1. BACKGROUND Previous research suggests that the change from Communism to Democracy led to psychological changes in Central Europe. We suspect that political systems can affect the perception that action in everyday life is caused by internal or external forces. -Communism  collectivism, collectivism linked to external attributions and locus of control -Communism made situational constraints on behavior more salient, Democracy made them less so -Increase in individualism from 1980’s – 1990’s (Šverko, 1999) -Shift toward more internal sense of control from end of communism to late 1990’s (Varnum & Bowman, 2008) -Increased internality from 1980’s – early 1990’s (Tobacyk, 1992) STUDY 1 In study 1 we compared scores on Rotter’s IE scale in Poland from three time periods, 1986, 1991, and 2008. We predicted a shift toward internality from the Communist period to the present. STUDY 2 In study 2 we sought to examine whether priming the Communist period would lead less dispositional bias in making attributions for others behavior. We predicted that Slovak participants primed with the Communist period would show less dispositional bias than those primed with the recent past, or with the present. Methods Conclusions Political Systems, Locus of Control, and Attribution Michael E. W. Varnum 1, Miroslav Sirota 2, Krzysztof Motyka 3 1 University of Michigan, 2 Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 3 Catholic University of Lublin Figure 1. Study 1: Locus of Control in Poland Figure 2. Study 2: Dispositional Bias by Condition References CHART or PICTURE STUDY 2 Participants Participants included 116 students (100 f, 16 m) from Comenius University in Bratislava, mean age 22.1, s.d. = 4.29. -“Communist Past” condition (CP), N = 43 -“Recent Past” condition (RP), N = 38 -“Present” condition (PR), N = 35 Materials Participants read a series of three vignettes similar to those used by Kitayama (2006) describing positive or negative behaviors of 3 protagonists. In the “Communist Past” condition the vignettes took place during the Communist Period, as indicated by the year in which the story was said to take place, i.e. “1978” or “1983.” In the “Recent Past” condition the vignettes took place in post-communist period, i.e. “1999” or “2003.” In the “Present” condition all vignettes took place in year in which the study was run, i.e. “2008.” Participants filled out 4 7-pt Likert scales after reading each vignette, indicating to what extent they thought the behavior was caused by the internal traits of the actor or by outside forces. The ratings were averaged and a difference score (dispositional – situational) was computed. Kitayama, S., Ishii, K., Imada, T., Takemura, K., & Ramaswamy, J. (2006). Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: Evidence from Japan’s northern frontier. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 369-384. Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies of internal versus external control of reinforcements. Psychological Monographs, 80, 1-28. Šverko, B.B. (1999). The work importance study: Recent changes of values in Croatia. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 48, 89-102. Tobacyk, J. (1992). Changes in locus of control beliefs in Polish university students before and after democratization. The Journal of Social Psychology, 132, 217-222. Varnum, M. E. W., & Bowman, N. A. (2008). The political is personal: Changes in locus of control in post-communist Central Europe. Manuscript submitted for publication. STUDY 1 -2008 sample (M = 11.4, SD = 3.7), more internal than 1985 sample (M = 13.5, SD = 3.7), t(194) = 3.95, p <.001, d =.57 (see Fig. 1) -2008 sample more internal than 1991 sample (M = 12.4, SD = 4.2), t(194) = 1.75, p <.09, d =.25 -2008 vs. 1985 effect size double that found by Tobacyk (1992) comparing 1985 sample to 1991 sample, t(198) = 1.91, p =.06, d =.27 -2008 vs. 1991 effect size similar to that found by Tobacyk (1992) comparing 1985 sample to 1991 sample STUDY 2 -Communist Past condition showed least dispositional bias (M =.085, SD =.83), followed by the Recent Past condition (M =.461, SD =.92), and the Present condition (M =.63, SD =.96), F(2,113) = 3.86, p <.03 -Post-Hoc LSD found CP vs. RP diff was significant, p =.06 and CP vs. PR diff was significant, p =.008; RP vs. PR diff was not significant, p =.41 Taken together with pervious research, our results suggest that the nature of political systems can indeed affect people’s tendency to view events and behavior as externally or internally determined. Study 1 found a fairly large shift toward internality from the Communist period to the present. Study 2 indicates that priming different political systems (through priming different periods of time) may shift people’s patterns of attribution. One limitation of study 2 is that the majority of participants were born only a few years before the end of Communism. Thus it may be that the manipulation is priming lay theories about situational constraints during that period, rather than priming a different set of causal theories. Future studies might examine whether this manipulation affected dispositional bias in a situation set in the present, perhaps through a correspondence bias paradigm. Introduction Results Methods STUDY 1 Participants The sample consisted of 96 participants matched for age, gender, and major with Tobacyk’s 1985 (N = 100) and 1991 (N = 100) samples (see table below). The present sample was combined with the previous samples for analysis. All participants were students at the Catholic University of Lublin. Materials Participants completed Rotter’s (1966) IE scale translated into Polish. CHART or PICTURE Poster to be presented at the 10 th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Tampa, FL, 2009.