with our expectations, so we attribute it to the unique personal characteristics of the individual. We consider this person to be quite extraordinary, so his actions do not change our conception of the role. On the contrary, we think him the exception that proves the rule. Our failure t o expect individual differences among older people thus becomes self-perpetuating despite frequent contact. Any instance that supports the expectation is taken as evidence for the lack of individual differences among older people, and any instance that disagrees is considered exceptional. This attributional error must be corrected if our expectations about the life circumstances and personal characteristics of older citizens are ever to reach a level commensurate with the individual differences that exist. And as involved perceivers of the aging process, we would be less apprehensive about its onset if we could see the healthy, vital octagenarian as in some small way representative, rather than as an almost unique exception. Throughout the NCOA survey, the authors refer to the negative impression of old age with the classical term “stereotype,” and the reader may wonder what our attributional analysis adds to this description. First, the attributional description is a more inclusive one. Stereotypes are usually limited to identifiable social categories (such as “persons over 65”), but the attributional view takes into account the individual‘s actual behavior, as well as his social memberships. Second, the attributional description may be more appropriate in this situation. Stereotypes arise and persist when perceivers have minimal
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contact with, and less empathy for, the members of the target group. But attributional errors can survive both contact and empathy, conditions which are more typical of our relationships with older people. Third, and perhaps most important, describing the negative impression in attributional terms places an important social problem in the context of a highly active and promising area of research and developing theory. As an example of the difference that this description can make, the Bayesian analysis of in-role and out-of-role information accomplished by Trope and Burnstein provides a more sophisticated technique for measuring these particular attributions than has been achieved in the assessment of stereotyping [30]. MULTIPLE CAUSES: PERSON OR ENVIRONMENT?
A common theme throughout this paper, as through much of the attribution literature, has been the distinction between attributions to personal dispositions and attributions t o various aspects of the environment. Nowhere is this theme more explicitly specified than in the attribution theory of Kelley [18, 191. The basic principle of the theory is one of covariation: An effect will be attributed to a presumed cause which is present when the effect is present, but which is absent when the effect is absent. Suppose, for example, that you feel pleasure when you see a new film. Should that feeling be attributed to the film (what Kelley would call the entity), should it be attributed to the particular circumstances (referred to as time and modality) under which the film wasviewed, or should it be attributed t o a disposition of yours? Whether the final attribution is to an entity, to the circumstances, or t o a unique personal characteristic, the covariation analysis proceeds in exactly the same manner. The perceiver samples across entities (how d o you feel about other films), across situations (e.g., first run, or television re-run), and across persons (do other people share your reaction) in order to determine which one of the potential causes covaries distinctively with the effect. Locus of causality for the internal state (or for the actions of another person, if those actions are the entity to be explained) will then be attributed to the distinctive causal source, rather than to other potential sources which, if varied, produce no noticeable change in the effect. The final clear result is achieved, of course, only when there is a single distinctive causal source. When there are multiple possible causes, or when some of the actual causes are hidden from the perceiver, the attribution is less certain and may even be in error. Indeed, when the causal structure is a complex one, the perceiver is likely to attribute-quite mistakenly-the effects to the possible causes which seem most obvious at the time. Such misattribution may account for some of the negative effects presumably produced by becoming old.
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Specifically, let us consider the attributions that people over sixty-five make for the fact that they are no longer working. Termination of employment is an event that could have numerous multiple possible causes, some of which are internal and some external. Among the internal causes is the active choice to stop working, and some 61 per cent of retired people make this attribution [ l , p. 871. As far as external causes are concerned, 37 per cent of retired people (who constitute 23 per cent of all people over 65) say that they were forced into retirement, and another 6 per cent of people over sixty-five describe themselves as unemployed. So approximately 30 per cent of people over sixty-five identified external causes as the reason for their termination of employment. Some have adjusted to “retirement,” but 31 per cent of retired or unemployed people (slightly more than 21 per cent of all people over 65) say that they would like to work. Although these percentages sound small, they represent nearly four million people over sixty-five who would like to return to work [ 1, p. 851 . It is plausible that the group of people who would like to work corresponds roughly to the group whose unemployment or retirement was originally based on external causes. If this is the case, it is interesting that over threequarters of these people now cite internal causes-poor health and old age-as the reasons for their unemployment. They appear to have accepted society’s view that personal, rather than environmental, causes are responsible for their situation. This erroneous shift from external to internal attribution has at least one advantage for the older people themselves. As the survey authors note, it can serve as a “learned excuse to cover up for other reasons such a ‘nobody wants me’.” [ l , p. 901 But it has even greater advantages for society. First, it convinces older people that they are the problem, rather than the victims of a problem. People who felt victimized might try t o change the system. Second, it appears t o permit better definition of the problem: Social conditions are less