Confirmation bias is an interesting phenomenon; it explains people’s misplaced confidence when evaluating someone’s character based on first impressions. If people allow their first impressions to be challenged, there is a chance that subsequent information will compel a revision. However, not everyone is willing to change their first impressions; somehow, their belief in being a good judge of character is threatened if their impression changes.

In this case, there is a resistance to new information that may challenge what they already believe is true. They will likely focus only on details that confirm their first impression while ignoring those that do not. This is why so many insist that, based on “sound” first impressions, they are excellent judges of character. Clearly, this is not necessarily so.

For this Discussion, you will consider a personal experience regarding first impressions and apply social psychology theory to explore how impressions form quickly and persist. 

 

• Review the Learning Resources for this week and consider how downward comparisons and idealized images of physical attractiveness impact the developing self-concept.
• Also, consider whether this impact would be different across race and ethnicity.

 Post a description of a time when you were certain your first impression of someone you had just met was accurate, only to discover subsequently that you were mistaken. Describe how social psychology theory explains this phenomenon. 

 

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S. R. (Eds.). (2019). Social psychology (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

• Chapter 4, “Social Perception: How We Come to Understand Other People”

 Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the social psychology theory and research. In addition to the Learning Resources, search the Walden Library and/or Internet for peer-reviewed articles to support your post and responses. Use proper APA format and citations, including those in the Learning Resources. 

Where Does the Buck Stop? Applying
Attribution Theory to Examine Public

Appraisals of the President

CIGDEM V. SIRIN
University of Texas at El Paso

JOSÉ D. VILLALOBOS
University of Texas at El Paso

This study applies attribution theory to examine public appraisals of the president. To
date, most political science research on attribution theory has focused on domestic policy, and no
work has considered both domestic and foreign policy domains in tandem. To fill this gap, we
formulate and experimentally test a series of hypotheses regarding the level of responsibility and
credit/blame that individuals attribute to the president in both policy domains across varying
policy conditions. We also consider how party compatibility affects people’s attribution judg-
ments. Our findings provide a new contribution to the literature on political attributions,
executive accountability, and public perceptions of presidential performance.

Modern presidents have increasingly taken on a public leadership role in the
political arena. Through wars, economic crises, and increased civic demands, presidents
have sought more involvement and influence in overseeing public affairs (Edwards 1983),
a development accompanied by an exponential growth and institutionalization of the
executive branch (Burke 2000; Hart 1995). Amid such developments, the media has
focused on the president as the most salient political actor (Farnsworth and Lichter 2006;
see also Brody 1991), while public polling surveys have consistently connected the
president’s job performance with conditions in the foreign and domestic policy domains

Cigdem V. Sirin is assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has recently
published her work in Acta Politica, International Political Science Review, and the International Journal of
Conflict Management.

José D. Villalobos is assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. He has recently
published articles in Political Research Quarterly, Administration & Society, the International Journal of Public
Administration, and Review of Policy Research.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We wish to thank Nick Valentino and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful insights
and comments on this project.

Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June) 334
© 2011 Center for the Study of the Presidency

(see Edwards 1990). Subsequently, the public has developed growing expectations for
presidents to be responsive to their needs (Cohen 1995, 1999).

In the course of such systemic and institutional changes, presidents have, particu-
larly during election campaigns, reinforced and embellished the perception that they
have the means to solve the nation’s problems. However, presidents consistently fall short
of keeping their promises to the public, revealing a gap between public expectations of
the president and the president’s capacity for governing (see Cronin 1977). In the midst
of this paradox, scholars have become interested in understanding the dynamics that
influence whether and how the public attributes responsibility to presidents for the state
of national affairs and, in turn, the extent to which presidents are able to claim credit in
times of success and avoid blame in times of deteriorating national conditions.

Studies on attribution theory in political science have traditionally focused on the
domestic policy domain, particularly on how the public attributes responsibility to the
president for the state of the economy. By comparison, attribution research in the area of
foreign policy has been scarce, and no work we know of has considered the domestic and
foreign policy domains in tandem, nor examined how the public attributes responsibility
and credit/blame for foreign policy issues to political figures, particularly the president. To
fill this gap in the literature, this study employs an experimental approach to test the
influence that policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility have on public
appraisals of the president. Our findings provide a new contribution to the literature on
political attributions, executive accountability, and public perceptions of presidential
performance.

Attribution Theory in the Study of Politics

Heider’s (1958) early work in social psychology on the process of causal attribution
served as a springboard for studying how people draw inferences from their own behavior
and the behavior of others (see Heradstveit 1979; Jervis 1976; Larson 1985). Weiner
(1986) later developed a model associating causal attributions with judgments of per-
sonal controllability, affective reactions, and behavior (see also Weiner 1991, 1995). In
another seminal piece, Jones and Nisbett (1972) posited that actors tend to attribute
their actions to situational requirements, whereas observers tend to attribute the same
actions to personal dispositions, a pervasive tendency in social attribution commonly
referred to as the “actor-observer hypothesis.” Ross (1977) later coined the term “funda-
mental attribution hypothesis” to denote the propensity for people to explain the behav-
ior of others mainly by considering dispositional, personality-based factors. These works
have provided a foundation for political scientists to explore systematically public per-
ceptions of responsibility and accountability for political figures as well as perceptions
about political events, issues, and other related phenomena.

As Gomez and Wilson (2003, 273) note, “Attribution is indisputably fundamental
to individual decision making, and has been shown to influence powerfully attitudes toward
the self and others, as well as emotional arousal” (see also Fiske and Taylor 1991; Hewstone
1989; Petty and Cacioppo 1996). In the political arena, attributions of responsibility, credit,

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 335

and blame are commonly associated with public appraisals of political leaders (Iyengar
1989). Such appraisals, in turn, influence voting behavior (Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears
1981) and voter turnout (Arceneaux 2003; Brody and Sniderman 1977), which are central
to the democratic process. As such, attribution theory provides a useful framework for
understanding public perceptions of political phenomena and their implications (see
Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988; Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears 1981; Rosenberg
and Wolfsfeld 1977; Rudolph 2006; Rudolph and Grant 2002).

