A Person Is More Likely to Make the Fundamental Attribution Error When Reading

Chapter five. Perceiving Others

Biases in Attribution

1. Review a variety of common attibutional biases, outlining cultural diversity in these biases where indicated.
2. Explore the related concepts of the fundamental attribution mistake and correspondence bias.
3. Depict the actor-observer bias.
4. Outline self-serving attributional biases.
5. Explore grouping-serving biases in attribution.
6. Describe victim-blaming attributional biases.

Are Our Attributions Accurate?

We have seen that person perception is useful in helping us successfully collaborate with others. In relation to our preceding discussion of attributions for success and failure, if nosotros can determine why we did poorly on a test, we can try to prepare differently and so we do better on the next one. Because successful navigation of the social world is based on being accurate, we can expect that our attributional skills volition exist pretty good. However, although people are oftentimes reasonably accurate in their attributions—nosotros could say, perchance, that they are "good enough" (Fiske, 2003)—they are far from perfect. In fact, causal attributions, including those relating to success and failure, are subject to the same types of biases that any other types of social judgments are. Let'southward consider some of the means that our attributions may go awry.

The Central Attribution Error

1 way that our attributions may be biased is that we are often also quick to aspect the beliefs of other people to something personal about them rather than to something virtually their situation. This is a archetype example of the full general homo tendency of underestimating how important the social situation really is in determining behavior. This bias occurs in two ways. First, we are as well probable to brand strong personal attributions to business relationship for the behavior that we notice others engaging in. That is, we are more likely to say "Cejay left a big tip, and so he must exist generous" than "Cejay left a big tip, but maybe that was because he was trying to impress his friends." 2nd, we also tend to brand more than personal attributions about the behavior of others (we tend to say, "Cejay is a generous person") than nosotros practise for ourselves (we tend to say, "I am generous in some situations but not in others").

When we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations,nosotros are making a error that social psychologists have termed thefundamental attribution error.This error is very closely related to another attributional tendency, thecorrespondence bias, which occurs when we attribute behaviors to people'southward internal characteristics, even in heavily constrained situations. In one sit-in of the fundamental attribution mistake, Linda Skitka and her colleagues (Skitka, Mullen, Griffin, Hutchinson, & Chamberlin, 2002) had participants read a cursory story about a professor who had selected two student volunteers to come up in front end of a class to participate in a trivia game. The students were described equally having been randomly assigned to the role of either quizmaster or contestant by drawing straws. The quizmaster was asked to generate v questions from his idiosyncratic noesis, with the stipulation that he knew the correct answer to all five questions.

Joe (the quizmaster) subsequently posed his questions to the other student (Stan, the contestant). For example, Joe asked, "What cowboy movie actor's sidekick is Smiley Burnette?" Stan looked puzzled and finally replied, "I really don't know. The simply film cowboy that pops to listen for me is John Wayne." Joe asked iv additional questions, and Stan was described every bit answering only one of the 5 questions correctly. Later reading the story, the students were asked to bespeak their impression of both Stan's and Joe's intelligence.

If you remember most the setup here, you'll notice that the professor has created a state of affairs that tin can have a big influence on the outcomes. Joe, the quizmaster, has a huge advantage because he got to cull the questions. As a result, the questions are hard for the contestant to answer. Only did the participants realize that the situation was the cause of the outcomes? They did not. Rather, the students rated Joe equally significantly more intelligent than Stan. You can imagine that Joe just seemed to be really smart to the students; after all, he knew all the answers, whereas Stan knew only 1 of the v. But of course this is a fault. The difference was not at all due to person factors only completely to the situation: Joe got to use his own personal store of esoteric cognition to create the nearly difficult questions he could think of. The observers committed the fundamental attribution error and did not sufficiently accept the quizmaster'southward situational reward into account.

As nosotros take explored in many places in this book, the culture that we live in has a significant touch on the way we recollect almost and perceive our social worlds. Thus, it is not surprising that people in different cultures would tend to call up about people at to the lowest degree somewhat differently. Ane difference is between people from  many Western cultures (e.g., the United states of america, Canada, Australia) and people from many Asian cultures (e.g., Japan, Prc, Taiwan, Korea, India). For instance, as we reviewed in Chapter 2 in our word of research about the self-concept, people from Western cultures tend to be primarily oriented toward individualism. This leads to them having an independent self-concept where they view themselves, and others, as democratic beings who are somewhat separate from their social groups and environments. In contrast, people in many East Asian cultures take a more interdependent view of themselves and others, one that emphasizes not so much the individual simply rather the relationship between individuals and the other people and things that surroundings them. In relation to our current discussion of attribution, an event of these differences is that, on boilerplate, people from individualistic cultures tend to focus their attributions more than on the private person, whereas, people from collectivistic cultures tend to focus more on the situation (Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Lewis, Goto, & Kong, 2008; Maddux & Yuki, 2006).