accessible to influence, and more resistant t o constructive change, than are individuals. At the most elementary level people are more easily identified than are contributory social conditions. If you violate a law you are by definition a criminal; if you are physically dependent upon a drug you are an addict; if you are sixty-five, you are old. These defmitions not only specify the problem as an individual one, they also suggest solutions. Punish criminals and crime will disappear. Put all of the addicts on methadone maintenance administered by hospitals, and there will be no more heroin addiction. Convince people over sixty-five that they do not really want to work, and it will not be necessary to find jobs for them. And provide an entire range of practitioners in the “helping professions”-corrections and probation officers, physicians and psychiatrists, sociai workers, counselors, and psychologists-to implement the changes in all of these problem people. ‘Ihe most appealing aspect of this approach is that it promises to correct the
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social problem by acting on the individual person. There is some reason to believe that these solutions will prove futile: As long as the contributory social conditions are permitted to continue, they will renew the class of problem people. It is time that we began to address ourselves to the social system, rather than concentrating exclusively upon the “problem” individuals. To the extent that the attitudes obtained in the National Council on Aging survey reflect the opinions of society as a whole, that survey can serve as a first step in this direction. Attributional Error and Aging: Some Suggestions for Research It has been argued that misattribution might account for some of the negative views of growing old and that this negative impression might be selfperpetuating. Such misattribution is prevalent among people over sixty-five, as well as among those under sixty-five, and can be traced to three different sources. First, the personal needs of older people to maintain self-esteem and personal dignity may lead them to attribute their retirement to arbitrary company policies rather than to loss of personal competence. Second, the mistaken expecfafionsabout aging held by both young and old may lead to a uniformly negative view of aging that cannot be corrected by counterexamples. And third, the natural ambiguity of social situations may permit erroneous attributions of social status to internal causes when the external ones are really responsible. Although these ideas are consistent with attribution research literature, they are merely interpretations of data originally collected for a different purpose. As such, they cannot take the place of appropriate experimental research; they can only suggest that such research might be worthwhile. I would like to outline two possible directions that could be taken by attributional research on aging: specification of the precise nature of the attributions involved and demonstration of the relationship between these attributions and other considerations. First consider specification of the nature of the attributions involved in the social perception of aging. To what extent do the internal attributions made for unemployment, by those who were forced to retire, reflect an actual shift in perceived locus of causality, and to what extent do they reflect the demand for what is socially desirable? Is the loss of professional competence, presumed to accompany aging, attributed to changes in intellectual capacity, to loss of physical stamina, or to changes in motivation? Do those who attribute this loss of professional competence to ability factors view the loss as more threatening or as less threatening than do those who attribute the loss to changes in motivation? Do people under sixty-five have a similar view of the situation? Is there a shift in the proportion of external to internal attributions made for actors at different stages in the life cycle (are the very young and
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the very old seen as “pawns” of the environment, while people between these two extremes are seen as “origins” of action)? If this is the case, what implications does it have for the specific attributions of concern? To what degree do the attributions made by young and old for job performance agree with objective measures of that performance, rather than with opinions of performance? All of these questions require closer scrutiny than is possible within the framework of a national attitude survey, and in some cases convincing answers will be obtained only through experimentation. If the first task of attributional research on aging can be regarded as the construction of an adequate data base, the second major objective can be described as a combination of theory-testing and practical application. These might be thought of as separate goals, but in an area with high social relevance this is not likely to be the case. When the data are attributions of causality to fictitious stimulus persons, the general public is not concerned with the outcome. But when attributions about aging are used to test theory, those attributions will have social impact whether or not they confirm the particular theoretical predictions. Consider the argument that mandatory retirement policies serve as an attributional crutch. This argument rests on several assumptions, among them the idea that internal attributions for diminished competence would be psychologically threatening. Although research by Weiner and his associates has shown that low-achievement motive college students internalize their failure at experimental tasks, it may be inappropriate to generalize these results to the issue of competence in one’s chosen profession [5]. The important point is that no matter how the theoretical issue is resolved, the attributions that serve as data will have implications for social policy. If older people are threatened by internal attributions for diminished competence, that would not only confirm the theoretical assumption, it would also serve as an argument against removing mandatory retirement rules. If on the other hand older people do not find these internal attributions threatening, that at once would negate a theoretical assumption and serve as supporting evidence for those who would abolish mandatory retirement rules. In much the same manner the data gathered to test other theoretical assumptions and derivations will have social importance. Attempts to determine whether expectations about the “typical” older person can be changed may be useful either to those who would favor isolation of the elderly in their own communities or those who would oppose such isolation, depending on how the data turn out. Study of the apparent shift from external to internal attribution may provide evidence suggesting that those who are forced to retire should be included in the unemployment figures-a decision which would have massive social impact-or it may justify the continued exclusion of forced retirees from official estimates of the labor force. Thus the study of attributional errors associated with the various
