Conducted 2 experiments to assess the impact of the need for effective control on attributions made in a conflict situation. In the 1st experiment with 32 undergraduates, it was hypothesized that the prospect of future interaction with a target person would lead observers to exaggerate the degree of dispositional information they believed could be inferred from the target person’s behavior. Results confirm the hypothesis. In the 2nd experiment with 90 undergraduates, it was hypothesized that Ss scoring high on Rotter’s Internal–External Locus of Control Scale would draw more dispositional inferences from a target person’s behavior than would Ss scoring low on this scale. This prediction was also supported. The overall pattern of results is construed as supporting the position that the attributional differences found between the various types of observers were due, at least in part, to motivational as opposed to information-processing factors.