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Where Does the Buck Stop? ApplyingAttribution Theory to Examine Public

Appraisals of the President

CIGDEM V. SIRINUniversity of Texas at El Paso

JOSÉ D. VILLALOBOSUniversity of Texas at El Paso

This study applies attribution theory to examine public appraisals of the president. Todate, most political science research on attribution theory has focused on domestic policy, and nowork has considered both domestic and foreign policy domains in tandem. To fill this gap, weformulate and experimentally test a series of hypotheses regarding the level of responsibility andcredit/blame that individuals attribute to the president in both policy domains across varyingpolicy 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 thepolitical arena. Through wars, economic crises, and increased civic demands, presidentshave sought more involvement and influence in overseeing public affairs (Edwards 1983),a development accompanied by an exponential growth and institutionalization of theexecutive branch (Burke 2000; Hart 1995). Amid such developments, the media hasfocused on the president as the most salient political actor (Farnsworth and Lichter 2006;see also Brody 1991), while public polling surveys have consistently connected thepresident’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 recentlypublished her work in Acta Politica, International Political Science Review, and the International Journal ofConflict Management.

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

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We wish to thank Nick Valentino and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful insightsand 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 forpresidents 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 theyhave the means to solve the nation’s problems. However, presidents consistently fall shortof keeping their promises to the public, revealing a gap between public expectations ofthe president and the president’s capacity for governing (see Cronin 1977). In the midstof this paradox, scholars have become interested in understanding the dynamics thatinfluence whether and how the public attributes responsibility to presidents for the stateof national affairs and, in turn, the extent to which presidents are able to claim credit intimes of success and avoid blame in times of deteriorating national conditions.

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

Attribution Theory in the Study of Politics

Heider’s (1958) early work in social psychology on the process of causal attributionserved as a springboard for studying how people draw inferences from their own behaviorand 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). Inanother seminal piece, Jones and Nisbett (1972) posited that actors tend to attributetheir actions to situational requirements, whereas observers tend to attribute the sameactions to personal dispositions, a pervasive tendency in social attribution commonlyreferred 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 workshave provided a foundation for political scientists to explore systematically public per-ceptions of responsibility and accountability for political figures as well as perceptionsabout political events, issues, and other related phenomena.

As Gomez and Wilson (2003, 273) note, “Attribution is indisputably fundamentalto individual decision making, and has been shown to influence powerfully attitudes towardthe self and others, as well as emotional arousal” (see also Fiske and Taylor 1991; Hewstone1989;Petty andCacioppo1996). In thepolitical arena, attributionsof responsibility, credit,

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and blame are commonly associated with public appraisals of political leaders (Iyengar1989). Such appraisals, in turn, influence voting behavior (Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears1981) and voter turnout (Arceneaux 2003; Brody and Sniderman 1977), which are centralto the democratic process. As such, attribution theory provides a useful framework forunderstanding public perceptions of political phenomena and their implications (seeAbramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988; Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears 1981; Rosenbergand Wolfsfeld 1977; Rudolph 2006; Rudolph and Grant 2002).

For our purposes, we apply attribution theory vis-à-vis public appraisals of thepresident to examine the dynamics within which the public ascribes responsibility andcredit/blame for a given political event or condition, either internally to the actions of thepresident or externally to situational factors. More specifically, internal (dispositional)attribution occurs when an individual perceives a president’s performance—successful ornot—as a product of that president’s personal abilities and actions. Conversely, external(situational) attribution occurs when an individual perceives a president’s performance asa 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 orfunctional (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 ofstudies posit that ideology plays an important role in influencing responsibility attribu-tions (Christiansen and Lavine 1997; Guimond, Begin, and Palmer 1989; Kluegel andSmith 1986; Lane 1962; Shirazi and Biel 2005; Skitka and Tetlock 1992, 1993; Skitkaet 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 liberalstend to adjust their perceptions of social problems toward external explanations toincrease their cognitive consistency. Conservatives, on the other hand, are more motivatedto seek punishment for individuals who violate what they view as traditional socialnorms. Regarding the impact of economic ideology on attribution judgments, becauseeconomic conservatives traditionally ascribe a minimum role for the government ineconomic affairs, they are likely to attribute relatively less responsibility to governmentalactors than non-governmental ones (see Rudolph 2003a).