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aspects of aging will have political as well as theoretical significance. For the careful researcher this is one of the great challenges of the area. REFERENCES
1. National Council on the Aging, Inc., The Myth and Reality of Aging in America, conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1975. 2. E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins and B. Weiner, (eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior, General Learning Press, Momstown, N.J., 1972. 3. K. G. Shaver, An Introduction to Attribution Processes, Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass., 1975. 4. F. Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, Wiley, New York, 1958. 5. B. Weiner, Achievement Motivation and Attribution Theory, General Learning Press, Morristown, N.J., 1974. 6. L. McArthur, The How and The What of Why: Some Determinants and Consequences of Causal Attribution, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 22, pp. 171-193, 1972. 7. K. G. Shaver, Defensive Attribution: Effects of Severity and Relevance on the Responsibility Assigned for an Accident, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, pp. 101-1 13, 1970. 8. M. E. Shaw and J. L. Sulzer, An Empirical Test of Heider’s Levels in Attribution of Responsibility, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69, pp. 3 9 4 6 , 1964. 9. E. H. Walster, Assignment of Responsibility for an Accident, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, pp. 73-79, 1966. 10. E. E. Jones, L. Rock, K. G. Shaver, G. R. Goethals and L. M. Ward, Pattern of Performance and Ability Attribution: An Unexpected Primacy Effect, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, pp. 3 17-340, 1968. 11. D. D. Thompson, Attributions of Ability from Patterns of Performance Under Competitive and Cooperative Conditions, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23, pp. 302-308, 1972. 12. E. E. Jones and V. A. Hams, The Attribution of Attitudes, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, pp. 1-24, 1967. 13. M. Snyder and E. E. Jones, Attitude Attribution When Behavior is Constrained, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, pp. 585-800, 1974. 14. R. E. Nisbett and S. Valins, Perceiving the Causes of One’s Own Behavior, Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior, E. E . Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins and B. Weiner, (eds.), General Learning Press, Morristown, N.J., pp. 63-78, 1972. 15. M. D. Storms and R. E. Nistett, Insomnia and the Attribution Process, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, pp. 3 19-328, 1970. 16. S. Valins, The Perception and Labeling of Bodily Changes as Determinants of Emotional Behavior, Physiological Correlates of Emotion, P. Black, (ed.), Academic Press, N.Y., pp. 229-243, 1970.
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17. E. E. Jones and K. E. Davis, From Acts to Dispositions: The Attribution Process in Person Perception, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, L. Berkowitz, (ed.), Academic Press, N.Y., 2, pp. 219-266, 1965. 18. H. H. Kelley, Attribution Theory in Social Psychology, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1967,D. Levine, (ed.), University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Neb., pp. 192-238, 1967. 19. -, The Process of Causal Attribution, American Psychologist, 28, pp. 107-128, 1973. 20. E. H. Walster, “SecondGuessing” Important Events, Human Relations, 20, pp. 239-250, 1967. 21. M. J. Lerner, The Desire for Justice and Reactions to Victims, Altruism and Helping Behavior, J. R. Macaulay and L. Berkowitz, (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 205-229, 1970. 22. M. J. Lerner and G. Matthews, Reactions t o the Suffering of Others Under Conditions of Indirect Responsibility, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, pp. 319-325, 1967. 23. M. J. Lemer and C. H. Simmons, Observers’ Reaction to the “Innocent Victim”: Compassion or Rejection?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4 , pp. 203-210, 1966. 24. D. Novak and M. J. Lerner, Rejection as a Consequence of Perceived Similarity, Journal of Personality and Social Psychologv, 9, pp. 147-1 52, 1968. 25. K. G. Shaver, Intentional Ambiguity in the Attribution of Responsibility: A Reply to Fishbein and Ajzen, College of William and Mary, unpublished manuscript, 1973. 26. K. G. Shaver, A. A. Turnbull and M. P. Sterling, Defensive Attribution: The Effects of Occupational Danger and Locus of Control; Perceiver Sex and Self-Esteem, JSAS Catalog of Selected Douments in Psychology, 3, p. 48, 1973. 27. B. J. Calder, Informational Cues and Attributions Based on Role Behavior, Journal ofExperimenta1 Social Psychology, 10, pp. 121-125, 1974. 28. E. E. Jones, K. E. Davis and K. J. Gergen, Role Playing Variations and Their Informational Value for Person Perception, Journal of Abnormal and Social PSyChOlOgy, 63,pp. 302-310, 1961. 29. D. M. Messick and G. D. Keeder, Roles, Occupations, Behaviors, and Attributions, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10,pp. 126-132, 1974. 30. Y.Trope and E. Burnstein, Processing the Information Contained in Another’s Behavior, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 11, pp. 439-458, 1975. Direct reprint requests to: Kelly G. Shaver Social and Developmental Psychology Program Division of Behavioral and Neural Sciences National Science Foundation
Washington, D.C.20550
ATTRIBUTIONAL ERROR AND ATTITUDES TOWARD AGING: A VIEW OF THE NCOA NATIONAL ATTITUDE SURVEY
KELLY G. SHAVER The College of William and Mary
ABSTRACT
Attitudes toward aging obtained in the National Council on Aging national attitude survey are examined in light of recent developments in attributional theory. A specific principle drawn from each of the three major attribution theories is applied to findings from the survey. It is argued that (a) mandatory retirement policies may be attributionally preferable to retirement based on demonstrated incompetence, (b) opinions of older people are shaped by attributions made to the role, and (c) the attributional focus of the helping professions may perpetuate the negative view of aging. Suggestions are made for research on aging.