In ane report demonstrating this difference, Miller (1984) asked children and adults in both India (a collectivistic culture) and the United States (an individualist civilisation) to betoken the causes of negative deportment by other people. Although the younger children (ages 8 and 11) did non differ, the older children (age 15) and the adults did—Americans made more than personal attributions, whereas Indians fabricated more situational attributions for the same behavior.

Masuda and Nisbett (2001) asked American and Japanese students to draw what they saw in images like the ane shown in Figure v.9, "Cultural Differences in Perception." They constitute that while both groups talked near the virtually salient objects (the fish, which were brightly colored and pond effectually), the Japanese students besides tended to talk and remember more about the images in the background (they remembered the frog and the plants equally well as the fish).

Figure 5.9 Cultural Differences in Perception

Michael Morris and his colleagues (Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 2000) investigated the role of culture on person perception in a unlike way, by focusing on people who are bicultural (i.e., who have knowledge about two different cultures). In their inquiry, they used high school students living in Hong Kong. Although traditional Chinese values are emphasized in Hong Kong, because Hong Kong was a British-administered territory for more than than a century, the students in that location are also somewhat acculturated with Western social beliefs and values.

Morris and his colleagues beginning randomly assigned the students to one of iii priming conditions. Participants in theAmerican civilisation priming condition saw pictures of American icons (such as the U.Southward. Capitol building and the American flag) and so wrote 10 sentences about American civilisation. Participants in theChinese culture priming condition saw viii Chinese icons (such equally a Chinese dragon and the Great Wall of China) and and so wrote 10 sentences about Chinese culture. Finally, participants in thecontrol status saw pictures of natural landscapes and wrote 10 sentences about the landscapes.

Then participants in all conditions read a story about an overweight male child who was advised past a physician not to eat food with high sugar content. I day, he and his friends went to a buffet dinner where a delicious-looking block was offered. Despite its high sugar content, he ate information technology. After reading the story, the participants were asked to indicate the extent to which the boy'south weight problem was caused by his personality (personal attribution) or by the situation (situational attribution). The students who had been primed with symbols about American civilisation gave relatively less weight to situational (rather than personal) factors in comparison with students who had been primed with symbols of Chinese culture.

Returning to the case study at the start of this chapter, the very unlike explanations given in the English language and Chinese language newspapers about the killings perpetrated by Gang Lu at the University of Iowa reflect these differing cultural tendencies toward internal versus external attributions. A focus on internal explanations led to an assay of the criminal offense primarily in terms of the individual characteristics of the perpetrator in the American newspaper, whereas there were more external attributions in the Chinese newspaper, focusing on the social weather condition that led upward to the tragedy. Morris and Peng (1994), in improver to their analyses of the news reports, extended their inquiry by request Chinese and American graduate students to weight the importance of the potential causes outlined in the newspaper coverage. In line with predictions, the Chinese participants rated the social weather as more than important causes of the murders than the Americans, particularly stressing the role of corrupting influences and disruptive social changes. In contrast, the Americans rated internal characteristics of the perpetrator as more than disquisitional bug, particularly chronic psychological problems. Morris and Peng besides institute that, when asked to imagine factors that could take prevented the killings, the Chinese students focused more on the social atmospheric condition that could have been changed, whereas the Americans identified more changes in terms of the internal traits of the perpetrator.

Given these consequent differences in the weight put on internal versus external attributions, it should come equally no surprise that people in collectivistic cultures tend to show the fundamental attribution error and correspondence bias less often than those from individualistic cultures, peculiarly when the situational causes of behavior are made salient (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999). Being more than aware of these cross-cultural differences in attribution has been argued to exist a critical issue facing united states of america all on a global level, especially in the hereafter in a globe where increased ability and resource equality between Western and Eastern cultures seems probable (Nisbett, 2003). Homo history is littered with tragic examples of the fatal consequences of cross-cultural misunderstandings, which tin be fueled by a failure to understand these differing approaches to attribution. Peradventure as the two worldviews increasingly interact on a world stage, a fusion of their two stances on attribution may become more than possible, where sufficient weight is given to both the internal and external forces that bulldoze homo behavior (Nisbett, 2003).

The Actor-Observer Bias

The fundamental attribution fault involves a bias in how easily and frequently we make personal versus situational attributions about others. Some other, like manner that nosotros overemphasize the power of the person is thatwe tend to brand more personal attributions for the behavior of others than we do for ourselves and to make more than situational attributions for our own beliefs than for the behavior of others. This is known as therole player-observer bias ordivergence (Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, & Marecek, 1973; Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002). When we are asked about the behavior of other people, we tend to quickly make trait attributions ("Oh, Sarah, she's really shy"). On the other manus, when we think of ourselves, we are more likely to take the situation into business relationship—we tend to say, "Well, I'thou shy in my team at work, but with my close friends I'm not at all shy." When a friend behaves in a helpful fashion, nosotros naturally believe that he or she is a friendly person; when nosotros behave in the same way, on the other paw, nosotros realize that there may be a lot of other reasons why we did what we did.