Party cues also play an important role in stimulating ideologically motivatedattribution judgments. For example, peoplewhoarepartisan supporters of agivenpresidentmay attribute less responsibility and give more leeway to that president during decliningnational conditions rather than engage in a more objective evaluation of the president’spolicy performance (see Lau and Sears 1981). Thus, there exists a favorable ideological biasthat liberal Democrats hold for Democratic presidents and conservative Republicans holdfor Republican presidents. Nevertheless, Malhotra and Kuo’s (2008) study on HurricaneKatrina finds that although party cues play an important role in stimulating biased partisanreactions, individuals with access to information about the specific responsibilities ofgovernment officials are likely to make more evenhanded judgments.

As individuals develop their perceptions of political figures, politicians strive toshape 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 Woods2002, 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 salientand more positive policy conditions and outcomes (McGraw 1991; Weaver 1986; see alsoJacobs and Shapiro 2000). In addition, news media coverage and the way reporters frameevents can influence individual perceptions for attributing responsibility to the presidentor other political actors (Shah et al. 2004; see also Farnsworth and Lichter 2006).

Last, a number of scholars suggest that an individual’s attribution judgmentsregarding political figures also depend on that individual’s level of education and politicalsophistication1 (e.g., Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000; Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003).It makes intuitive sense to expect that highly educated and sophisticated individuals havea better understanding of the political process and are generally more aware of nationalconditions as they relate to governmental performance, which helps such individualsdevelop more accurate (or at least more consistent) political and economic evaluations(Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000, 639). However, some studies have found thatindividuals who possess high amounts of political knowledge may instead choose to engagein biased information processing due to affectively charged “hot cognitions” shaped bypartisan 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 responsibilityconcerning the state of the economy affect the perceived accountability and electionprospects of political leaders (see Lewis-Beck and Paldam 2000). In exploring howindividuals respond politically to economic conditions, a number of scholars have arguedthat the answer relies partly on the extent to which individuals attribute responsibilityand credit/blame to certain political actors (see Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988;Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears 1981; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b, 2006; Rudolph and Grant2002). For instance, according to the reward-punishment theory, people generally creditpolitical incumbents for improvements in the economy and blame them otherwise (seeFiorina 1978; Key 1966; Page 1978). Therein, a number of studies argue that citizens aremore 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 thata deteriorating economy often harms a president’s popularity, whereas an improvingeconomy does not necessarily lead to high approval ratings, concluding that “There ispunishment 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 knowledgeand acquired information about politics (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, 10; Goren 2001, 161). In additionto using the term “political sophistication,” scholars also employ alternative terms such as “politicalinformation,” “political expertise,” “political knowledge,” or “political awareness.”


relative to equally extreme and equally likely positive information in a variety ofinformation-processing tasks” (Lau 1985, 119). Scholars have extensively explored theissue 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 itrelates to economic voting (e.g., Bloom and Price 1975; Kernell 1977; Lau 1985). Forinstance, examining the impact of short-run economic changes on congressional voting,Bloom and Price (1975) find that although the deterioration of economic conditionshurts the president’s party, better conditions do not necessarily aid it (see also Kernell1977). A number of studies also suggest that negativity bias influences public judgmentsof presidential character and performance as well as evaluations of presidential candidates(e.g., Brody 1991; Goren 2002). However, some studies have found no empirical supportfor negativity bias, suggesting that its impact may instead be conditional upon otherfactors (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 developtheir 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 blamefor economic policy conditions (see also Kinder, Abelson, and Fiske 1979; Miller,Wattenberg, and Malanchuk 1986; Page 1978; Peffley 1984). He further argues thatsuch perceptions are open to revision if the president’s continuing performance on theeconomy 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 determinewhether a president could handle certain policy problems in the future, particularly whenconsidering whether to reelect the president for a second term (see Fiorina 1981; Page1978; 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 thecurrent president for poor economic conditions, individuals may instead blame theprevious president, especially “during the first half of a new administration.”