For our purposes, we apply attribution theory vis-à-vis public appraisals of the
president to examine the dynamics within which the public ascribes responsibility and
credit/blame for a given political event or condition, either internally to the actions of the
president or externally to situational factors. More specifically, internal (dispositional)
attribution occurs when an individual perceives a president’s performance—successful or
not—as a product of that president’s personal abilities and actions. Conversely, external
(situational) attribution occurs when an individual perceives a president’s performance as
a product of environmental or other exogenous conditions that are beyond that presi-
dent’s control. As such, whether the public perceives the president to have causal or
functional (role) responsibility, as well as control over certain political events or condi-
tions, largely determines overall perceptions regarding the president’s level of account-
ability (see Arceneaux 2006; Peffley and Williams 1985).

Building on the general dynamics of the attribution model, a growing number of
studies posit that ideology plays an important role in influencing responsibility attribu-
tions (Christiansen and Lavine 1997; Guimond, Begin, and Palmer 1989; Kluegel and
Smith 1986; Lane 1962; Shirazi and Biel 2005; Skitka and Tetlock 1992, 1993; Skitka
et al. 2002; Zucker and Weiner 1993). Skitka et al. (2002) find that situational attribu-
tions for social problems more often correspond with a liberal viewpoint and that liberals
tend to adjust their perceptions of social problems toward external explanations to
increase their cognitive consistency. Conservatives, on the other hand, are more motivated
to seek punishment for individuals who violate what they view as traditional social
norms. Regarding the impact of economic ideology on attribution judgments, because
economic conservatives traditionally ascribe a minimum role for the government in
economic affairs, they are likely to attribute relatively less responsibility to governmental
actors than non-governmental ones (see Rudolph 2003a).

Party cues also play an important role in stimulating ideologically motivated
attribution judgments. For example, people who are partisan supporters of a given president
may attribute less responsibility and give more leeway to that president during declining
national conditions rather than engage in a more objective evaluation of the president’s
policy performance (see Lau and Sears 1981). Thus, there exists a favorable ideological bias
that liberal Democrats hold for Democratic presidents and conservative Republicans hold
for Republican presidents. Nevertheless, Malhotra and Kuo’s (2008) study on Hurricane
Katrina finds that although party cues play an important role in stimulating biased partisan
reactions, individuals with access to information about the specific responsibilities of
government officials are likely to make more evenhanded judgments.

As individuals develop their perceptions of political figures, politicians strive to
shape and manage those perceptions in a number of ways. For instance, presidents are

336 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

known to use the presence of divided government to “offer a plausible counterproposal”
that Congress is to blame for negative policy conditions (Nicholson, Segura, and Woods
2002, 704; see also Leyden and Borrelli 1995; Norpoth 2001; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b).
Presidents and other political figures may also attempt to frame negative policy condi-
tions and outcomes in a favorable manner or try to shift public attention to other salient
and more positive policy conditions and outcomes (McGraw 1991; Weaver 1986; see also
Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). In addition, news media coverage and the way reporters frame
events can influence individual perceptions for attributing responsibility to the president
or other political actors (Shah et al. 2004; see also Farnsworth and Lichter 2006).

Last, a number of scholars suggest that an individual’s attribution judgments
regarding political figures also depend on that individual’s level of education and political
sophistication1 (e.g., Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000; Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003).
It makes intuitive sense to expect that highly educated and sophisticated individuals have
a better understanding of the political process and are generally more aware of national
conditions as they relate to governmental performance, which helps such individuals
develop more accurate (or at least more consistent) political and economic evaluations
(Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000, 639). However, some studies have found that
individuals who possess high amounts of political knowledge may instead choose to engage
in biased information processing due to affectively charged “hot cognitions” shaped by
partisan motivations (see Taber and Lodge 2006; Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000).

Attribution Theory and the Economy

Most studies on attribution theory consider how public judgments of responsibility
concerning the state of the economy affect the perceived accountability and election
prospects of political leaders (see Lewis-Beck and Paldam 2000). In exploring how
individuals respond politically to economic conditions, a number of scholars have argued
that the answer relies partly on the extent to which individuals attribute responsibility
and credit/blame to certain political actors (see Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988;
Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears 1981; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b, 2006; Rudolph and Grant
2002). For instance, according to the reward-punishment theory, people generally credit
political incumbents for improvements in the economy and blame them otherwise (see
Fiorina 1978; Key 1966; Page 1978). Therein, a number of studies argue that citizens are
more inclined to punish rather than reward the president and other incumbents (e.g.,
Campbell et al. 1960; Key 1966; Mueller 1973). Indeed, Mueller (1970, 23) finds that
a deteriorating economy often harms a president’s popularity, whereas an improving
economy does not necessarily lead to high approval ratings, concluding that “There is
punishment but never reward.”

The reward versus punishment asymmetry is closely related to the concept of
“negativity bias,” which refers to the “greater weight given to negative information,

1. Generally speaking, one’s level of political sophistication denotes one’s range of factual knowledge
and acquired information about politics (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, 10; Goren 2001, 161). In addition
to using the term “political sophistication,” scholars also employ alternative terms such as “political
information,” “political expertise,” “political knowledge,” or “political awareness.”

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 337

relative to equally extreme and equally likely positive information in a variety of
information-processing tasks” (Lau 1985, 119). Scholars have extensively explored the
issue of negativity bias in cognitive and social psychology (e.g., Fiske 1980; Ito et al.
1998; Kanouse and Hanson 1972) and in political behavior research, particularly as it
relates to economic voting (e.g., Bloom and Price 1975; Kernell 1977; Lau 1985). For
instance, examining the impact of short-run economic changes on congressional voting,
Bloom and Price (1975) find that although the deterioration of economic conditions
hurts the president’s party, better conditions do not necessarily aid it (see also Kernell
1977). A number of studies also suggest that negativity bias influences public judgments
of presidential character and performance as well as evaluations of presidential candidates
(e.g., Brody 1991; Goren 2002). However, some studies have found no empirical support
for negativity bias, suggesting that its impact may instead be conditional upon other
factors (see, for example, Fiorina and Shepsle 1989; Gant and Davis 1984; Kiewiet 1983;
Lewis-Beck 1988; Radcliff 1988).