Yous might exist able to get a feel for the player-observer difference by taking the following short quiz. First, think about a person you know, simply not particularly well —a afar relation, a colleague at work. Then, for each row, circle which of the iii choices best describes his or her personality (for example, is the person'due south personality more than energetic, relaxed, or does it depend on the state of affairs?). So answer the questions again, only this time near yourself.

i.	Energetic	Relaxed	Depends on the situation
2.	Skeptical	Trusting	Depends on the situation
3.	Tranquillity	Talkative	Depends on the situation
4.	Intense	At-home	Depends on the situation

Richard Nisbett and his colleagues (Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, & Marecek, 1973) had college students consummate a very like task, which they did for themselves, for their all-time friend, for their male parent, and for a well-known TV newscaster at the time, Walter Cronkite. As y'all can see in Table 5.4, "The Actor-Observer Difference," the participants checked i of the 2 trait terms more frequently for other people than they did for themselves, and checked off "depends on the situation" more ofttimes for themselves than they did for the other person; this is the thespian-observer difference.

Table five.4 The Actor-Observer Deviation

	Trait Term / Depends on the Situation
Self	xi.92 / eight.08
All-time Friend	xiv.21 / 5.79
Father	xiii.42 / 6.58
Walter Cronkite	xv.08 / four.92
This table shows the average number of times (out of 20) that participants checked off a trait term (such as "energetic" or "talkative") rather than "depends on the situation" when asked to describe the personalities of themselves and diverse other people. You can meet the actor-observer difference. Participants were significantly more than likely to check off "depends on the situation" for themselves than for others. Data are from Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, and Marecek (1973). Nisbett, R. Eastward., Caputo, C., Legant, P., & Marecek, J. (1973). Behavior every bit seen by the thespian and as seen by the observer. Periodical of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(2), 154–164.

Similar the fundamental attribution fault, the actor-observer deviation reflects our trend to overweight the personal explanations of the behavior of other people. However, a recent meta-analysis (Malle, 2006) has suggested that the histrion-observer divergence might not exist equally common and stiff as the fundamental attribution mistake and may simply exist likely to occur under certain conditions.

The tendency to overemphasize personal attributions in others versus ourselves seems to occur for several reasons. Ane is just because other people are so salient in our social environments. When y'all look at someone's behavior, you tend to focus on that person and are likely to make personal attributions about him or her. It'due south just piece of cake because yous are looking right at the person. When you wait at Cejay giving that big tip, you lot run across him—and and then you decide that he caused the activeness. In fact, research has shown that we tend to make more personal attributions for the people we are directly observing in our environments than for other people who are part of the situation simply who we are non directly watching (Taylor & Fiske, 1975). When you lot retrieve of your own behavior, however, yous exercise non see yourself but are instead more focused on the situation. You also tend to have more memory for your ain by situations than for others'. Yous come to realize that information technology is not only yous but besides the dissimilar situations that you lot are in that make up one's mind your beliefs. Perhaps y'all can call up the other times where you did not give a big tip, then you conclude that your behavior is caused more by the situation than past your underlying personality.

This greater access to prove about our own past behaviors can lead the states to realize that our behave varies quite a lot across situations, whereas considering we have more than limited memory of the beliefs of others, we may encounter them equally less changeable. This in turn leads to another, related attributional trend, namely thetrait ascription bias, which defines a tendency for people to view their own personality, beliefs, and behaviors every bit more variable than those of others(Kammer, 1982). We are thus more likely to caricature the behaviors of others as but reflecting the type of people we call up they are, whereas we tend to describe our ain deport equally more nuanced, and socially flexible.

A second reason for the tendency to make and then many personal attributions is that they are but easier to brand than situational attributions. In fact, personal attributions seem to be made spontaneously, without any endeavour on our part, and even on the basis of only very limited behavior (Newman & Uleman, 1989; Uleman, Blader, & Todorov, 2005). Personal attributions just pop into heed before situational attributions do. 1 reason for this is that is cognitively demanding to try to procedure all the relevant factors in someone else'southward situation and to consider how all these forces may exist affecting that person'southward conduct. It is much more than straightforward to label a behavior in terms of a personality trait.

Third, personal attributions also dominate because we demand to make them in order to empathize a situation. That is, we cannot brand either a personal attribution (eastward.grand., "Cejay is generous") or a situational attribution ("Cejay is trying to impress his friends") until we have first identified the beliefs equally existence a generous beliefs ("Leaving that large tip was a generous affair to do"). So we cease up starting with the personal attribution ("generous") and only afterward try to correct or conform our judgment ("Oh," nosotros think, "possibly it really was the state of affairs that caused him to do that").

