Informational Gain and Racial Effects in the Attribution of Attitudes
Attitude attribution was investigated defining corre spondent inference as informational gain. Varied were the race of the actor, the racial association and direction of an essay, and the constraint on the target. The degree of change from pre- essay to post-essay attributions was highly specific to the conditions of the experiment. Informational gain was highest when a black argued against affirmative action. However, subjects gained the least confidence in their attribution in this condition.