With regards to longitudinal dynamics, Peffley (1989) suggests that people develop
their perceptions of presidential competence early on in a president’s term and subse-
quently refer to those perceptions when deciding whether to attribute credit or blame
for economic policy conditions (see also Kinder, Abelson, and Fiske 1979; Miller,
Wattenberg, and Malanchuk 1986; Page 1978; Peffley 1984). He further argues that
such perceptions are open to revision if the president’s continuing performance on the
economy takes a noticeable and lasting turn, for better or worse (see also Fiorina 1981).
Other scholars point out that people may at times use such perceptions to determine
whether a president could handle certain policy problems in the future, particularly when
considering whether to reelect the president for a second term (see Fiorina 1981; Page
1978; Popkin et al. 1976). Thus, individuals are likely to consider past performance as a
“prima facie indicator of the government’s competence (or lack thereof)” (Fiorina 1981,
12). That said, Peffley and Williams (1985, 414) find that rather than blaming the
current president for poor economic conditions, individuals may instead blame the
previous president, especially “during the first half of a new administration.”

As mentioned earlier, a number of studies suggest that the formation and structure
of an individual’s attribution judgments in general and economic voting behavior in
particular may also depend in part on that individual’s level of political sophistication
(e.g., Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003; Goren 1997; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991;
see also Godbout and Bélanger 2007). According to Gomez and Wilson (2007, 555), “less
sophisticated individuals tend to make conceptually proximal attributions, focusing credit
or blame on the single most obvious actor in the relevant sphere, while more sophisticated
individuals tend toward diffuse attributions, dividing credit or blame between proximal and
distal agents.” Applying their proximal/distal attribution argument (which they refer to as
the “theory of heterogeneous attribution”) to the context of presidential economic voting,
Gomez and Wilson (2001, 2003, 2007) argue that because less sophisticated citizens
primarily tend to credit/blame themselves for their own economic circumstances and
attribute responsibility for the national circumstances exclusively to the president, they
are more likely to vote sociotropically (i.e., based on national economic conditions). By
comparison, sophisticated individuals are more likely to engage in pocketbook voting (i.e.,

338 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

based on personal economic conditions) since they better understand the impact that
macroeconomic policies have on their personal economic well-being while recognizing that
the economy is also affected by numerous other actors and economic forces that lie beyond
the president’s control (see also Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988, 856-57).2

Attribution Theory and Foreign Policy

Compared to scholarship on attribution theory regarding the domestic policy
domain, scholars have done considerably less work in the realm of foreign policy. Among
the small number of attribution studies on foreign policy, scholars have focused on the
general perceptions of decision makers and the public concerning international events
and conflicts. To our knowledge, almost no work has systematically examined how the
public attributes responsibility and credit/blame to political figures, particularly the
president, with regards to foreign policy issues.

Jervis’s (1976) study on foreign policy decision making marked the first application
of attribution theory in the field of international relations. Specifically, Jervis addresses how
leaders’ perceptual/attributional errors concerning a given set of issues and political actors
may impair their ability to collect and process information for decision making. On a parallel
basis, Rosenberg and Wolfsfeld (1977) explore how decision makers interpret the reasons
behind the actions of their adversaries during a conflict and the effects of such causal
perceptions on the types of policies they propose. Larson (1985) also applies attribution
theory to explain the containment policies employed by U.S. political leaders during the
Cold War. In another study, Heradstveit and Bonham (1986) examine the attributions of
American and Norwegian officials regarding Soviet activities in Norway. Later on,
Heradstveit and Bonham (1996) conduct in-depth interviews with Arab elites to investigate
attributions regarding the Gulf War and the actions of the Iraqi government.

Regarding the dynamics of foreign policy attributions among the public, most
studies refer to the in-group versus out-group bias, which suggests that people tend to
attribute foreign policy successes and positive acts on the part of their in-group to
internal causes while attributing the causes of their own failures and negative acts to the
out-group and other external factors (see Tajfel and Turner 1979). In a similar vein,
people resort to external attributions in response to the success and/or positive behavior
of an out-group, whereas they make attributions to internal characteristics when the
out-group displays signs of failure and/or negative actions (see, for example, Bizman and
Hoffman 1993; Dresler-Hawke 2005; Heradstveit and Bonham 1996; Hewstone 1990;
Hulsizer et al. 2004; Islam and Hewstone 1993; Pettigrew 1979; Rosenberg and Wolf-
sfeld 1977). Studies have found evidence of such in-group/out-group bias by comparing
the attribution judgments of various groups in conflict, including those of Israelis versus

2. One should note that a number of scholars offer alternative theorizing and empirical evidence
contradicting Gomez and Wilson’s findings regarding the link between political sophistication and economic
voting behavior (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Goren 1997; van der Brug, van der Eijk, and Franklin
2007). Such scholars argue that because gathering and processing information about the state of the national
economy is a far more difficult task than evaluating one’s own financial situation, sociotropic voting may be
more common among sophisticated voters, whereas less sophisticated voters may more often engage in
pocketbook voting (Godbout and Bélanger 2007, 543; Fiorina 1981; Krause 1997; Lupia 1994).

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 339

Arabs regarding the Middle East conflict (see Bizman and Hoffman 1993; Heradstveit
1979; see also Rosenberg and Wolfsfeld 1977), Protestants versus Catholics in Northern
Ireland (Hunter and Stringer 1999), Hindus versus Muslims in southern India (Taylor
and Jaggi 1974), and Muslim versus Christian habitants of the island of Mindanao in the
Philippines (Montiel and Macapagal 2006). In addition, recent studies find that political
leaders can take advantage of such biased perceptions to legitimize the use of force against
a historical adversary (Bandura 2004; Sabucedo, Blanco, and De la Corte 2003).