Adjusting our judgments generally takes more effort than does making the original judgment, and the adjustment is frequently not sufficient. We are more probable to commit attributional errors—for example chop-chop jumping to the determination that behavior is caused by underlying personality—when nosotros are tired, distracted, or busy doing other things (Geeraert, Yzerbyt, Corneille, & Wigboldus, 2004; Gilbert, 1989; Trope & Alfieri, 1997).

There is a very of import general message nearly perceiving others that applies here:we should not be besides quick to judge other people! It is cognitively easy to think that poor people are lazy, that people who impairment someone else are mean, and that people who say something harsh are rude or unfriendly. But these attributions may often overemphasize the role of the person. This tin can sometimes result in overly harsh evaluations of people who don't really deserve them; we tend to arraign the victim, even for events that they can't really control (Lerner, 1980). Sometimes people are lazy, mean, or rude, only they may also be the victims of situations. When yous notice yourself making potent personal attribution for the behaviors of others, your knowledge of attribution inquiry tin help yous to stop and think more carefully: Would you lot want other people to brand personal attributions for your behavior in the same situation, or would you prefer that they more than fully consider the situation surrounding your beliefs? Are you lot peradventure making the fundamental attribution error? Ultimately, to paraphrase a well-known saying, we need to be try to be generous to others in our attributions, equally everyone we see is fighting a battle we know nix virtually.

Self-Serving Biases

You lot may recall that the process of making causal attributions is supposed to go along in a conscientious, rational, and even scientific mode. But this assumption turns out to exist, at least in part, untrue. Our attributions are sometimes biased past affect—especially the desire to enhance the cocky that we talked about in Affiliate 3. Although we would similar to think that we are always rational and accurate in our attributions, we often tend to distort them to make united states of america feel meliorate.Self-serving attributions areattributions that help united states of america run into our desire to run across ourselves positively (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004). A particularly mutual instance is thecocky-serving bias, which isthe tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others and the state of affairs.

We all make self-enhancing attributions from fourth dimension to time. If a teacher's students do well on an exam, he may brand a personal attribution for their successes ("I am, after all, a corking teacher!"). On the other hand, when they do poorly on an exam, the instructor may tend to make a situational attribution and blame them for their failure ("Why didn't y'all all written report harder?"). Yous can come across that this process is conspicuously not the blazon of scientific, rational, and careful process that attribution theory suggests the teacher should exist post-obit. Information technology'southward unfair, although it does make him experience better about himself. If he were really interim like a scientist, yet, he would determine ahead of time what causes good or poor exam scores and make the appropriate attribution, regardless of the outcome.

You might have noticed yourself making self-serving attributions too. Perhaps y'all have blamed another commuter for an accident that you were in or blamed your partner rather than yourself for a breakup. Or maybe you have taken credit (internal) for your successes merely blamed your failures on external causes. If these judgments were somewhat less than accurate, but they did benefit you, then they were indeed self-serving.

Interestingly, we do not as often show this bias when making attributions most the successes and setbacks of others. This tendency to make more charitable attributions nigh ourselves than others about positive and negative outcomes ofttimes links to the actor-observer difference that we mentioned before in this section. It appears that the tendency to make external attributions well-nigh our own behavior and internal attributions almost the conduct of others is particularly strong in situations where the beliefs involves undesirable outcomes. This was dramatically illustrated in some fascinating research past Baumeister, Stillwell, and Wotman (1990). In this written report, the researchers analyzed the accounts people gave of an feel they identified where they angered someone else (i.due east., when they were the perpetrator of a behavior leading to an unpleasant outcome) and another one where someone else angered them (i.eastward., they were the victim).

The differences in attributions made in these two situations were considerable. When accounting for themselves as perpetrators, people tended to emphasize situational factors to describe their behavior as an isolated incident that was a meaningful, understandable response to the state of affairs, and to assert that the action acquired no lasting harm. When they were the victims, on the other mitt, they explained the perpetrator's beliefs by focusing on the presumed grapheme defects of the person and by describing  the beliefs as an capricious and senseless action, taking identify in an ongoing context of abusive behavior that acquired lasting impairment to them as victims. These sobering findings take some profound implications for many of import social bug, including reconciliation between individuals and groups who have been in disharmonize. In a more everyday fashion, they perhaps remind us of the need to try to extend the same understanding we requite to ourselves in making sense of our behaviors to the people around us in our communities. Too many times in homo history we have failed to understand and fifty-fifty demonized other people because of these types of attributional biases.

Why are these cocky-serving attributional biases so common? 1 respond, that we have already alluded to, is that they can assistance to maintain and enhance self-esteem. Consequent with this idea is that in that location are some cross-cultural differences, reflecting the different amounts of self-enhancement that were discussed in Affiliate iii. Specifically, self-serving bias is less apparent in members of collectivistic than individualistic cultures (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004).

