This study investigated people's attributions for unfulfilled obligations, in situations in which a message source attempted to persuade a target to do something the target already had agreed to do. People's likelihood of attributing an unfulfilled obligation to the message target was expected to depend on the situational features of role (whether they were the message source or target), intimacy, and benefits of compliance for both parties. Construct differentiation also was expected to moderate the strength of associations between situational features and target attributions. As predicated, as construct differentiation increased the degree to which people associated situational features and causal judgments also increased. Situational features accounted for substantial variation in attributions made by highly differentiated individuals but not for judgments made by moderately and less differentiated individuals. Implications for communication research and attribution theories are discussed.
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