Four experiments were conducted to explore the effects of actor sex on causal attributions for performance. Perceivers were found to rely more heavily on personal factors to explain the cause of women's behavior and to rely more heavily on environmental' factors to explain the 'cause of men's behavior. The impact of behavioral expectancies based on category membership (male or female) was also demonstrated. The implications of these sex-linked attributional tendencies on perceivers' search for causal information were tested and discussed. The results obtained may provide a partial explanation for the differential treatment of women and men despite the fact that their actual behavior is frequently the same.