Another important reason is that when nosotros make attributions, we are non only interested in causality, we are oft interested in responsibility. Fincham and Jaspers (1980) argued that, as well as acting like lay scientists, hunting for the causes of behavior, we are also often alike to lay lawyers, seeking to assign responsibleness. We want to know non but why something happened, but besides who is to blame. Indeed, it is hard to brand an attribution of cause without also making a claim about responsibleness. When nosotros attribute someone'due south angry outburst to an internal factor, like an aggressive personality, every bit opposed to an external cause, such as a stressful situation, nosotros are, implicitly or otherwise, also placing more arraign on that person in the sometime case than in the latter. Seeing attribution every bit too being about responsibility sheds some interesting further lite on the self-serving bias. Perhaps we brand external attributions for failure partly because information technology is easier to blame others or the situation than it is ourselves. In the victim-perpetrator accounts outlined by Baumeister, Stillwell, and Wotman (1990), perhaps they were partly about either absolving or assigning responsibility, respectively. Indeed, at that place are a number of other attributional biases that are also relevant to considerations of responsibility. It is to these that we will now plow.

Group-Serving Biases

A self-serving pattern of attribution can also spill over into our attributions near the groups that we belong to. Thegrouping-serving bias,sometimes referred to equally the ultimate attribution error, describes atendency to brand internal attributions about our ingroups' successes, and external attributions virtually their setbacks, and to brand the contrary design of attributions about our outgroups (Taylor & Doria, 1981). When members of our favorite sports team make illegal challenges on the field, or rink, or courtroom, nosotros often aspect information technology to their being provoked. What near when it is someone from the opposition? Their illegal conduct regularly leads us to make an internal attribution near their moral character! On a more serious note, when individuals are in a violent confrontation, the same actions on both sides are typically attributed to different causes, depending on who is making the attribution, so that reaching a common agreement can become incommunicable (Pinker, 2011).

Returning to the case study at the start of this chapter, could the grouping-serving bias be at to the lowest degree part of the reason for the dissimilar attributions fabricated by the Chinese and American participants about the mass killing? How might this bias take played out in this situation? Call up that the perpetrator, Gang Lu, was Chinese. Might the American participants' tendency to make internal attributions have reflected their want to arraign him solely, every bit an outgroup member, whereas the Chinese participants' more external attributions might take related to their wish to try to mitigate some of what their swain ingroup fellow member had done, by invoking the social conditions that preceded the crime?

Morris and Peng (1994) sought to test out this possibility past exploring cross-cultural reactions to another, parallel tragedy, that occurred only two weeks afterward Gang Lu's crimes. Thomas Mcllvane, an Irish American postal worker who had recently lost his job, unsuccessfully appealed the conclusion with his union. He had in the meantime failed to notice a new total-time job. On November 14, he entered the Majestic Oak, Michigan, post office and shot his supervisor, the person who handled his appeal, several fellow workers and bystanders, and and so himself. In all, like Gang Lu, Thomas McIllvane killed himself and five other people that 24-hour interval. If the group-serving bias could explicate much of the cross-cultural differences in attributions, then, in this case, when the perpetrator was American, the Chinese should have been more than likely to make internal, blaming attributions against an outgroup fellow member, and the Americans to make more external, mitigating ones about their ingroup member. This is not what was found. Although the Americans did make more situational attributions well-nigh McIlvane than they did about Lu, the Chinese participants were equally likely to use situational explanations for both sets of killings. As Morris and Peng (1994) point out, this finding indicated that whereas the American participants tended to show the group-serving bias, the Chinese participants did not. This has been replicated in other studies indicating a lower likelihood of this bias in people from collectivistic versus individualistic cultures (Heine & Lehman, 1997).

At first glance, this might seem like a counterintuitive finding. If people from collectivist cultures tend to meet themselves and others as more embedded in their ingroups, then wouldn't they exist more likely to make grouping-serving attributions? A key explanation as to why they are less probable relates back to the word in Affiliate 3 of cultural differences in cocky-enhancement. Like the cocky-serving bias, group-serving attributions can have a self-enhancing function, leading people to experience amend nigh themselves by generating favorable explanations about their ingroups' behaviors. Therefore, as cocky-enhancement is less of a priority for people in collectivistic cultures, we would indeed await them to evidence less group-serving bias.