As mentioned earlier, a number of studies suggest that the formation and structureof an individual’s attribution judgments in general and economic voting behavior inparticular 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), “lesssophisticated individuals tend to make conceptually proximal attributions, focusing creditor blame on the single most obvious actor in the relevant sphere, while more sophisticatedindividuals tendtowarddiffuseattributions,dividingcreditorblamebetweenproximalanddistal agents.” Applying their proximal/distal attribution argument (which they refer to asthe “theory of heterogeneous attribution”) to the context of presidential economic voting,Gomez and Wilson (2001, 2003, 2007) argue that because less sophisticated citizensprimarily tend to credit/blame themselves for their own economic circumstances andattribute responsibility for the national circumstances exclusively to the president, theyare more likely to vote sociotropically (i.e., based on national economic conditions). Bycomparison, sophisticated individuals are more likely to engage in pocketbook voting (i.e.,


based on personal economic conditions) since they better understand the impact thatmacroeconomic policies have on their personal economic well-being while recognizing thatthe economy is also affected by numerous other actors and economic forces that lie beyondthe 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 policydomain, scholars have done considerably less work in the realm of foreign policy. Amongthe small number of attribution studies on foreign policy, scholars have focused on thegeneral perceptions of decision makers and the public concerning international eventsand conflicts. To our knowledge, almost no work has systematically examined how thepublic attributes responsibility and credit/blame to political figures, particularly thepresident, with regards to foreign policy issues.

Jervis’s (1976) study on foreign policy decision making marked the first applicationof attribution theory in the field of international relations. Specifically, Jervis addresses howleaders’ perceptual/attributional errors concerning a given set of issues and political actorsmay impair their ability tocollect andprocess information fordecisionmaking.Onaparallelbasis, Rosenberg and Wolfsfeld (1977) explore how decision makers interpret the reasonsbehind the actions of their adversaries during a conflict and the effects of such causalperceptions on the types of policies they propose. Larson (1985) also applies attributiontheory to explain the containment policies employed by U.S. political leaders during theCold War. In another study, Heradstveit and Bonham (1986) examine the attributions ofAmerican and Norwegian officials regarding Soviet activities in Norway. Later on,Heradstveit andBonham(1996)conduct in-depth interviewswithArabelites to investigateattributions regarding the Gulf War and the actions of the Iraqi government.

Regarding the dynamics of foreign policy attributions among the public, moststudies refer to the in-group versus out-group bias, which suggests that people tend toattribute foreign policy successes and positive acts on the part of their in-group tointernal causes while attributing the causes of their own failures and negative acts to theout-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 behaviorof an out-group, whereas they make attributions to internal characteristics when theout-group displays signs of failure and/or negative actions (see, for example, Bizman andHoffman 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 comparingthe 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 evidencecontradicting Gomez and Wilson’s findings regarding the link between political sophistication and economicvoting behavior (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Goren 1997; van der Brug, van der Eijk, and Franklin2007). Such scholars argue that because gathering and processing information about the state of the nationaleconomy is a far more difficult task than evaluating one’s own financial situation, sociotropic voting may bemore common among sophisticated voters, whereas less sophisticated voters may more often engage inpocketbook voting (Godbout and Bélanger 2007, 543; Fiorina 1981; Krause 1997; Lupia 1994).


Arabs regarding the Middle East conflict (see Bizman and Hoffman 1993; Heradstveit1979; see also Rosenberg and Wolfsfeld 1977), Protestants versus Catholics in NorthernIreland (Hunter and Stringer 1999), Hindus versus Muslims in southern India (Taylorand Jaggi 1974), and Muslim versus Christian habitants of the island of Mindanao in thePhilippines (Montiel and Macapagal 2006). In addition, recent studies find that politicalleaders can take advantage of such biased perceptions to legitimize the use of force againsta 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 domesticpolicy domain, particularly the economy. However, scholars have done relatively little workon responsibility attributions in the foreignpolicydomainand,noworkhas consideredbothpolicy domains in tandem or examined how the interaction of policy domain, policycondition, and party compatibility influence public appraisals of the president. To fill thisgap in the literature, we formulate and test a series of hypotheses regarding the overall levelof responsibility and credit/blame that individuals attribute to presidents in both domesticand foreign policy domains across varying policy conditions. In doing so, we also considerthe role that party compatibility plays in mediating people’s attribution judgments.

