Attribution and the psychology of prediction

Described 2 previously conducted psychology experiments to a total of 128 male undergraduates in 2 experiments. Some Ss were told about the actual distribution of behavior in the experiments, and others were not. Knowledge of the distributions did not influence Ss' attributions about the causes of the behavior of original participants nor their predictions about what their own behavior might be. As expected, base rate information did not even affect Ss' guesses about the behavior of particular target members of the original experimental populations. It is concluded that Ss ignore base rates for behavior just as they ignore base rates for category membership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).