Empathy, meta-attributions, judgment of conflict and preferences for negotiation

Social interaction, including social behavior and associated outcomes, consists of a continuous exchange and interpretation of information between social actors. According to attribution theory, subjective causal analysis of the causes of important social events determines, at least in part, subsequent responses to these events. In the present research, attributional thinking is broadened to include inferences about the attributional activity of others about an important social event. Such inferences about the mental processes (e.g., intention, motivation) of others constitute social metacognitive activity referred to in this paper as meta-attributions. Following an overview of relevant research in social cognition and social metacognition, an attribution theory framework for the examination of meta-attributional processes their implications is discussed. Dispositional empathy was integrated into a conceptual model based on the cognition (attribution)-emotion linkage previously shown to predict responses to conflict and violence (Betancourt, 1991, 1997) and used to test the proposition that dispositional empathy influences responses to conflict directly and through mediating attributions and emotions and also through mediating meta-attributions and emotions. Structural equation model analyses of relations proposed as determinants of support for negotiations and for judgments of responsibility for the war in Iraq were conducted. Resulting meta-attributional models provided good fits for the data and were comparable to attributional models, supporting the usefulness of the construct of meta-attributions in examining social processes. Additionally, results demonstrate the significant influence of dispositional empathy on responses to conflict and violence, both directly and through the mediating effects of psychological processes (both attributions and meta-attributions as well as related emotions).