What is it like t o be old in America? The answer to this question, like the answers t o many questions of social importance, depends to no small degree upon whom you ask. This is dramatically illustrated by the results of the recent National Council on Aging attitude study conducted by the Harris organization [ l ] . Among the respondents under sixty-five “old age” is seen as a time of trial, fraught with problems of loneliness, uselessness, fear, and generally poor health. Similar perceptions of old age are held by respondents over sixty-five, who consider themselves lucky exceptions to the unhappy ruIe. But when people over sixty-five are asked to say how much they are personally affected by many of the ‘‘common” problems, the actual prevalence of difficulty is remarkably low. Indeed, a third of the respondents over sixty-five considered these t o be the “best years of their lives.” [l , p. 1551 This is not intended to minimize the very real social, physical, and psychological disabilities suffered by significant minorities of older people. But it does suggest, as the conclusions of the survey note, that “people in their 101 @ 1978,Baywood Publishing Co.. Inc.
doi: 10.2190/2M62-NR5X-AYBN-V53K http://baywood.com
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later years are not that much different from the way they were in their own youth and the way the young are now themselves.” [ I , p. 23 11 How does the public come to such a distorted perception of what it is like to be old, and how might those erroneous impressions be corrected? The purpose of the present paper is to bring to bear on these questions a recent development in social psychology and social perception: the area known as attribution theory. Attribution theory assumes that people are not content merely to observe human behavior, but rather they engage in active attempts to explain and predict the causes of action [2, 31. The principles of attribution theory suggest how these attempts at explanation and prediction might proceed. Consider some examples of attributional problems. Is another person complimenting me because I have behaved admirably, or is he flattering me because I have something he wants? Does the aspiring politician really believe his campaign slogans, or is he simply taking positions he thinks will be popular with the voters? Is a recently retired executive listless and uninterested in life because he is now a year older, or because his social situation has changed dramatically? In short, should each of these behaviors be attributed to an underlying disposition within the person, or to some factor in the external environment? A complete discussion of attribution theory is beyond the scope of this paper. What I shall do here is outline the attribution approach, mention some of the specific attributional errors that might be involved in misperceptions about aging, and outline some possible directions for future research. To my knowledge, there has as yet been no attributionally oriented research on aging, so I will use the NCOA attitude survey as a source of data. Consequently, what I say here should be regarded more as speculation based on theory than as conclusion drawn from tests of specific hypotheses. The Elements of Social Attribution
Whenever we search for the reasons behind an action (whether that action is another person’s, or one of our own), we engage in a cognitive process of social attribution. As I have pointed out elsewhere [3], this process consists of three fundamental stages-observation of action, judgment of intention, and the making of a dispositional attribution. In the first stage the action comes to the perceiver’s attention either through his firsthand observation or through the reports of intermediaries. These reports may not be entirely accurate, since each intermediate observer has viewed the action through the filter of his own motives and expectations. For our purposes here, however, it is possible to assume that the observations have been substantially correct. In the second stage of the attribution process, the perceiver must decide whether an action was intentionally produced by the stimulus person. This judgment may require consideration of the stimulus person’s ability and effort, and consideration of the environmental properties of task difficulty and luck
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[4, 51. The judgment of intentionality usually requires that alternative potential causes-accidents, habits, and reflexes-be ruled out, although in some cases a series of accidents can be the manifestation of what Heider called “unconscious intention.” [4] Since an attribution is a further inference made from an intentional action, the judgment of intention must be correct before the reliability of the attribution can be established. This is not to say that perceivers do not make attributions for accidental occurrences, only that such attributions cannot be demonstrated to be veridical. The final link in the chain of inference is the making of a dispositional attribution. Having observed, or received reports of, the action, and having traced that action to intention, the perceiver must now determine whether the intention should be attributed to environmental force or to an underlying personal disposition of the actor. Environmental force can be either irresistible reward or coercion; personal dispositions are motives or personality characteristics that are presumed to be relatively enduring aspects of the stimulus person’s psychological make-up. As an example, if we were attempting to discover the cause of a hostile action intentionally taken by the stimulus person, we might wonder whether it had been coerced by the environment (was the actor being threatened with harm by a third party) or had been a result of the actor’s hostile disposition. In a most fundamental sense, the dispositional attribution serves as the final answer to the question, “why?” Most of the attributions we make are accomplished so quickly that the various elements of the process are never in full view. But a growing body of experimental literature illustrates some of the antecedents and consequences of attributions, including those of causality and responsibility [6-91, of ability and motivation [5, 10, 113, of attitude [12, 131, and of emotional state [14-161. Three major theoretical models have been developed to account for the process of social attribution: the “naive psychology” of Heider [4], the “correspondent inference” theory of Jones and Davis [17], and the “covariation” theory of Kelly [18, 191. In the next section I will show how a selected principle from each of these theoretical orientations might be applied in the study of aging, concentrating on the issues of retirement and health. For a more thorough discussion of the three theories see Shaver [3], and for theoretical extensions of the original formulations see the collection of papers by Jones, Kanouse, Kelley, Nisbett, Valins, and Weiner [2].
