Development and Validation Study of the Attributional Biases Assessment Instrument

Abstract

This study outlines the development process of a new instrument for assessing attributional biases in clinical and social cognition research, called the “Instrumento de Avaliação dos Vieses de Atribuição (IAVA).” The IAVA is a direct evaluation tool that measures perceptions of causality and intentionality in ambiguous social contexts. The study involved49 adults aged 18 to 55 years (59% female). The results demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability indices, and overall performance on the IAVA showed a significant correlation with a perspective-taking measure. The IAVA emerges as a reliable and valid tool for assessing the presence and degree of attributional biases within the Brazilian population.