Type of psychology: Social psychology

Field of study: Social perception and cognition

Attributions about the causes of one’s own behavior and the behavior of others play an important role in self-perception and the perception of others. Attributional biases are systematic errors that distort perceptions and attributions; the study of these provides insight into stereotyping, the blaming of victims, faulty decision making, conflict, and depression.

Introduction

For human behavior to make sense, it must be perceived accurately and its causes understood. Theories that describe ways in which people can make these judgments about the causes of behavior are called attribution theories. An attribution can be defined as the process by which one gathers information and interprets it to determine the cause of an event or behavior.

Most attribution theories propose models that describe how people collect information and how attributions are formed from that information. Many specific attributions are possible, but generally these attributions can be grouped into two categories: personal and situational. If a situational attribution is made, the behavior is attributed to external forces or circumstances; for example, someone who trips may attribute his or her behavior to a slippery floor rather than to clumsiness. In a personal attribution, an internal cause, such as the person’s personality, or an internal force, such as ability or effort, is seen as being the cause of the behavior. For example, if David observes Lois making a donation to charity, he may attribute her behavior to her generous personality rather than to some external circumstance. Attribution theories predict and explain the circumstances under which a personal or a situational attribution will be made.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Attribution theories provide logical models of how people gather and use information to form attributions, but people do not always seem to follow a logical process. Researchers have discovered that people frequently fall prey to attributional biases. These systematic errors teach much about human social cognition.

One attributional bias is so pervasive that it has earned the right to be called the fundamental attribution error. Social psychologist Lee Ross discovered that people tend to overestimate the role of personal, internal factors and underestimate the influence of situational factors; therefore, people make unwarranted personal attributions. In research demonstrating this bias, subjects were given essays supporting a particular position on an issue (in favor of abortion, for example). Despite the fact that the subjects were told that the authors had no choice but to take the stated position, the subjects rated the authors’ attitudes as being in agreement with the essay.

Two explanations have been proposed for the fundamental attribution error. In 1958, Fritz Heider proposed that people are more aware of persons than situations because persons are the obvious, attention-getting figures, whereas situations are the more easily ignored background. Daniel Gilbert, in 1989, proposed that, contrary to what most attribution models propose, people do not initially use information to decide between personal and situational attributions; instead, they initially assume a personal attribution and then revise that attribution to include situational forces only if information thatis inconsistent with a personal attribution forces them to do so. Supporting this hypothesis, he has found that if he keeps subjects too busy to use incoming information to revise their attributions, they are more likely to make personal attributions than are subjects who are allowed time to think about the information they are given.

Attributional Biases

The fundamental attribution error is related to the actor-observer bias. Research has shown that the fundamental attribution error pattern is often reversed when people are attributing their own actions; actors tend to overestimate situational factors and underestimate personal ones. This bias leads to situations in which people attribute their own actions to circumstances and others’ often identical actions to personal factors, as in “I am late because of traffic, but you are late because you do not care about being punctual.” This bias has been demonstrated in numerous studies; in one, researchers examined letters to “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby” and found that the letter writers were more likely to attribute their own actions to situational factors and others’ behavior than to personal factors.

Perceivers are often motivated to make a particular attribution. One motivation that may affect attribution is the motive to be correct, which may lead the person making the attribution to interpret ambiguous information as being supportive of an initial expectation or attribution. This bias often takes the form of “seeing” a trait that one associates with another trait. For example, if Glenda has made the attribution that Jennie’s astute decisions are the result of her intelligence, she may also assume that Jennie is exceptionally outgoing, not because she actually observed that trait, but because Glenda associates being intelligent with being outgoing. This expectancy confirmation bias is robust; unless the target person behaves in a way that is inconsistent with the assumption, the perceiver is unlikely to test the assumption.

One well-documented motivated attributional bias is the self-serving bias in attributing success and failure. When people succeed, they tend to attribute that success to personal, internal factors, such as ability and effort; however, when they fail, they are likely to attribute the failure to situational, external factors, such as having a difficult task or bad luck. As its name implies, the self-serving bias is thought to be motivated by a desire to preserve or enhance self-esteem by taking credit for success and denying one’s role in failure.

Another motivated bias is the tendency for observers to blame victims for their situations. This is called defensive attribution, because it has been found to be more likely to occur when the observer is similar to the victim than when the observer is dissimilar, and when the victim’s harm is severe rather than mild. Kelly Shaver, the social psychologist who first discussed this bias, believes that it is motivated by fear. If observers blame the victims rather than their situations, the observers can also believe that they themselves are unlikely to be harmed. This is related to what Melvin Lerner calls the belief in a just world. People are motivated to believe that there is justice in the world and that people get what they deserve. This is comforting, because it leads to the conclusion that if one is good, one will get good outcomes; however, the belief in a just world also leads one to assume that victims deserve their outcomes.