Sources of Attributional Error AFFECTIVE SIGNIFICANCE AND ATTRIBUTIONAL DISTORTION
The first discussion of social attribution was that of Heider [4]. Concerned with the phenomenology of the perceiver, Heider tried to construct a “naive psychology” that would explain how the layman would identify the causes of
,
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behavior. Personal factors such as the actor’s ability and effort, and environmental factors such as task difficulty and luck, were thought to enter into the perceiver’s calculations. The greater the personal forces relative to the environmental forces, the greater the personal responsibility for action attributed to the actor. Although Heider’s model emphasized the rational aspect of these deductions, it did include the possibility that attributions could be distorted by the perceiver’s personal needs [4]. If an attribution has affective significance (positive or negative consequences) for the perceiver, errors may be made. We are too slow t o take blame, too quick to take credit; we let our personal needs influence our judgments of others; we make attributions that will protect us from harm. In the research literature this effect can be seen in the research by Walster on self-protective attribution [ 9 , 201 ;in work by Lerner and his associates on beliefs in a just world in which people are thought to deserve what they get [21-241 ; and in studies of defensive attribution by Shaver and his associates [7, 25, 261. Lerner’s work, for example, shows that people will derogate a stimulus person who suffers through no fault of his own. By convincing himself that the victim deserved his bad outcomes, the perceiver can protect himself from similar occurrences (assuming, of course, that the perceiver has a high regard for himself). In a slightly different vein Shaver’s research indicates that perceivers will exaggerate the blameworthiness of the perpetrator of an accident having negative consequences unless they see themselves as similar to the actor, in which case they exaggerate the influence of chance factors. Here the perceivers appear to be trying to protect themselves from blame, as well as from the occurrence of negative outcomes. Each of these approaches suggests a slightly different attributional mechanism, but both demonstrate that affective significance can produce distortions in attribution. The process of aging has affective significance for us all, so it is likely that our attributions about the effects of aging might be in error. From every new ache, from every forced acknowledgement of how much of life has already passed, and from every sign of diminished physical capacity we obtain intimations of our own mortality. Let us consider how this affective impact of aging might color some of our attributions for circumstances associated with becoming older, using as an example the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five. Mandatory retirement is a good place to begin our attributional analysis. First, the question of retirement can easily be considered in attributional terms: What is the reason given for termination of employment? Second, retirement itself can be the basis for other attributions (even the NCOA survey uses sixty-five as the onset of “old age”). And third, a policy of mandatory retirement at a futed age may be even more important to the psychological well being of workers than it is to the efficiency of business decisions: It may be an attributional crutch.
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Given our economic and social preoccupations with success, the question “When will I no longer be fit t o hold a job?” could be a very threatening one indeed. Mandatory retirement provides a safe answer. We wonder about an individual‘s competence and motivation only when his employment terminates before mandatory retirement age. Is the executive who leaves his job at fiftyfive quitting while he is ahead, or is he being eased out by his employer? And if the latter, is it to save the cost of his salary, to make room for younger people, or t o remove an employee who has lost his usefulness? We may have strong opinions on the answer, but we can never be absolutely certain. In contrast, when a person retires at the mandatory age, only one attribution is salient. This attribution to age (a factor over which the person obviously has no personal control) conveniently avoids the less flattering alternatives and allows the person t o leave his occupation without stigma. Some tentative evidence for this interpretation can be seen in two different aspects of the NCOA survey. First, it is interesting to note that while 49 per cent of the public supports a mandatory retirement age for ease of administration, only 37 per cent of the personnel decision-makers believe that such a policy makes sense [ l , p. 2131. The difference may not be statistically significant, but the direction of the difference is just the opposite of what we might otherwise have expected. The second bit of evidence in favor of the attributional interpretation is ttie substantial overestimation of the prevalence of physical handicap among people over sixty-five. Not only does the under-sixty-five public dramatically overestimate the extent of poor health among the elderly, the over-sixty-five respondents share this opinion, even though it contrasts with their own personal experience. Just as age is a non-threatening attribution for retirement, physical disability is a non-threatening attribution for mandatory retirement policies. This is not to minimize the very real health problems faced by many older people, but only t o suggest a reason why those problems are thought to be more widespread than they actually are. If this line of reasoning is correct, those who argue for removal of the mandatory retirement rules might do well to contemplate some of the attributional consequences of individualized retirement systems. If we are not careful, the number of years worked beyond “official” retirement age might equal or replace final salary as the corporate symbol of competence and success. EXPECTATIONS AND INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS
In an extension of Heider’s [4] formulation, Jones and Davis suggest a way for the perceiver to take into account not only the action that was performed, but other actions that might have been taken [17]. And here the perceiver’s expectations, rather than his motives, may influence the attribution that is made. According to Jones and Davis every action can be seen as the