Scholarsnote that thepublic confers amuchhigherdegreeofdeference to thepresidenton foreign policy issues compared to domestic ones (Cohen 1995; Hill 1998; Hurwitz1989; see also Peterson 1994; Schlesinger 1973). Given the fact that Congress has longrelinquished much of its foreign policy decision-making power to the president by essen-tially surrendering its constitutional authority to declare war (see Fisher 2000), modernpresidents are now more than ever equipped with greater military and diplomatic powersover foreign affairs (Peake 2001). Consequently, the public has become increasinglydependent on presidential leadership when it comes to issues concerning foreign policy,particularlynationaldefense,whereinpresidentsoperatenot justaschief executives,butalsounder the moniker of “commander in chief” (see Holsti 2004; Hurwitz 1989).

In the domestic policy domain, although dire economic conditions such as risinginflation and unemployment may cause great concern among the public and a heightenedfocus on the president in dealing with them, scholars point out that the president andCongress generally share constitutional and statutory power for shaping macroeconomicpolicy (Arnold 1990; Keech 1995; West 1987). Particularly with respect to the economy,there are numerous additional external factors that shape economic conditions over whichthe president and Congress have a limited amount of political control and influence (seeTufte 1978). Therein, we expect that the public is likely to hold the president relativelyless 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 amidcongressional 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 thoseconcerning the domestic policy domain.


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 toattribute successes to in-group members and attribute failures to out-group members (FiskeandTaylor1991;Hewstone1990).Applyingthisnotionof in-group/out-groupbias topartycompatibility, political scientists have developed the “partisan rationalization hypothesis”(see Rudolph 2003a, 2003b). The empirical findings indicate that partisans are more likelyto believe that their own party can best solve economic problems (Peffley, Feldman, andSigelman 1987; Sigelman and Knight 1985) and that presidents from the opposite partyare toblame for economicdownturns (PeffleyandWilliams1985;Tyler1982).Accordingly,partisans tend to attribute more responsibility for favorable economic conditions topresidents or governors of their own party than those from the opposing party (Gomez andWilson 2001; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b). So far, scholars have generally focused on examininggroup-serving attribution bias based on partisan rationalizations only with respect to thestateof theeconomy(but seeMalhotra andKuo2008).Weretest thepartisan rationalizationhypothesis in a more general setting to include both domestic and foreign policy domains.Inaccordancewithpreviousfindings,wehypothesize the following forbothpolicydomains:

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

Given our expectations that the public should perceive presidents as having greatercontrol and jurisdiction over issues of foreign policy than domestic policy (H1), we alsoanticipate that the tendency for individuals to engage in group-serving attribution biasbased 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 policydomain, we anticipate that people will display even more biased attributions for foreignpolicy 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 foreignpolicy successes toapresidentof theirownpartyandattributemore responsibilityandblamefor foreign policy failures to a president from the opposition party, than they would fordomestic policy successes and failures. Accordingly, we hypothesize the following:

H3: The interactive effects of party compatibility and policy conditions suggested in H2 willbe 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-nineupper-level undergraduate students (71 female and 78 male) took part in this experi-

3. The full experimental questionnaire is available upon request.


ment.4 We randomly assigned the participants to eight experimental conditions, in a2x2x2 between-groups factorial design composed of three manipulated factors: (1) policydomain [domestic (economy) versus foreign (war)], (2) policy condition (deterioratingversus improving), and (3) party compatibility (same party as the president versusopposing party).5 The experimental conditions were presented as hypothetical newsupdates. In addition to the experimental manipulations, we also included “politicalsophistication” in the experiment as a covariate, which we measured using a conventionalknowledge scale with 18 factual test items. Given the presence of this covariate factor, themethod we employ is analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Operationalization of the Dependent Variables

The dependent variables we analyze are (1) attribution of responsibility to thepresident 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 theexperimental 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 politicalscientists 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 useof 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 generalizabilityof experimental results.

