Norm of Internality: Critique of the Method
Type de matériel :
67
The norm of internality hypothesis (Dubois, 2003) is seen today as a standard theory among the French speaking social psychologists. This status was established without a critical examination of the research methods (for a notable exception, cf. Gangloff, 1997). Starting from a lack of evidence about the construct validity of internality measures, we have postulated confusion in internality questionnaires between the locus of explanations (internal versus external) and their social value. The fact that internal explanations included in these questionnaires generally have more value than their external alternatives could explain the preference observed for the former in situations which prompt normativity. Experiments 1 and 2 confirm the existence of such a bias in two distinct questionnaires. The third experiment shows that the difference in value between internal and external explanations determines strongly the choice of one of them: The explanation which has the more value is systematically preferred, even if it is external and the other one is internal. The consequences of these results are discussed for the development of a proper method for testing the norm of internality hypothesis.
Réseaux sociaux