Actor Observer Bias vs self serving bias2/18/2024 ![]() ![]() The students were described as having been randomly assigned to the role of either quizmaster or contestant by drawing straws. This error is very closely related to another attributional tendency, the correspondence bias, which occurs when we attribute behaviors to people’s internal characteristics, even in heavily constrained situations. In one demonstration of the fundamental attribution error, Linda Skitka and her colleagues (Skitka, Mullen, Griffin, Hutchinson, & Chamberlin, 2002) had participants read a brief story about a professor who had selected two student volunteers to come up in front of a class to participate in a trivia game. When we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations, we are making a mistake that social psychologists have termed the fundamental attribution error. That is, we are more likely to say “Cejay left a big tip, so he must be generous” than “Cejay left a big tip, but perhaps that was because he was trying to impress his friends.” Second, we also tend to make more personal attributions about the behavior of others (we tend to say, “Cejay is a generous person”) than we do for ourselves (we tend to say, “I am generous in some situations but not in others”). First, we are too likely to make strong personal attributions to account for the behavior that we observe others engaging in. This is a classic example of the general human tendency of underestimating how important the social situation really is in determining behavior. One way that our attributions may be biased is that we are often too quick to attribute the behavior of other people to something personal about them rather than to something about their situation. Let’s consider some of the ways that our attributions may go awry. 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. However, although people are often reasonably accurate in their attributions-we could say, perhaps, that they are “good enough” (Fiske, 2003)-they are far from perfect. Because successful navigation of the social world is based on being accurate, we can expect that our attributional skills will be pretty good. In relation to our preceding discussion of attributions for success and failure, if we can determine why we did poorly on a test, we can try to prepare differently so we do better on the next one. We have seen that person perception is useful in helping us successfully interact with others. Describe victim-blaming attributional biases.Explore group-serving biases in attribution.Outline self-serving attributional biases.Explore the related concepts of the fundamental attribution error and correspondence bias.Review a variety of common attibutional biases, outlining cultural diversity in these biases where indicated.We know what pressures us, but not necessarily others. ![]() This is convenient for our peace of mind, and fits with our domain of knowledge, too. You’re not evil, just stressed! The coworker who snaps at you, however, is more likely to be interpreted as a jerk, without going through the same kind of rationalization. If you snap at a coworker, for example, you may rationalize your behavior by remembering that you had difficulty sleeping last night and had financial struggles this month. ![]() But when we misbehave, we are better at recognizing the external pressures on us that shape our actions: a situational understanding. When someone wrongs us, we tend to think they are evil, misguided or selfish: a personalized explanation. This is such a common way of looking at the world that social psychologists have a word for it: the fundamental attribution error. We tend to seek internal, psychological explanations for the behavior of those around us while making situational excuses for our own. We also have a bias for the individual as the locus of agency in interpreting our own everyday life and the behavior of others. (Oh, ye of little faith!) Instead, they might think that the FAE is something like the following: Now, some readers may object that what I have described is not what the FAE means and that I don’t know what I am talking about. ![]()
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