In response to such criticism, we echo the sentiments expressed by Mook (1983, 386) that, “what makesresearch findings of interest is that they help us understand everyday life. That understanding, however, comesfrom theory or the analysis of mechanism; it is not a matter of ‘generalizing’ the findings themselves.” In otherwords, our research objective and the conclusions we draw from our experiment relate solely to the logic of ourtheory and hypotheses. As such, we neither intend to estimate the characteristics of a given population fromsample characteristics nor to draw inductive conclusions about that population. We also emphasize that ourexperiment is designed to study the policy preferences and decision making processes of the general public ratherthan that of elite decision makers. Otherwise, using students in an experiment to study elite behavior wouldbe problematic. With regards to this study, our use of experimentation is an appropriate method since thereal-world equivalent of our student sample is the public, not the political elite (see Mintz, Redd, and Vedlitz2006).

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

In the out of date view of political experimentation, control refers to a baseline treatment thatallows a researcher to gather data where he or she has not intervened. But many experiments donot have a clear baseline, and in some cases it is not necessary. For example, suppose a researcheris interested in evaluating how voters choose in a three-party election conducted by plurality ruleas compared to how they would choose in an identical three-party election conducted viaproportional representation. The researcher might conduct two laboratory elections wheresubjects’ paymentsdependontheoutcomeof theelection,but somesubjectsvote inaproportionalrepresentationelectionandothersvote inapluralityruleelection.Theresearchercanthencomparevoter behavior in the two treatments.

With respect to our experiment, the proper baselines, in accordance with our hypotheses, are eachexperimentalconditionincomparisontooneanother.Moreover, addinganextracontrolgroupwithnotreatment(e.g., having a separate group read a technical report from NASA) to our experimental design that alreadyencompasses three experimental factors would in fact complicate the analyses to the point of obtainingunintelligible results.


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 thedomestic 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 includedthe president, the previous administration, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO), the United Nations, and the newly elected government of the fictitious countrythe United States was depicted to be at war with.

Experimental Scenarios and Manipulations

We designed the experiment around eight hypothetical scenarios in the form ofnews updates, each one set in the near future with a fictitious president.6 The structureand content of each experimental scenario were held constant except for the manipulatedfactors. Four of the scenarios were set around the state of the economy, and the other fourconcerned 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 ofthe economy as deteriorating and the other half as improving. The same logic applied tothe foreign policy scenarios with one-half of the scenarios depicting the policy conditionas 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 questionnairein which they were asked to indicate their party identification. Thereafter, they wereexposed to one of the eight hypothetical scenarios where for each policy domain andpolicy condition scenario, the fictitious president in office was from either the DemocraticParty or the Republican Party. After the experiment, we coded the cases where aparticipant shared the same party as the president in a given scenario as “same party” orotherwise as “opposing party.” Since this study focuses on party compatibility between anindividual and the president with regards to whether one is of the same or opposing partyas the president, 17 of the 149 participants who identified themselves as independents atthe start of the questionnaire were subsequently excluded from the analyses, resulting ina sample size of 132 participants.

6. As Gartner (2008) suggests, experimental designs that use hypothetical scenarios provide theresearcher a way to get a handle on the broader range of processes concerning public opinion by enabling oneto manipulate and vary the factors of interest in accordance with one’s research objectives. Employinghypothetical scenarios also helps prevent any bias or confusion that might arise by referring to present or pasttime 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 updatesdesigned in close concert to the type of content found in real news stories by using the Vanderbilt TelevisionNews Archive database (see http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu). In addition, we set the experimental scenarios in theyear 2018 so that the participants would not inadvertently confuse the fictional setting with that of the currentpolitical atmosphere. Indeed, because Barack Obama’s presidency may stretch until the year 2016 and becauseparticipants could interpret the year 2016 differently as a presidential election year, we employ the year 2018to depict the midpoint of a future president’s first or second term. In doing so, we are confident that 2018 servesas 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.