There are other, related biases that people besides use to favor their ingroups over their outgroups. —Thegrouping attribution error describes atrend to make attributional generalizations near entire outgroups based on a very minor number of observations of individual members. This error tends to takes 1 of  two distinct, but related forms. The first was illustrated in an experiment by Hamill, Wilson, and Nisbett (1980), college students were shown vignettes most someone from one of two outgroups, welfare recipients and prison house guards. They were and then asked to make inferences about members of these ii groups as a whole, after existence provided with varying data about how typical the person they read about was of each group. A key finding was that even when they were told the person was not typical of the group, they still made generalizations well-nigh group members that were based on the characteristics of the private they had read about. This bias may thus crusade u.s.a. to see a person from a item outgroup behave in an undesirable fashion and so come to attribute these tendencies to almost or all members of their group. This is one of the many ways that inaccurate stereotypes can be created, a topic we will explore in more depth in Chapter xi.

The 2d form of group attribution bias closely relates to the fundamental attribution mistake, in that individuals come up to aspect groups' behaviors and attitudes to each of the individuals within those groups, irrespective of the level of disagreement in the group or how the decisions were fabricated. In a series of experiments, Allison & Messick (1985) investigated people's attributions about grouping members as a function of the decisions that the groups reached in various social contexts. In their showtime experiment, participants assumed that members of a community making decisions about water conservation laws held attitudes reflecting the group decision, regardless of how it was reached. In two follow-upwardly experiments, subjects attributed a greater similarity between outgroup decisions and attitudes than between ingroup decisions and attitudes. A further experiment showed that participants based their attributions of jury members' attitudes more than on their terminal group decision than on their individual views. This bias tin can present us with numerous challenges in the real world. Allow's say, for example, that a party passes a policy that goes confronting our deep-seated beliefs near an important social effect, like abortion or aforementioned-sex matrimony. This type of grouping attribution bias would then go far all too easy for usa to caricature all members of and voters for that party as opposed to us, when in fact there may exist a considerable range of opinions among them. This imitation assumption may and then cause us to close down meaningful dialogue most the result and neglect to recognize the potential for finding mutual ground or for building important allegiances.

Victim-Blaming Biases

Nosotros saw before how the primal attribution error, by causing us to place too much weight on the person and not enough on the situation, can pb to us to make attributions of blame toward others, even victims, for their behaviors. Some other bias that increases the likelihood of victim-blaming is termed thejust earth hypothesis, which isa tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the globe is fundamentally just. In other words, that the outcomes people experience are off-white.

Lerner (1965), in a archetype experimental study of these beliefs, instructed participants to watch two people working together on an anagrams task. They were informed that one of the workers was selected by run a risk to be paid a big amount of coin, whereas the other was to become nothing. Participants also learned that both workers, though ignorant of their fate, had agreed to do their best. In addition, the attractiveness of the two workers was set up up so that participants would perceive one equally more bonny. Consequent with the thought of the just globe hypothesis, in one case the event was known to the observers, they persuaded themselves that the person who had been awarded the money by run a risk had really earned it after all. Also, when the less attractive worker was selected for payment, the operation of the entire group was devalued.

As with many of the attributional biases that have been identified, there are some positive aspects to these beliefs when they are practical to ourselves. Fob, Elder, Gater, & Johnson (2010), for instance, constitute that stronger endorsement of only world beliefs in relation to the self was related to higher self-esteem. Intuitively this makes sense: if nosotros believe that the world is fair, and will give us back what nosotros put in, this can be uplifting. On the other hand, though, as in the Lerner (1965) written report above, there can be a downside, too. If we believe that the world is off-white, this can also lead to a belief that adept things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. In other words, people go what they deserve. When people are in difficult positions, the just world hypothesis can cause others to make internal attributions about the causes of these difficulties and to end upwardly blaming them for their bug (Rubin & Peplau, 1973). Consistent with this, Pull a fast one on and colleagues  institute that greater understanding with just world beliefs about others was linked to harsher social attitudes and greater victim derogation.

The just world hypothesis is often at work when people react to news of a particular crime past blaming the victim, or when they apportion responsibility to members of marginalized groups, for instance, to those who are homeless, for the predicaments they face. Degree of endorsement of just world attributions also relates to more stigmatizing attitudes toward people who have mental illnesses (Rüsch, Todd, Bodenhausen, & Corrigan, 2010). These views, in plough, can human action as a bulwark to empathy and to an understanding of the social conditions that can create these challenges. Belief in a just world has also been shown to correlate with meritocratic attitudes, which assert that people reach their social positions on the basis of merit alone. For example, people who endorse just world statements are also more than likely to charge per unit high-condition individuals as more competent than depression-condition individuals. Such beliefs are in turn used by some individuals to justify and sustain inequality and oppression (Oldmeadow & Fiske, 2007). Here, then, we meet important links between attributional biases held by individuals and the wider social inequities in their communities that these biases help to sustain.