Exploring Public Attributions of Responsibility to the President

As previously noted, most research on attribution theory has focused on the domestic
policy domain, particularly the economy. However, scholars have done relatively little work
on responsibility attributions in the foreign policy domain and, no work has considered both
policy domains in tandem or examined how the interaction of policy domain, policy
condition, and party compatibility influence public appraisals of the president. To fill this
gap in the literature, we formulate and test a series of hypotheses regarding the overall level
of responsibility and credit/blame that individuals attribute to presidents in both domestic
and foreign policy domains across varying policy conditions. In doing so, we also consider
the role that party compatibility plays in mediating people’s attribution judgments.

Scholars note that the public confers a much higher degree of deference to the president
on foreign policy issues compared to domestic ones (Cohen 1995; Hill 1998; Hurwitz
1989; see also Peterson 1994; Schlesinger 1973). Given the fact that Congress has long
relinquished much of its foreign policy decision-making power to the president by essen-
tially surrendering its constitutional authority to declare war (see Fisher 2000), modern
presidents are now more than ever equipped with greater military and diplomatic powers
over foreign affairs (Peake 2001). Consequently, the public has become increasingly
dependent on presidential leadership when it comes to issues concerning foreign policy,
particularly national defense, wherein presidents operate not just as chief executives, but also
under the moniker of “commander in chief” (see Holsti 2004; Hurwitz 1989).

In the domestic policy domain, although dire economic conditions such as rising
inflation and unemployment may cause great concern among the public and a heightened
focus on the president in dealing with them, scholars point out that the president and
Congress generally share constitutional and statutory power for shaping macroeconomic
policy (Arnold 1990; Keech 1995; West 1987). Particularly with respect to the economy,
there are numerous additional external factors that shape economic conditions over which
the president and Congress have a limited amount of political control and influence (see
Tufte 1978). Therein, we expect that the public is likely to hold the president relatively
less responsible for domestic policy conditions than for foreign policy conditions. Accord-
ingly, due to the president’s more centralized control over the foreign policy domain amid
congressional and public deference to the president, we hypothesize the following:

H1: People are likely to attribute a relatively higher amount of credit/blame and responsi-
bility to the president for issues concerning the foreign policy domain than for those
concerning the domestic policy domain.

340 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

In social psychology research, an established finding is that people tend to engage in
“group-serving attribution bias” when making causal attributions; that is, they tend to
attribute successes to in-group members and attribute failures to out-group members (Fiske
and Taylor 1991; Hewstone 1990). Applying this notion of in-group/out-group bias to party
compatibility, political scientists have developed the “partisan rationalization hypothesis”
(see Rudolph 2003a, 2003b). The empirical findings indicate that partisans are more likely
to believe that their own party can best solve economic problems (Peffley, Feldman, and
Sigelman 1987; Sigelman and Knight 1985) and that presidents from the opposite party
are to blame for economic downturns (Peffley and Williams 1985; Tyler 1982). Accordingly,
partisans tend to attribute more responsibility for favorable economic conditions to
presidents or governors of their own party than those from the opposing party (Gomez and
Wilson 2001; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b). So far, scholars have generally focused on examining
group-serving attribution bias based on partisan rationalizations only with respect to the
state of the economy (but see Malhotra and Kuo 2008). We retest the partisan rationalization
hypothesis in a more general setting to include both domestic and foreign policy domains.
In accordance with previous findings, we hypothesize the following for both policy domains:

H2: If people are of the same party as the president, they are likely to attribute less blame and
responsibility to the president for deteriorating policy conditions, and attribute more
credit and responsibility to the president for improving policy conditions than people of
the opposing party.

Given our expectations that the public should perceive presidents as having greater
control and jurisdiction over issues of foreign policy than domestic policy (H1), we also
anticipate that the tendency for individuals to engage in group-serving attribution bias
based on partisan rationalizations (H2) is more pronounced in the realm of foreign policy.
In other words, compared to the level of biased partisan attributions in the domestic policy
domain, we anticipate that people will display even more biased attributions for foreign
policy issues given a president of their own party versus a president of the opposing party.
We thereby propose that people will attribute more responsibility and credit for foreign
policy successes to a president of their own party and attribute more responsibility and blame
for foreign policy failures to a president from the opposition party, than they would for
domestic policy successes and failures. Accordingly, we hypothesize the following:

H3: The interactive effects of party compatibility and policy conditions suggested in H2 will
be stronger in the foreign policy domain.

Method

To test our hypotheses, we conduct an experiment that provides a direct examina-
tion of attribution judgments under a controlled setting.3 One-hundred and forty-nine
upper-level undergraduate students (71 female and 78 male) took part in this experi-

3. The full experimental questionnaire is available upon request.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 341

ment.4 We randomly assigned the participants to eight experimental conditions, in a
2x2x2 between-groups factorial design composed of three manipulated factors: (1) policy
domain [domestic (economy) versus foreign (war)], (2) policy condition (deteriorating
versus improving), and (3) party compatibility (same party as the president versus
opposing party).5 The experimental conditions were presented as hypothetical news
updates. In addition to the experimental manipulations, we also included “political
sophistication” in the experiment as a covariate, which we measured using a conventional
knowledge scale with 18 factual test items. Given the presence of this covariate factor, the
method we employ is analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Operationalization of the Dependent Variables

The dependent variables we analyze are (1) attribution of responsibility to the
president and (2) attribution of credit/blame to the president. To measure these variables,
we asked the participants to complete a questionnaire following their exposure to the
experimental scenarios. First, they were asked how responsible they thought the presi-
dent was for the state of the policy issue they read about on a scale of 0 to 10. Then,
regarding the distribution of credit/blame (depending on the policy condition), they were

4. A few comments are warranted regarding our use of the experimental method. Whereas political
scientists in general acknowledge the high internal validity of experimentation as means of testing hypoth-
eses, debate continues over the external validity of this method. Therein, most criticism is directed at the use
of college students (Sears 1986) and the artificiality of laboratory settings (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995;
Luskin 1990) with respect to the representativeness of experimental samples, as well as the generalizability
of experimental results.