The experiment also included manipulation checks. At the end of the experimentalquestionnaire, we asked the participants (in accordance with the experimental scenariothey were exposed to) to recall the following: (1) which political party the president wasfrom (Democratic or Republican) and (2) what the policy condition was (deteriorating orimproving) 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, themanipulation checks served to ensure that the manipulations worked as intended by ourexperimental 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 havea significant impact on an individual’s attribution judgments (Gomez and Wilson 2001,2003). To control for such effect, we included a conventional measure of politicalsophistication—one’s general knowledge of domestic and international politics—as acovariate in our models. Specifically, we administered a questionnaire on general politicalknowledge with a total of 18 factual test items at the end of the experiment. We modeledthe questionnaire based on items from the National Election Surveys (NES), Gomez andWilson’s (2001) study, Prior’s (2002) study, and Taber and Lodge’s (2006) study. Thequestionnaire 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 scoreof each participant’s level of general political knowledge.

We estimated a commonly used reliability statistic, Cronbach’s alpha, in order tocheck whether each constitutive section of the questionnaire measured the same under-lying construct (here, political sophistication) and could thus be combined together togenerate 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 todetermine 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 theeffects that policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility have on the amountof 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 recallthe experimental conditions they were in, since such failure closely reflects real-world circumstances whereinsome members of the public often fail to correctly identify the political party of the president or accuratelydescribe 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. Theresults of these previous analyses (which are available upon request) do not differ substantively from our finalanalyses. We thank the anonymous reviewer who brought this issue to our attention and recommended themore conservative tests of our hypotheses, which helped increase confidence in our inferences.


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 thepresident in the foreign policy domain with respect to the issue of war as compared to thedomestic policy domain with respect to the economy. In addition, the interactionbetween policy condition and party compatibility displays statistical significance, sug-gesting that people attribute more blame and responsibility for deteriorating conditionsand less credit and responsibility for improving conditions to an opposition partypresident compared to a president of their own party, particularly regarding war in theforeign policy domain.

Attribution of Responsibility

Table 1 shows the results of our analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) concerning theeffects of policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility on attribution ofresponsibility to the president. Following their exposure to one of the eight experimentalscenarios, participants were asked to indicate the level of responsibility (on a scale of 0 to10) they thought the president should hold concerning a given policy issue depicted inthat scenario. Our findings indicate that the attribution of responsibility to the presidentis significantly higher in the foreign policy domain (M = 6.55) than in the domesticpolicy 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 betweenpolicy condition and party compatibility are also statistically significant and in theexpected direction, F (1, 123) = 16.09, p < .001. As Figure 1 shows, in the case ofdeteriorating policy conditions, participants attributed more responsibility to a presidentof the opposing party (M = 6.71) than to a president of the same party (M = 5.36). On theother hand, in the case of improving policy conditions, the level of responsibility thatparticipants 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 1Attribution 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 <.05Policy condition (deteriorating/improving) 4.478 1 4.478 1.226 >.05Party compatibility (same/opposing) .051 1 .051 .014 >.05Policy domain * Policy condition 15.133 1 15.133 4.145 <.05Policy domain * Party compatibility 1.331 1 1.331 .365 >.05Policy condition * Party compatibility 58.755 1 58.755 16.092 <.001Domain * Condition * Compatibility 6.151 1 6.151 1.685 <.10Political sophistication 4.600 1 4.600 1.260 >.10Residual 449.100 123 3.651N = 132


The three-way interactive effect of policy domain, policy condition, and partycompatibility is moderately significant, F (1, 123) = 1.68, p < .10. In line with our thirdhypothesis (H3), the proposed effects of policy condition and party compatibility on thelevel of responsibility attributed to the president are stronger for the foreign policydomain (see Figure 2). More specifically, regarding deteriorating policy conditions, thedifference 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 policydomain is larger [(Mopposing = 7.71) - (Msame = 5.71) = 2.00] than the difference in thedomestic 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 ofResponsibility to the President.