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consequence of a choice, even though the choice may only be between action and inaction. Further, each of the possible choices has certain effects that can be examined in order to infer the person’s reasons for choosing the action he did. Some effects will be common to both choices, but others will be unique to a single choice. These noncommon effects are at the core of Jones and Davis’s theory. Making the plausible assumption that only noncommon effects reveal reasons for acting, Jones and Davis suggest two ways in which such effects can enter into attribution. First, the number of noncommon effects can simply be counted for each choice. If an action that is taken produces only a single noncommon effect, the person’s goal is obvious; if the action taken produces a large number of noncommon effects, it is difficult to determine just which of these may have influenced the actor’s decision. Second, the noncommon effects can be characterized in terms of assumed social desirability for the actor. One way to communicate the idea of assumed desirability is t o ask “what would most people do in the same situation?” The answer to that question (restricted, of course, to a comparable set of people) identifies the alternative of assumed high desirability. If the choice actually made leads to nothing but highly desirable effects, it does not reveal anything of interest about the psychological characteristics of the particular actor. Only if the choice is not the one we would expect, do we learn about the unique dispositions of the actor. Both the number and assumed desirability of the noncommon effects determine the correspondence of the perceiver’s inference about the actor. Correspondence can be thought of as the likelihood that the disposition inferred from an action really matches it. When there are few noncommon effects and all of these are of low desirability, the perceiver can be certain that the action taken truly reflects an underlying disposition of the actor. For example, there is no doubt that a politician who advocates cuts in social security means what he says if his call for reductions is prominent in an address to a gathering of retired persons. The general conclusion from correspondent inference theory is that unexpected or out-of-role behavior is more informative about the personal characteristics of the actor than is expected or in-role behavior. Broadly conceived, this proposition has been supported in a number of experimental studies [27-291 including one in which the informational value of the two kinds of behavior was directly compared 1301. This sort of attributional reasoning can be applied to the typical perceiver’s conception of what it is like to be old. At several points in the NCOA survey, the authors note that the general public does not seem to be sensitive to the individual differences that exist among older people [ l , pp. 129, 1721. It is possible, of course, that this apparent insensitivity is an artifact of the questions posed in the survey: Most of the questions did refer to the category of “people over 65” as if it were a unitary entity. But at the same time, the
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survey revealed that half of the respondents used a fixed age, rather than a judgment of functional impairment, as the criterion for “when a person becomes old.” [ l , p. 221 It is reasonable then, to believe that many respondents would fail to distinguish among older people regardless of how the specific questions might be asked. Negative stereotypes of various ethnic groups persist in part because they are self-fulfilling-we simply don’t have much t o do with members of ethnic groups we hold in low esteem, and we cannot imagine ourselves in their position. But nearly all of us have had contact with older people, if only our parents and grandparents, and we know very well that some day we will be in their shoes. So why does the negative impression persist? Part of the answer to this question may lie in the way our expectations influence the attributional information we process. In popular wisdom the lot of older people consists of failing health, financial problems, and loneliness [ 1, p. 201 , and the older people themselves are considered “closed-minded, unproductive members of society.” [ 1, p. 471 So what happens when we meet a closed-minded old codger who constantly complains about his financial and health problems? Aha, we say, that is what happens to you when you get old! We attribute his behavior to his age and ignore the possibility that he might have been just as cranky when he was thirty. Now suppose we encounter a vivacious, open-minded octagenarian who is still physically and professionally active? This behavior does not agree with our expectations, so we attribute it to the unique personal characteristics of the individual. We consider this person to be quite extraordinary, so his actions do not change our conception of the role. On the contrary, we think him the exception that proves the rule. Our failure t o expect individual differences among older people thus becomes self-perpetuating despite frequent contact. Any instance that supports the expectation is taken as evidence for the lack of individual differences among older people, and any instance that disagrees is considered exceptional. This attributional error must be corrected if our expectations about the life circumstances and personal characteristics of older citizens are ever to reach a level commensurate with the individual differences that exist. And as involved perceivers of the aging process, we would be less apprehensive about its onset if we could see the healthy, vital octagenarian as in some small way representative, rather than as an almost unique exception. Throughout the NCOA survey, the authors refer to the negative impression of old age with the classical term “stereotype,” and the reader may wonder what our attributional analysis adds to this description. First, the attributional description is a more inclusive one. Stereotypes are usually limited to identifiable social categories (such as “persons over 65”), but the attributional view takes into account the individual‘s actual behavior, as well as his social memberships. Second, the attributional description may be more appropriate in this situation. Stereotypes arise and persist when perceivers have minimal
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contact with, and less empathy for, the members of the target group. But attributional errors can survive both contact and empathy, conditions which are more typical of our relationships with older people. Third, and perhaps most important, describing the negative impression in attributional terms places an important social problem in the context of a highly active and promising area of research and developing theory. As an example of the difference that this description can make, the Bayesian analysis of in-role and out-of-role information accomplished by Trope and Burnstein provides a more sophisticated technique for measuring these particular attributions than has been achieved in the assessment of stereotyping [30]. MULTIPLE CAUSES: PERSON OR ENVIRONMENT?