Attributions that blame victims don't merely have the potential to help to reinforce people's general sense that the globe is a fair place, they also help them to experience more than safe from being victimized themselves. If, according to the logic of the merely globe hypothesis, victims are bad people who become what they deserve, then those who see themselves as good people exercise non have to confront the threatening possibility that they, likewise, could be the victims of like misfortunes. Appropriately, defensive attribution (eastward.grand., Shaver, 1970) occurs when we make attributions which defend ourselves from the notion that we could be the victim of an unfortunate outcome, and oft also that we could exist held responsible as the victim. Put some other fashion, people's attributions about the victims are motivated by both harm avoidance (this is unlikely to happen to me) and blame avoidance (if it did happen to me, I would non be to blame). If we meet ourselves as more than similar to the victim, therefore, nosotros are less likely to attribute the blame to them. If, on the other hand, we identify more with the perpetrator, then our attributions of responsibleness to the victim volition increase (Burger, 1981).

This pattern of attribution conspicuously has significant repercussions in legal contexts. For case, attributions about the victims of  rape are related to the amount that people identify with the victim versus the perpetrator, which could accept some interesting implications for jury selection procedures (Grubb & Harrower, 2009). Furthermore, men are less probable to brand defensive attributions well-nigh the victims of sexual harassment than women, regardless of the gender of the victim and perpetrator (e.g., Smirles, 2004). Defensive attributions can as well shape industrial disputes, for example, damages claims for work-related injuries. The victims of serious occupational accidents tend to attribute the accidents to external factors. In contrast, their coworkers and supervisors are more likely to aspect the accidents to internal factors in the victim (Salminen, 1992). Once again, the role of responsibleness attributions are clear here. It is in the victims' interests to not be held accountable, just as information technology may well be for the colleagues or managers who might instead be in the firing line.

• Our attributional skills are often "good plenty" only not perfect. We often testify biases and make errors in our attributions, although in general these biases are less evident in people from collectivistic versus individualistic cultures.
• Sometimes, we put as well much weight on internal factors, and not enough on situational factors, in explaining the behavior of others.
• When we are the attributing causes to our own behaviors, we are more likely to utilize external attributions than when we are when explaining others' behaviors, especially if the beliefs is undesirable.
• We tend to make self-serving attributions that help to protect our cocky-esteem; for example, past making internal attributions when we succeed and external ones when we fail.
• We as well ofttimes testify group-serving biases where we make more favorable attributions about our ingroups than our outgroups.
• We sometimes evidence victim-blaming biases due to beliefs in a only globe and a tendency to brand defensive attributions.

1. Describe a situation where you or someone you know engaged in the central attribution fault. What internal causes did you attribute the other person'south behavior to? In hindsight, what external, state of affairs causes were probably at work here?
2. Outline a time that someone fabricated the fundamental attribution error about one of your behaviors. How did you feel when they put your actions down to your personality, as opposed to the situation, and why?
3. Retrieve of an example when yous attributed your own beliefs to external factors, whereas you lot explained the same behavior in someone else as being due to their internal qualities? What were the reasons for you showing the actor-observer bias hither?
4. Identify some examples of self-serving and group-serving attributions that you accept seen in the media recently. What sorts of behaviors were involved and why do you recall the individuals involved fabricated those attributions?
5. Which groups in the communities that yous live in do you call back nigh often have victim-blaming attributions fabricated near their behaviors and outcomes? What consequences do you think that these attributions take for those groups? How do you lot think the private group members experience when others blame them for the challenges they are facing?

References

Allison, S. T., & Messick, D. Thou. (1985). The group attribution mistake. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21(6),563-579.

Baumeister, R. F., Stillwell, A., & Wotman, S. R. (1990). Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal disharmonize: Autobiographical narratives about anger.Periodical Of Personality And Social Psychology,59(v), 994-1005. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.5.994

Burger, J. Grand. (1981). Motivational biases in the attribution of responsibility for an accident: A meta-analysis of the defensive-attribution hypothesis.Psychological Bulletin,90(3), 496-512. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.90.3.496

Choi, I., Nisbett, R. E., Norenzayan, A. (1999) Causal attribution beyond cultures: Variation and universality.Psychological Bulletin, 125, 47-63. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.125.1.47

Fincham, F. D., & Jaspers, J. M. (1980). Attribution of responsibleness: From human being the scientist to man the lawyer. In 50. K. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 13,81-138.

Fiske, Southward. T. (2003).Social beings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Fox, C. Fifty., Elder, T., Gater, J., Johnson, East. (2010). The association between adolescents' beliefs in a just world and their attitudes to victims of bullying. British Journal of Educational Psychology,  lxxx(2), 183-198. doi: 10.1348/000709909X479105

Geeraert, Due north., Yzerbyt, 5. Y., Corneille, O., & Wigboldus, D. (2004). The render of dispositionalism: On the linguistic consequences of dispositional suppression.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, twoscore(2), 264–272;

Gilbert, D. T. (Ed.). (1989).Thinking lightly about others: Automated components of the social inference process. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Grubb, A., & Harrower, J. (2009). Understanding attribution of blame in cases of rape: An analysis of participant gender, type of rape and perceived similarity to the victim.Periodical Of Sexual Aggression,fifteen(1), 63-81. doi:10.1080/13552600802641649

Hamill, R., Wilson, T. D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1980). Insensitivity to sample bias: Generalizing from atypical cases.Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology,39(4), 578-589. doi:ten.1037/0022-3514.39.iv.578

Heine, S. J., & Lehman, D. R. (1997). The cultural construction of self-enhancement: An examination of group-serving biases.Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology,72(6), 1268-1283. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.6.1268

Hong, Y.-Y., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C.-Y., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2000). Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist arroyo to culture and cognition.American Psychologist, 55(vii), 709–720.