In response to such criticism, we echo the sentiments expressed by Mook (1983, 386) that, “what makes
research findings of interest is that they help us understand everyday life. That understanding, however, comes
from theory or the analysis of mechanism; it is not a matter of ‘generalizing’ the findings themselves.” In other
words, our research objective and the conclusions we draw from our experiment relate solely to the logic of our
theory and hypotheses. As such, we neither intend to estimate the characteristics of a given population from
sample characteristics nor to draw inductive conclusions about that population. We also emphasize that our
experiment is designed to study the policy preferences and decision making processes of the general public rather
than that of elite decision makers. Otherwise, using students in an experiment to study elite behavior would
be problematic. With regards to this study, our use of experimentation is an appropriate method since the
real-world equivalent of our student sample is the public, not the political elite (see Mintz, Redd, and Vedlitz
2006).

5. In comparing manipulated factors across experimental conditions, Morton and Williams (2008, 342;
see also Morton and Williams 2010) aptly address one of the most prominent misconceptions regarding
experimentation—the notion that for each experimental group that receives a treatment, there must always be
a baseline control group receiving no treatment at all:

In the out of date view of political experimentation, control refers to a baseline treatment that
allows a researcher to gather data where he or she has not intervened. But many experiments do
not have a clear baseline, and in some cases it is not necessary. For example, suppose a researcher
is interested in evaluating how voters choose in a three-party election conducted by plurality rule
as compared to how they would choose in an identical three-party election conducted via
proportional representation. The researcher might conduct two laboratory elections where
subjects’ payments depend on the outcome of the election, but some subjects vote in a proportional
representation election and others vote in a plurality rule election. The researcher can then compare
voter behavior in the two treatments.

With respect to our experiment, the proper baselines, in accordance with our hypotheses, are each
experimental condition in comparison to one another. Moreover, adding an extra control group with no treatment
(e.g., having a separate group read a technical report from NASA) to our experimental design that already
encompasses three experimental factors would in fact complicate the analyses to the point of obtaining
unintelligible results.

342 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

asked to rank the president and four alternative potential sources from 1 to 5, where “1”
signified the highest level of credit/blame and “5” signified the lowest ranking. For the
domestic policy condition, the sources included the president, the previous administra-
tion, business circles, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
and the state of the global economy. For the foreign policy condition, the sources included
the president, the previous administration, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), the United Nations, and the newly elected government of the fictitious country
the United States was depicted to be at war with.

Experimental Scenarios and Manipulations

We designed the experiment around eight hypothetical scenarios in the form of
news updates, each one set in the near future with a fictitious president.6 The structure
and content of each experimental scenario were held constant except for the manipulated
factors. Four of the scenarios were set around the state of the economy, and the other four
concerned the state of a fictitious war. This served as our manipulation of policy domain.
Among the scenarios addressing the economy, half of the scenarios described the state of
the economy as deteriorating and the other half as improving. The same logic applied to
the foreign policy scenarios with one-half of the scenarios depicting the policy condition
as deteriorating and the remaining scenarios depicting the policy condition as improving.
This served as our manipulation of policy condition.

For the manipulation of party compatibility, we followed a quasi-experimental pro-
cedure. At the beginning of the experiment, participants completed a short questionnaire
in which they were asked to indicate their party identification. Thereafter, they were
exposed to one of the eight hypothetical scenarios where for each policy domain and
policy condition scenario, the fictitious president in office was from either the Democratic
Party or the Republican Party. After the experiment, we coded the cases where a
participant shared the same party as the president in a given scenario as “same party” or
otherwise as “opposing party.” Since this study focuses on party compatibility between an
individual and the president with regards to whether one is of the same or opposing party
as the president, 17 of the 149 participants who identified themselves as independents at
the start of the questionnaire were subsequently excluded from the analyses, resulting in
a sample size of 132 participants.

6. As Gartner (2008) suggests, experimental designs that use hypothetical scenarios provide the
researcher a way to get a handle on the broader range of processes concerning public opinion by enabling one
to manipulate and vary the factors of interest in accordance with one’s research objectives. Employing
hypothetical scenarios also helps prevent any bias or confusion that might arise by referring to present or past
time real-world actors and events, which would contaminate the validity and reliability of the findings.
Nevertheless, experimenters should avoid developing hypothetical scenarios that are unrealistic or artificial.
With these considerations in mind, we created our experimental scenarios in the form of fictional news updates
designed in close concert to the type of content found in real news stories by using the Vanderbilt Television
News Archive database (see http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu). In addition, we set the experimental scenarios in the
year 2018 so that the participants would not inadvertently confuse the fictional setting with that of the current
political atmosphere. Indeed, because Barack Obama’s presidency may stretch until the year 2016 and because
participants could interpret the year 2016 differently as a presidential election year, we employ the year 2018
to depict the midpoint of a future president’s first or second term. In doing so, we are confident that 2018 serves
as a point in time far enough into the future to avoid participant confusion with current and near-future events,
but not too far into the future that participants cannot fathom what societal conditions might look like.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 343

The experiment also included manipulation checks. At the end of the experimental
questionnaire, we asked the participants (in accordance with the experimental scenario
they were exposed to) to recall the following: (1) which political party the president was
from (Democratic or Republican) and (2) what the policy condition was (deteriorating or
improving) as described in the news update they read. Out of the 132 participants,
91.67% of the respondents recalled the experimental conditions accurately. As such, the
manipulation checks served to ensure that the manipulations worked as intended by our
experimental design, thus confirming the internal validity of our experiment.7

Political Sophistication as a Covariate

As mentioned earlier, several scholars suggest that political sophistication may have
a significant impact on an individual’s attribution judgments (Gomez and Wilson 2001,
2003). To control for such effect, we included a conventional measure of political
sophistication—one’s general knowledge of domestic and international politics—as a
covariate in our models. Specifically, we administered a questionnaire on general political
knowledge with a total of 18 factual test items at the end of the experiment. We modeled
the questionnaire based on items from the National Election Surveys (NES), Gomez and
Wilson’s (2001) study, Prior’s (2002) study, and Taber and Lodge’s (2006) study. The
questionnaire consisted of three segments: (1) domestic political knowledge, (2) recog-
nition of important national and foreign political figures, and (3) foreign policy knowl-
edge. We then aggregated the separate scores of the three sections to obtain a total score
of each participant’s level of general political knowledge.