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


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 theopposing 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 area number of other interesting findings that also warrant discussion. Primarily, the resultsshow 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 amountof responsibility to the president for deteriorating conditions in the foreign policydomain (M = 6.71) than in the domestic policy domain (M = 5.35). By comparison, thedifference 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 isnot significant (p > .5), the results concerning the interaction of policy condition withpolicy domain suggest the presence of a negativity bias in the foreign policy domain,wherein participants attribute higher responsibility to the president for deterioratingconditions than improving ones. Furthermore, the weight of the negativity bias isamplified in the foreign policy domain where responsibility attributions for deterioratingconditions are much greater as compared to the domestic policy domain. Last, politicalsophistication as a covariate in the model does not demonstrate a statistically significanteffect on participants’ responsibility attributions to the president.

Attribution of Credit/Blame

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

TABLE 2Attribution 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 <.05Policy condition (deteriorating/improving) 5.662 1 5.662 3.594 >.05Party compatibility (same/opposing) 1.177 1 1.177 .747 >.05Policy domain*Policy condition .823 1 .823 .523 >.05Policy domain*Party compatibility 1.153 1 1.153 .732 >.05Policy condition* Party compatibility 19.384 1 19.384 12.304 <.001Domain*Condition*Compatibility 4.162 1 4.162 2.642 <.10Political sophistication 2.611 1 2.611 1.658 <.10Residual 193.779 123 1.575N = 132


where “1” denoted the highest ranking of credit/blame and “5” denoted the lowestranking. Similar to the findings regarding the attribution of responsibility, our resultsconcerning the attribution of credit/blame with respect to policy domain indicate thatparticipants 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 firsthypothesis (H1), F (1, 123) = 4.16, p < .05.

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

Last, the three-way interaction between policy domain, policy condition, and partycompatibility 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), theproposed 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 policyconditions, the difference between the mean ranking of the president by participantsof the same party and those of the opposing party is larger in the foreign policydomain [(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 theforeign policy domain [(Mopposing = 2.98) - (Msame = 1.82) = 1.16] than in the domesticpolicy domain [(Mopposing = 2.72) - (Msame = 2.67) = 0.05].

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


Last, in contrast to the results concerning attribution of responsibility to thepresident, we find that the interaction between policy domain and policy condition isnot significant for the attribution of credit/blame (p > .5). In addition, the main effectof 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 onparticipant 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 thatparticipants with higher levels of political knowledge tend to give lower rankings tothe president regarding the attribution of credit/blame (b = .038, t = 1.29). Thisfinding is in line with previous studies suggesting that less sophisticated individualstend to attribute credit or blame to the single most obvious political actor (here, thepresident), while more sophisticated individuals tend to engage in more diffuse attri-butions, dividing credit or blame between proximal and distal agents (see Gomez andWilson 2001, 2003, 2007).8

8. We also analyzed the covariate effect of sophistication specific to each policy domain by splittingthe data into the subsets of foreign and domestic policy domains. The results show that the effect ofsophistication 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 participantsis largely washed out in the foreign policy domain (p > .10). As such, the results corroborate Gomez andWilson’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, theresults also indicate that such attributional divergence based on political sophistication does not seem to holdin the foreign policy domain with respect to war. This may be because sophisticated and less sophisticatedindividuals both associate war more directly with the president as commander in chief. The results of theseadditional split data analyses are available upon request.

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


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 publicappraisals of the president. Building on and extending previous research, we applied anexperimental approach to test how policy domain, policy condition, and party compat-ibility influence public attributions of responsibility and credit/blame to presidents. Ourfindings demonstrate that the public directs a greater amount of credit/blame andresponsibility to the president in the foreign policy domain with respect to war than inthe domestic policy domain with respect to the economy. Our findings also show thatpeople attribute more blame and responsibility for deteriorating conditions and lesscredit and responsibility for improving conditions to a president of the opposing partycompared to a president of their own party, particularly regarding war in the foreignpolicy domain.

