A Study of Person Perception in Nigeria

Abstract

A critical appraisal of the existing motivational and cognitive approaches to attribution led to a postulation of a two-dimensional model consisting of Locus of Causality and Evaluation. Consequently, two attributional mechanisms were hypothesized to be operating: egotism and positive evaluation. In the study, a person's ethnicity was regarded as a factor affecting the degree of egotism in self-attributions, while an interaction of ethnic variables was predicted to determine the magnitude of positive evaluation in actor's attribution. The modelwas tested with Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba Nigerian undergraduate students serving as subjects in a three-way experiment (with target object of perception being the fourth and repeated measures factor). As expected, the Muslim Hausas demonstrated less attributional egotism than the Christian southerners. Other-attributions did not reveal the predicted pattern of a positive evaluation gradient along the psychological distance from the self. The findings demonstrated, however, a strong egocentric tendency in other-attribution due to self-outcome; and here, too, the Hausa subjects showed a unique resistance against this motivational bias.