We estimated a commonly used reliability statistic, Cronbach’s alpha, in order to
check whether each constitutive section of the questionnaire measured the same under-
lying construct (here, political sophistication) and could thus be combined together to
generate an additive scale. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for this scale is 0.74,
which is sufficiently high as per the widely accepted criterion of 0.70 or higher used to
determine the internal consistency of summated scales (see Nunnally 1978). Therefore,
the results justify the formation of an index variable.

Results

Overall, the experimental results corroborate our expectations concerning the
effects that policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility have on the amount
of responsibility and credit/blame attributed to the president. Specifically, the results

7. In our analyses, we do not exclude the data from the participants who failed to accurately recall
the experimental conditions they were in, since such failure closely reflects real-world circumstances wherein
some members of the public often fail to correctly identify the political party of the president or accurately
describe certain policy conditions. Previously, we had overlooked this consideration and had instead con-
ducted our analyses by excluding the data from the participants who failed the manipulation checks. The
results of these previous analyses (which are available upon request) do not differ substantively from our final
analyses. We thank the anonymous reviewer who brought this issue to our attention and recommended the
more conservative tests of our hypotheses, which helped increase confidence in our inferences.

344 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

demonstrate that policy domain has a significant main effect on attribution judgments,
indicating that people place a greater amount of credit/blame and responsibility on the
president in the foreign policy domain with respect to the issue of war as compared to the
domestic policy domain with respect to the economy. In addition, the interaction
between policy condition and party compatibility displays statistical significance, sug-
gesting that people attribute more blame and responsibility for deteriorating conditions
and less credit and responsibility for improving conditions to an opposition party
president compared to a president of their own party, particularly regarding war in the
foreign policy domain.

Attribution of Responsibility

Table 1 shows the results of our analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) concerning the
effects of policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility on attribution of
responsibility to the president. Following their exposure to one of the eight experimental
scenarios, participants were asked to indicate the level of responsibility (on a scale of 0 to
10) they thought the president should hold concerning a given policy issue depicted in
that scenario. Our findings indicate that the attribution of responsibility to the president
is significantly higher in the foreign policy domain (M = 6.55) than in the domestic
policy domain (M = 5.89), which corroborates our first hypothesis (H1), F (1,
123) = 3.68, p < .05.

The results for our second hypothesis (H2) concerning the interaction between
policy condition and party compatibility are also statistically significant and in the
expected direction, F (1, 123) = 16.09, p < .001. As Figure 1 shows, in the case of deteriorating policy conditions, participants attributed more responsibility to a president of the opposing party (M = 6.71) than to a president of the same party (M = 5.36). On the other hand, in the case of improving policy conditions, the level of responsibility that participants attributed to a president of their own party was significantly higher (M = 7.13) than the amount they attributed to a president of the opposing party (M = 5.70).

TABLE 1
Attribution of Responsibility to the President—Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)

Independent Variables SS Df MS F-value p-value

Policy domain (domestic/foreign) 13.436 1 13.436 3.680 <.05 Policy condition (deteriorating/improving) 4.478 1 4.478 1.226 >.05
Party compatibility (same/opposing) .051 1 .051 .014 >.05
Policy domain * Policy condition 15.133 1 15.133 4.145 <.05 Policy domain * Party compatibility 1.331 1 1.331 .365 >.05
Policy condition * Party compatibility 58.755 1 58.755 16.092 <.001 Domain * Condition * Compatibility 6.151 1 6.151 1.685 <.10 Political sophistication 4.600 1 4.600 1.260 >.10
Residual 449.100 123 3.651
N = 132

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 345

The three-way interactive effect of policy domain, policy condition, and party
compatibility is moderately significant, F (1, 123) = 1.68, p < .10. In line with our third hypothesis (H3), the proposed effects of policy condition and party compatibility on the level of responsibility attributed to the president are stronger for the foreign policy domain (see Figure 2). More specifically, regarding deteriorating policy conditions, the difference between the mean scores of responsibility attributed to a president by partici- pants of the opposing party and those belonging to the same party in the foreign policy domain is larger [(Mopposing = 7.71) - (Msame = 5.71) = 2.00] than the difference in the domestic policy domain [(Mopposing = 5.70) - (Msame = 5.00) = 0.70]. By the same token,

FIGURE 1. Interactive Effect of Policy Condition and Party Compatibility on Attribution of
Responsibility to the President.

FIGURE 2. Three-Way Interactive Effect of Policy Domain, Policy Condition, and Party
Compatibility on Attribution of Responsibility to the President.

346 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

regarding improving policy conditions, the difference between the mean scores of respon-
sibility attributed to a president by participants of the same party and those of the
opposing party in the foreign policy domain is larger [(Msame = 7.23) – (Mopposing = 5.56) =
1.67] than the difference in the domestic policy domain [(Msame = 7.03) –
(Mopposing = 5.84) = 1.19].