Finally, people may fall prey to a group of biases that are collectively called the generalization fallacy. This fallacy is seen when people overgeneralize information from individual cases and personal experience and ignore more reliable information. One example of this bias is that many people believe that air travel is more dangerous than auto travel; in fact, the opposite is true. Because accidents involving airplanes are given greater attention than those involving automobiles, they are more vivid and therefore more memorable than the dangers associated with automobiles. As Heider suggested, vivid figures may be more salient than dull, statistical background information.

Relationship to Conflict

Because accurate attributions help perceivers negotiate complex social environments, attributional biases can interfere with that process. Therefore, it is not surprising that examples of attributional bias are found in situations in which there is conflict . One situation in which the fundamental attribution error and the actor-observer bias are often involved is arguments. If both parties believe that their own behavior is caused by circumstances but their partner’s behavior is caused by his or her personality, they are likely to experience conflict. This can even be seen between nations; for example, each may attribute the other’s cache of weapons to an aggressive personality but its own to necessity.

Another area of conflict that may involve attributional bias is stereotyping. Because stereotyping involves assuming the presence of certain traits based on membership in some group, the expectancy confirmation bias has been used as a model for stereotyping. Further, if people act on stereotypes in ways that encourage the targets to behave in certain ways, they may behaviorally confirm the stereotype. For example, if a perceiver believes that all dark-haired men are hostile, she may act in ways that prompt hostility from them, thereby confirming her stereotype. The belief in a just world and defensive attribution may also play a part in stereotyping. In general, stereotypes of minority or less powerful groups are negative. The belief in a just world may lead people to reason that the targets of their stereotypes deserve their poorer outcomes because they have these negative traits. Defensive attributions may add to this by motivating perceivers to overestimate differences between themselves and the target group out of the fear that if they are similar, they may receive similar outcomes.

Role in Decision Making and Depression

Researchers who investigate the generalization fallacy are often concerned that falling victim to it may lead to poor decisions. In one study, subjects who were given both reliable statistical information from a large group of car owners and the testimonial of one person tended to weigh the testimonial more heavily than the statistical information. Logically, a testimonial based on one car owned by one person is poorer data than information based on many cars owned by many people. Overreliance on unreliable but vivid data can lead to poor decisions.

Some psychologists believe that the absence of an attributional bias may be involved in depression. People who are depressed do not show the usual self-serving bias in attributing their successes and failures; severely depressed people can even show a reversal of the usual pattern, attributing failure to internal causes (such as lack of ability) and success to external factors (such as luck). In working with these patients, psychotherapists may help them learn to attribute their outcomes in ways that enhance their self-esteem.

Evolution of Cognition Study

In the late 1800’s, psychology was defined as the science of the mind, and human cognition was at the forefront of early psychologists’ interests. Wilhelm Wundt and his followers relied on introspection for their data; they observed their own cognitive processes and reported on them. Hermann Ebbinghaus taught himself lists of words and tested his knowledge after varying time periods to investigate human memory. Beginning in 1913, however, this early cognitive research was largely ignored in America, as John B. Watson redefined psychology as the science of behavior. The main proposition of behaviorism, as this school of psychology is known, is that psychology should use scientific methods of observation and data collection. Behaviorists argue that since cognitive processes are not observable and behaviors are, behaviors are the only proper subject for psychological study. Behaviorism ruled psychology almost exclusively until approximately 1960; although it is still an important force in psychology, it is no longer the dominant force it once was.

As behaviorism’s influence has lessened, cognition has become once again a topic of interest to psychologists. Behaviorism left its mark on cognition in the form of more rigorous experimental methods; introspection has been replaced by objective data collection using groups of subjects. As research methods in cognitive psychology continue to become more sophisticated, theories that might have been untestable in earlier years have become the subject of research. One indication of the strength of cognition in the academic world as a whole is that many universities have introduced interdisciplinary departments of cognitive science in which psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, linguists, and experts in artificial intelligence study different aspects of cognition.

Attribution played a significant part in the cognitive revolution; Heider’s The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958) was an important early work in social cognition. Attribution is one of the most researched topics in social psychology; in fact, some would argue that—especially since it has been found to be useful in applied areas such as health psychology, cognitive psychology, and clinical psychology, as well as social psychology—it is one of the most influential concepts in the field. One of the characteristics of the cognitive revolution is an interest in such topics as ambiguity, uncertainty, and the effects of emotion on cognition. This emphasis provides an interesting context for the study of attributional bias and opens new avenues of inquiry for theorists and researchers. Because of this and the applied areas that have adopted and adapted attributional bias, it has become an area of interest in its own right as well as being important for the refinement of attribution theories.

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