Ji, 50., Peng, Chiliad., & Nisbett, R. Eastward. (2000). Civilization, control, and perception of relationships in the environment.Periodical Of Personality And Social Psychology,78(five), 943-955. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.v.943

Kammer, D. (1982). Differences in trait ascriptions to cocky and friend: Unconfounding intensity from variability.Psychological Reports, 51(1), 99-102. doi:10.2466/pr0.1982.51.1.99

Lerner, K. J. (1965). Evaluation of performance as a function of performer's reward and bewitchery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 355-360.

Lerner, M. J. (1980).The belief in a simply world: A key delusion. New York, NY: Plenum.

Lewis, R. Due south., Goto, South. G., & Kong, L. L. (2008). Civilization and context: East Asian American and European American differences in P3 event-related potentials and cocky-construal.Personality And Social Psychology Message,34(5), 623-634. doi:10.1177/0146167207313731

Maddux, Due west. W., & Yuki, M. (2006). The 'Ripple Effect': Cultural Differences in Perceptions of the Consequences of Events.Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin,32(5), 669-683. doi:ten.1177/0146167205283840

Malle, B. F. (2006). The actor-observer disproportion in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis.Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 895–919.

Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 922–934.

Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of private, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias.Psychological Bulletin, 130(five), 711–747.

Miller, J. G. (1984). Civilisation and the development of everyday social explanation.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(v), 961–978.

Morris, Chiliad. W., & Peng, K. (1994). Culture and crusade: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events.Periodical Of Personality And Social Psychology,67(half dozen), 949-971. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.vi.949

Newman, L. Southward., & Uleman, J. Southward. (1989). Spontaneous trait inference. In J. Due south. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.),Unintended thought (pp. 155–188). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Nisbett, R. E. (2003).The geography of idea.New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Inc.

Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P., & Marecek, J. (1973). Behavior every bit seen by the histrion and as seen past the observer.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(2), 154–164;

Oldmeadow, J., & Fiske, S. T. (2007). System-justifying ideologies moderate status = competence stereotypes: Roles for conventionalities in a merely globe and social authorisation orientation.European Periodical Of Social Psychology,37(6), 1135-1148. doi:x.1002/ejsp.428

Pinker, S. (2011).The amend angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. New York, NY, US: Viking.

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others.Personality and Social Psychology Message, 28(3), 369–381.

Rubin Z., & Peplau LA (1973). Belief in a simply earth and reactions to another'south lot: A study of participants in the national draft lottery.Journal of Social Bug, 29, 73–93.

Rüsch, Due north., Todd, A. R., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Corrigan, P. W. (2010). Do people with mental affliction deserve what they go? Links between meritocratic worldviews and implicit versus explicit stigma.European Athenaeum Of Psychiatry And Clinical Neuroscience,260(8), 617-625. doi:10.1007/s00406-010-0111-4

Salminen, S. (1992). Defensive attribution hypothesis and serious occupational accidents.Psychological Reports,70(3, Pt 2), 1195-1199. doi:10.2466/PR0.70.4.1195-1199

Shaver, Thousand. G. (1970). Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an blow.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14(2), 101–113. doi: ten.1037/h00028777

Skitka, Fifty. J., Mullen, E., Griffin, T., Hutchinson, S., & Chamberlin, B. (2002). Dispositions, scripts, or motivated correction? Understanding ideological differences in explanations for social problems.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(2), 470–487.

Smirles, Chiliad. (2004). Attributions of Responsibility in Cases of Sexual Harassment: The Person and the Situation.Journal Of Practical Social Psychology,34(2), 342-365. doi:ten.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02551.ten

Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1975). Point of view and perceptions of causality.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(3), 439–445.

Taylor, D. Yard., & Doria, J. R. (1981). Self-serving and group-serving bias in attribution. The Periodical of Social Psychology,  113(two), 201-211.

Trope, Y., & Alfieri, T. (1997). Effortfulness and flexibility of dispositional judgment processes.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(4), 662–674.

Uleman, J. S., Blader, S. Fifty., & Todorov, A. (Eds.). (2005).Implicit impressions. New York, NY: Oxford Academy Press.

faunceresses.blogspot.com

Source: https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/biases-in-attribution/

Share this post