Apart from the experimental results directly concerning our hypotheses, there are
a number of other interesting findings that also warrant discussion. Primarily, the results
show that the interaction between policy domain and policy condition is significant, F (1,
123) = 4.14, p < .05. Specifically, the participants attributed a markedly higher amount of responsibility to the president for deteriorating conditions in the foreign policy domain (M = 6.71) than in the domestic policy domain (M = 5.35). By comparison, the difference in the means regarding responsibility attributions to the president for improv- ing conditions is considerably small between foreign and domestic policy domains (M = 6.39 and M = 6.43, respectively). Although the main effect of policy condition is not significant (p > .5), the results concerning the interaction of policy condition with
policy domain suggest the presence of a negativity bias in the foreign policy domain,
wherein participants attribute higher responsibility to the president for deteriorating
conditions than improving ones. Furthermore, the weight of the negativity bias is
amplified in the foreign policy domain where responsibility attributions for deteriorating
conditions are much greater as compared to the domestic policy domain. Last, political
sophistication as a covariate in the model does not demonstrate a statistically significant
effect on participants’ responsibility attributions to the president.

Attribution of Credit/Blame

Table 2 shows the results of our analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) concerning the
effects of policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility on attribution of
credit/blame to the president. Each participant, once exposed to a particular experimental
scenario, was asked to distribute credit or blame (depending on the policy condition) for
a given policy issue by ranking the president along with four other potential sources,

TABLE 2
Attribution of Credit/Blame to the President (Ranking 1-5)—Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)

Independent Variables SS Df MS F-value p-value

Policy domain (domestic/foreign) 6.556 1 6.556 4.162 <.05 Policy condition (deteriorating/improving) 5.662 1 5.662 3.594 >.05
Party compatibility (same/opposing) 1.177 1 1.177 .747 >.05
Policy domain*Policy condition .823 1 .823 .523 >.05
Policy domain*Party compatibility 1.153 1 1.153 .732 >.05
Policy condition* Party compatibility 19.384 1 19.384 12.304 <.001 Domain*Condition*Compatibility 4.162 1 4.162 2.642 <.10 Political sophistication 2.611 1 2.611 1.658 <.10 Residual 193.779 123 1.575 N = 132

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 347

where “1” denoted the highest ranking of credit/blame and “5” denoted the lowest
ranking. Similar to the findings regarding the attribution of responsibility, our results
concerning the attribution of credit/blame with respect to policy domain indicate that
participants ranked the president significantly higher in the foreign policy domain
(M = 2.53) than in the domestic policy domain (M = 2.99), which corroborates our first
hypothesis (H1), F (1, 123) = 4.16, p < .05.

The results also demonstrate a statistically significant interactive effect between
policy condition and party compatibility, F (1, 123) = 12.30, p < .001. As Figure 3 shows, in the case of deteriorating policy conditions, participants ranked a president of the opposing party higher for blame (M = 2.48) than a president of the same party (M = 3.47). By comparison, in the case of improving policy conditions, participants ranked a president of the same party higher for credit (M = 2.25) than a president of the opposing party (M = 2.85). These results corroborate our second hypothesis (H2).

Last, the three-way interaction between policy domain, policy condition, and party
compatibility concerning the attribution of credit/blame displays a moderately signifi-
cant effect, F (1, 123) = 2.64, p < .10. In line with our third hypothesis (H3), the proposed effects of policy condition and party compatibility on attributions of credit/ blame are stronger in the foreign policy domain than in the domestic policy domain (see Figure 4). Specifically, for the attribution of blame concerning deteriorating policy conditions, the difference between the mean ranking of the president by participants of the same party and those of the opposing party is larger in the foreign policy domain [(Msame = 3.25) - (Mopposing = 2.08) = 1.17] than in the domestic policy domain [(Msame = 3.70) - (Mopposing = 2.88) = 0.82]. Likewise, for the attribution of credit concern- ing improving policy conditions, the difference between the mean ranking of the presi- dent by participants of the opposing party and those of the same party is larger in the foreign policy domain [(Mopposing = 2.98) - (Msame = 1.82) = 1.16] than in the domestic policy domain [(Mopposing = 2.72) - (Msame = 2.67) = 0.05].

FIGURE 3. Interactive Effect of Policy Condition and Party Compatibility on Attribution of
Credit/Blame to the President (Ranking 1-5, where 1 = Highest Ranking).

348 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

Last, in contrast to the results concerning attribution of responsibility to the
president, we find that the interaction between policy domain and policy condition is
not significant for the attribution of credit/blame (p > .5). In addition, the main effect
of policy condition is also not significant (p > .5). On the other hand, political sophis-
tication as a covariate in this model demonstrates a moderately significant effect on
participant attributions of credit/blame to the president, F (1, 123) = 1.65, p < .10. Upon closer examination of the parameter estimates for this variable, we find that participants with higher levels of political knowledge tend to give lower rankings to the president regarding the attribution of credit/blame (b = .038, t = 1.29). This finding is in line with previous studies suggesting that less sophisticated individuals tend to attribute credit or blame to the single most obvious political actor (here, the president), while more sophisticated individuals tend to engage in more diffuse attri- butions, dividing credit or blame between proximal and distal agents (see Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003, 2007).8

8. We also analyzed the covariate effect of sophistication specific to each policy domain by splitting
the data into the subsets of foreign and domestic policy domains. The results show that the effect of
sophistication regarding credit/blame attribution is mainly driven by the domestic policy domain (p < .05), whereas the difference in credit/blame attribution between sophisticated and less sophisticated participants is largely washed out in the foreign policy domain (p > .10). As such, the results corroborate Gomez and
Wilson’s (2001, 2003) theory of heterogeneous attribution suggesting that sophisticated and less sophisti-
cated individuals differ in their attribution judgments with respect to the economy. At the same time, the
results also indicate that such attributional divergence based on political sophistication does not seem to hold
in the foreign policy domain with respect to war. This may be because sophisticated and less sophisticated
individuals both associate war more directly with the president as commander in chief. The results of these
additional split data analyses are available upon request.

FIGURE 4. Three-Way Interactive Effect of Policy Domain, Policy Condition, and Party
Compatibility on Attribution of Credit/Blame to the President (Ranking 1-5, where 1 = Highest
Ranking).

