Attributions for unemployment in Northern Ireland: Does it make a difference what your name is?

Two studies are described which provide evidence for intergroup attribution bias in Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants. In the first study, 209 Northern Irish university students completed a questionnaire designed to assess intergroup attribution bias along the dimensions of internality, stability and globality. It was found that outgroup attributions for unemployment tended towards more internal, stable and global causes than for the ingroup. Similar results were found in the second study which investigated intergroup attribution bias in 294 Northern Irish school age students.