A common theme throughout this paper, as through much of the attribution literature, has been the distinction between attributions to personal dispositions and attributions t o various aspects of the environment. Nowhere is this theme more explicitly specified than in the attribution theory of Kelley [18, 191. The basic principle of the theory is one of covariation: An effect will be attributed to a presumed cause which is present when the effect is present, but which is absent when the effect is absent. Suppose, for example, that you feel pleasure when you see a new film. Should that feeling be attributed to the film (what Kelley would call the entity), should it be attributed to the particular circumstances (referred to as time and modality) under which the film wasviewed, or should it be attributed t o a disposition of yours? Whether the final attribution is to an entity, to the circumstances, or t o a unique personal characteristic, the covariation analysis proceeds in exactly the same manner. The perceiver samples across entities (how d o you feel about other films), across situations (e.g., first run, or television re-run), and across persons (do other people share your reaction) in order to determine which one of the potential causes covaries distinctively with the effect. Locus of causality for the internal state (or for the actions of another person, if those actions are the entity to be explained) will then be attributed to the distinctive causal source, rather than to other potential sources which, if varied, produce no noticeable change in the effect. The final clear result is achieved, of course, only when there is a single distinctive causal source. When there are multiple possible causes, or when some of the actual causes are hidden from the perceiver, the attribution is less certain and may even be in error. Indeed, when the causal structure is a complex one, the perceiver is likely to attribute-quite mistakenly-the effects to the possible causes which seem most obvious at the time. Such misattribution may account for some of the negative effects presumably produced by becoming old.
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Specifically, let us consider the attributions that people over sixty-five make for the fact that they are no longer working. Termination of employment is an event that could have numerous multiple possible causes, some of which are internal and some external. Among the internal causes is the active choice to stop working, and some 61 per cent of retired people make this attribution [ l , p. 871. As far as external causes are concerned, 37 per cent of retired people (who constitute 23 per cent of all people over 65) say that they were forced into retirement, and another 6 per cent of people over sixty-five describe themselves as unemployed. So approximately 30 per cent of people over sixty-five identified external causes as the reason for their termination of employment. Some have adjusted to “retirement,” but 31 per cent of retired or unemployed people (slightly more than 21 per cent of all people over 65) say that they would like to work. Although these percentages sound small, they represent nearly four million people over sixty-five who would like to return to work [ 1, p. 851 . It is plausible that the group of people who would like to work corresponds roughly to the group whose unemployment or retirement was originally based on external causes. If this is the case, it is interesting that over threequarters of these people now cite internal causes-poor health and old age-as the reasons for their unemployment. They appear to have accepted society’s view that personal, rather than environmental, causes are responsible for their situation. This erroneous shift from external to internal attribution has at least one advantage for the older people themselves. As the survey authors note, it can serve as a “learned excuse to cover up for other reasons such a ‘nobody wants me’.” [ l , p. 901 But it has even greater advantages for society. First, it convinces older people that they are the problem, rather than the victims of a problem. People who felt victimized might try t o change the system. Second, it appears t o permit better definition of the problem: Social conditions are less accessible to influence, and more resistant t o constructive change, than are individuals. At the most elementary level people are more easily identified than are contributory social conditions. If you violate a law you are by definition a criminal; if you are physically dependent upon a drug you are an addict; if you are sixty-five, you are old. These defmitions not only specify the problem as an individual one, they also suggest solutions. Punish criminals and crime will disappear. Put all of the addicts on methadone maintenance administered by hospitals, and there will be no more heroin addiction. Convince people over sixty-five that they do not really want to work, and it will not be necessary to find jobs for them. And provide an entire range of practitioners in the “helping professions”-corrections and probation officers, physicians and psychiatrists, sociai workers, counselors, and psychologists-to implement the changes in all of these problem people. ‘Ihe most appealing aspect of this approach is that it promises to correct the
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social problem by acting on the individual person. There is some reason to believe that these solutions will prove futile: As long as the contributory social conditions are permitted to continue, they will renew the class of problem people. It is time that we began to address ourselves to the social system, rather than concentrating exclusively upon the “problem” individuals. To the extent that the attitudes obtained in the National Council on Aging survey reflect the opinions of society as a whole, that survey can serve as a first step in this direction. Attributional Error and Aging: Some Suggestions for Research It has been argued that misattribution might account for some of the negative views of growing old and that this negative impression might be selfperpetuating. Such misattribution is prevalent among people over sixty-five, as well as among those under sixty-five, and can be traced to three different sources. First, the personal needs of older people to maintain self-esteem and personal dignity may lead them to attribute their retirement to arbitrary company policies rather than to loss of personal competence. Second, the mistaken expecfafionsabout aging held by both young and old may lead to a uniformly negative view of aging that cannot be corrected by counterexamples. And third, the natural ambiguity of social situations may permit erroneous attributions of social status to internal causes when the external ones are really responsible. Although these ideas are consistent with attribution research literature, they are merely interpretations of data originally collected for a different purpose. As such, they cannot take the place of appropriate experimental research; they can only suggest that such research might be worthwhile. I would like to outline two possible directions that could be taken by