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 349

Discussion and Conclusion

Given the expectations gap between public perceptions of power and actual presi-
dential capacity, scholars have increasingly investigated the dynamics that shape public
appraisals of the president. Building on and extending previous research, we applied an
experimental approach to test how policy domain, policy condition, and party compat-
ibility influence public attributions of responsibility and credit/blame to presidents. Our
findings demonstrate that the public directs a greater amount of credit/blame and
responsibility to the president in the foreign policy domain with respect to war than in
the domestic policy domain with respect to the economy. Our findings also show that
people attribute more blame and responsibility for deteriorating conditions and less
credit and responsibility for improving conditions to a president of the opposing party
compared to a president of their own party, particularly regarding war in the foreign
policy domain.

Our study offers several implications pertaining to the presidency. Regarding
policy domain, our findings that presidents receive more credit for success (and more
blame for failure) on the issue of war as compared to the economy may relate to the
dynamics of presidential approval ratings, especially in connection with rally effects
(Mueller 1973). Typically, international rally effects on presidential approval are often
larger than domestic rally effects, including the effects of economic changes. Such
disparity in part reflects the fact that foreign policy events and crises that lead to rallies
tend to be sudden and dramatic while economic conditions tend to change more slowly,
thereby dispersing public reactions across time. Nevertheless, such differences in the
magnitude and duration between international and domestic rally effects may also be
partly related to different patterns of attribution observed between foreign and domestic
policy domains. Our findings further suggest that presidents who choose (or are forced)
to focus on foreign policy may find their standing in the polls to be more volatile than
presidents who prioritize domestic policy issues given the magnification of successes and
failures abroad due to the public’s proclivity to place more responsibility and more
credit/blame on the president in the foreign policy domain.9

The implications of our findings concerning party compatibility are also notewor-
thy and provide additional incentives for further research. Specifically, the finding that
partisan attachments lead to biased attributions of credit/blame and responsibility to the
president gives credence to the idea that presidents may benefit from emphasizing their
accomplishments and downplaying their failures or shortcomings as a means to rally
support among their party base, particularly in the foreign policy domain. However,
partisan opponents can likewise exaggerate failures and trivialize presidential successes in
an effort to undermine a president’s public standing. Given the presence of such partisan
bias in attributions of credit/blame and responsibility, one interesting question for
scholars to explore is how moderates and independents form their attribution judgments
of the president. In an increasingly polarized and partisan environment where political

9. We thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested these valuable points.

350 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

parties are constantly seeking to take credit for successes and avoid (or redirect) blame for
failures, do moderates and independents develop less biased evaluations of presidential
performance or do they simply become agitated or apathetic? Given the importance of the
“median voter” for politics (see Downs 1957), especially with regards to policy-making
and electoral outcomes, further scholarly investigations that address these questions are
warranted.

Further extending the scope of this line of research, one may examine how the
involvement of Congress and its level of discretionary power in the policy process mediate
public attributions of responsibility and credit/blame to the president. For instance, in
the foreign policy realm, although modern presidents have dominated over the legislative
branch when it comes to war, Congress holds a significant amount of shared discretion
with the president concerning other issues, such as foreign trade (see Peake 2001). In
cases where presidents and members of Congress share (and compete for) discretion over
policy direction, expectations about public appraisals for either institution are less clear.
To date, although there exist some studies that have examined issues such as how divided
government influences presidential approval ratings (see Nicholson, Segura, and Woods
2002) or how the perceived functioning of different levels of government affects voting
decisions (Arceneaux 2006), our understanding of the relationship between the “insti-
tutional context and the assignment of political responsibility” remains incomplete
(Rudolph 2003b, 190). Accordingly, future studies should consider how the level of
policy discretion may influence the manner in which the public apportions responsibility
and credit/blame to the president and Congress over a given policy issue.

Another alternative avenue for future research would be to experimentally manipu-
late political sophistication. Although we included a common measure of political
sophistication—one’s general political knowledge—as a covariate in our analytical
models, applying an experimental manipulation of political information along with the
random assignment of participants to experimental conditions would allow researchers to
better control for extraneous factors such as intelligence, motivation, and personal inter-
est. One way to experimentally manipulate political sophistication would be to provide
varying levels of information about certain issues to participants and then observe how
such manipulations may alter participants’ attribution judgments regarding presidential
performance.

Last, although our study provides new insights regarding the dynamics within
which the public ascribes responsibility and credit/blame to the president, our focus on
the issues of war and the economy are not fully representative of each domain, and
therefore our findings should not be overly generalized. Indeed, Ripley and Franklin
(1991) point out that the range of foreign policy issues is wide and diverse, and the same
may be said about the domestic policy realm. As such, future studies should look beyond
the issues of war and the economy to examine how the public attributes responsibility to
presidents across other foreign and domestic policy issues. Regarding foreign policy, one
might consider public attributions with respect to global trade pacts, international
treaties on environmental issues, or diplomacy issues and sanctioning policies related to
the prephases of war. On the domestic front, one might explore public attributions of
responsibility concerning issues such as health care, civil rights, education, or welfare.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 351

To conclude, despite the limited influence and capacity presidents have for solving
the nation’s most pressing problems, their position atop the governmental hierarchy
obliges them to be responsive to the public’s demands for effective policy leadership. In
an era of growing polarization, partisanship, and intense media scrutiny, modern presi-
dents face a significant uphill battle when it comes to earning and maintaining positive
public appraisals for their performance in the White House as they take on numerous
challenges during the course of their term. As was the case recently, although President
Barack Obama was swept into office in 2008 amid much fanfare and high public
expectations, he soon suffered a steady drop in public approval as he attempted to deal
with the economic recession, two wars, health care reform, and a host of other issues.
Thereafter, Obama witnessed—and was partly blamed for—a record loss of Democratic
congressional seats during the 2010 midterm elections (Fifield 2010). In the midst of
these shifts in public sentiment and voting behavior, presidential scholars, advisors,
pundits, and other prognosticators continue to struggle in their efforts to better com-
prehend the forces that influence public perceptions of presidential policy performance.
Accordingly, further scholarly investigations in this line of research are necessary for
developing a greater understanding of the dynamics that shape executive accountability
and public appraisals of the president.

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