Our study offers several implications pertaining to the presidency. Regardingpolicy domain, our findings that presidents receive more credit for success (and moreblame for failure) on the issue of war as compared to the economy may relate to thedynamics of presidential approval ratings, especially in connection with rally effects(Mueller 1973). Typically, international rally effects on presidential approval are oftenlarger than domestic rally effects, including the effects of economic changes. Suchdisparity in part reflects the fact that foreign policy events and crises that lead to ralliestend to be sudden and dramatic while economic conditions tend to change more slowly,thereby dispersing public reactions across time. Nevertheless, such differences in themagnitude and duration between international and domestic rally effects may also bepartly related to different patterns of attribution observed between foreign and domesticpolicy 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 thanpresidents who prioritize domestic policy issues given the magnification of successes andfailures abroad due to the public’s proclivity to place more responsibility and morecredit/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 thatpartisan attachments lead to biased attributions of credit/blame and responsibility to thepresident gives credence to the idea that presidents may benefit from emphasizing theiraccomplishments and downplaying their failures or shortcomings as a means to rallysupport among their party base, particularly in the foreign policy domain. However,partisan opponents can likewise exaggerate failures and trivialize presidential successes inan effort to undermine a president’s public standing. Given the presence of such partisanbias in attributions of credit/blame and responsibility, one interesting question forscholars to explore is how moderates and independents form their attribution judgmentsof the president. In an increasingly polarized and partisan environment where political

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


parties are constantly seeking to take credit for successes and avoid (or redirect) blame forfailures, do moderates and independents develop less biased evaluations of presidentialperformance 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-makingand electoral outcomes, further scholarly investigations that address these questions arewarranted.

Further extending the scope of this line of research, one may examine how theinvolvement of Congress and its level of discretionary power in the policy process mediatepublic attributions of responsibility and credit/blame to the president. For instance, inthe foreign policy realm, although modern presidents have dominated over the legislativebranch when it comes to war, Congress holds a significant amount of shared discretionwith the president concerning other issues, such as foreign trade (see Peake 2001). Incases where presidents and members of Congress share (and compete for) discretion overpolicy 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 dividedgovernment influences presidential approval ratings (see Nicholson, Segura, and Woods2002) or how the perceived functioning of different levels of government affects votingdecisions (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 ofpolicy discretion may influence the manner in which the public apportions responsibilityand 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 politicalsophistication—one’s general political knowledge—as a covariate in our analyticalmodels, applying an experimental manipulation of political information along with therandom assignment of participants to experimental conditions would allow researchers tobetter control for extraneous factors such as intelligence, motivation, and personal inter-est. One way to experimentally manipulate political sophistication would be to providevarying levels of information about certain issues to participants and then observe howsuch manipulations may alter participants’ attribution judgments regarding presidentialperformance.

Last, although our study provides new insights regarding the dynamics withinwhich the public ascribes responsibility and credit/blame to the president, our focus onthe issues of war and the economy are not fully representative of each domain, andtherefore 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 samemay be said about the domestic policy realm. As such, future studies should look beyondthe issues of war and the economy to examine how the public attributes responsibility topresidents across other foreign and domestic policy issues. Regarding foreign policy, onemight consider public attributions with respect to global trade pacts, internationaltreaties on environmental issues, or diplomacy issues and sanctioning policies related tothe prephases of war. On the domestic front, one might explore public attributions ofresponsibility concerning issues such as health care, civil rights, education, or welfare.


To conclude, despite the limited influence and capacity presidents have for solvingthe nation’s most pressing problems, their position atop the governmental hierarchyobliges them to be responsive to the public’s demands for effective policy leadership. Inan era of growing polarization, partisanship, and intense media scrutiny, modern presi-dents face a significant uphill battle when it comes to earning and maintaining positivepublic appraisals for their performance in the White House as they take on numerouschallenges during the course of their term. As was the case recently, although PresidentBarack Obama was swept into office in 2008 amid much fanfare and high publicexpectations, he soon suffered a steady drop in public approval as he attempted to dealwith 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 Democraticcongressional seats during the 2010 midterm elections (Fifield 2010). In the midst ofthese 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 fordeveloping a greater understanding of the dynamics that shape executive accountabilityand public appraisals of the president.

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