attributional research on aging: specification of the precise nature of the attributions involved and demonstration of the relationship between these attributions and other considerations. First consider specification of the nature of the attributions involved in the social perception of aging. To what extent do the internal attributions made for unemployment, by those who were forced to retire, reflect an actual shift in perceived locus of causality, and to what extent do they reflect the demand for what is socially desirable? Is the loss of professional competence, presumed to accompany aging, attributed to changes in intellectual capacity, to loss of physical stamina, or to changes in motivation? Do those who attribute this loss of professional competence to ability factors view the loss as more threatening or as less threatening than do those who attribute the loss to changes in motivation? Do people under sixty-five have a similar view of the situation? Is there a shift in the proportion of external to internal attributions made for actors at different stages in the life cycle (are the very young and
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the very old seen as “pawns” of the environment, while people between these two extremes are seen as “origins” of action)? If this is the case, what implications does it have for the specific attributions of concern? To what degree do the attributions made by young and old for job performance agree with objective measures of that performance, rather than with opinions of performance? All of these questions require closer scrutiny than is possible within the framework of a national attitude survey, and in some cases convincing answers will be obtained only through experimentation. If the first task of attributional research on aging can be regarded as the construction of an adequate data base, the second major objective can be described as a combination of theory-testing and practical application. These might be thought of as separate goals, but in an area with high social relevance this is not likely to be the case. When the data are attributions of causality to fictitious stimulus persons, the general public is not concerned with the outcome. But when attributions about aging are used to test theory, those attributions will have social impact whether or not they confirm the particular theoretical predictions. Consider the argument that mandatory retirement policies serve as an attributional crutch. This argument rests on several assumptions, among them the idea that internal attributions for diminished competence would be psychologically threatening. Although research by Weiner and his associates has shown that low-achievement motive college students internalize their failure at experimental tasks, it may be inappropriate to generalize these results to the issue of competence in one’s chosen profession [5]. The important point is that no matter how the theoretical issue is resolved, the attributions that serve as data will have implications for social policy. If older people are threatened by internal attributions for diminished competence, that would not only confirm the theoretical assumption, it would also serve as an argument against removing mandatory retirement rules. If on the other hand older people do not find these internal attributions threatening, that at once would negate a theoretical assumption and serve as supporting evidence for those who would abolish mandatory retirement rules. In much the same manner the data gathered to test other theoretical assumptions and derivations will have social importance. Attempts to determine whether expectations about the “typical” older person can be changed may be useful either to those who would favor isolation of the elderly in their own communities or those who would oppose such isolation, depending on how the data turn out. Study of the apparent shift from external to internal attribution may provide evidence suggesting that those who are forced to retire should be included in the unemployment figures-a decision which would have massive social impact-or it may justify the continued exclusion of forced retirees from official estimates of the labor force. Thus the study of attributional errors associated with the various
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aspects of aging will have political as well as theoretical significance. For the careful researcher this is one of the great challenges of the area. REFERENCES
1. National Council on the Aging, Inc., The Myth and Reality of Aging in America, conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1975. 2. E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins and B. Weiner, (eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior, General Learning Press, Momstown, N.J., 1972. 3. K. G. Shaver, An Introduction to Attribution Processes, Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass., 1975. 4. F. Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, Wiley, New York, 1958. 5. B. Weiner, Achievement Motivation and Attribution Theory, General Learning Press, Morristown, N.J., 1974. 6. L. McArthur, The How and The What of Why: Some Determinants and Consequences of Causal Attribution, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 22, pp. 171-193, 1972. 7. K. G. Shaver, Defensive Attribution: Effects of Severity and Relevance on the Responsibility Assigned for an Accident, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, pp. 101-1 13, 1970. 8. M. E. Shaw and J. L. Sulzer, An Empirical Test of Heider’s Levels in Attribution of Responsibility, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69, pp. 3 9 4 6 , 1964. 9. E. H. Walster, Assignment of Responsibility for an Accident, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, pp. 73-79, 1966. 10. E. E. Jones, L. Rock, K. G. Shaver, G. R. Goethals and L. M. Ward, Pattern of Performance and Ability Attribution: An Unexpected Primacy Effect, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, pp. 3 17-340, 1968. 11. D. D. Thompson, Attributions of Ability from Patterns of Performance Under Competitive and Cooperative Conditions, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23, pp. 302-308, 1972. 12. E. E. Jones and V. A. Hams, The Attribution of Attitudes, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, pp. 1-24, 1967. 13. M. Snyder and E. E. Jones, Attitude Attribution When Behavior is Constrained, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, pp. 585-800, 1974. 14. R. E. Nisbett and S. Valins, Perceiving the Causes of One’s Own Behavior, Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior, E. E . Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins and B. Weiner, (eds.), General Learning Press, Morristown, N.J., pp. 63-78, 1972. 15. M. D. Storms and R. E. Nistett, Insomnia and the Attribution Process, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, pp. 3 19-328, 1970. 16. S. Valins, The Perception and Labeling of Bodily Changes as Determinants of Emotional Behavior, Physiological Correlates of Emotion, P. Black, (ed.), Academic Press, N.Y., pp. 229-243, 1970.
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Washington, D.C.20550
