Attribution errors

Attribution theory ATTRIBUTION ERRORS Proposed by Heider People want to control, understand and predict the environment behind them. “People attempt to understand the behavior of others by attributing feelings, beliefs, and intentions to them.” We attribute, because we have pervasive need for causal understandings. ATTRIBUTION ERRORS When we incorrectly attribute a behavior based on situational/dispositional factors.

Key vocabulary Attribute – “Regard something as being caused by” Situational Factors – External factors Dispositional Factors - Internal factors Bias – “inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair”. Self-esteem – Based on how well you categorize yourself; evaluation of self.

CORRESPONDENCE INFERENCE THEORY Proposed by Jones and Davis Explains our tendency to take someone’s immediate behavior as a general statement about who that person is. E.g. Believing that someone’s first impression tells everything about a person.

1. Fundamental Attribution error (FAE) The tendency to overestimate the extent to which a person’s behavior is due to dispositional factors and underestimate the role of situational factors. E.g. A person who is quiet and unsociable Estimating that the person is self-involved and clueless, rather than considering about pressure that they face from friends/teachers/environment.

Empirical support – Ross et al (1977) Aim: To investigate whether knowledge of allocated social roles in a quiz show would affect participants’ judgments of people’s expertise. Procedure: - 18 pairs of students participated in a simulated quiz game They were given a role: questioner, contestant, or observer Questioner: Created 10 questions Contestants: Had 30 seconds to answer each question Observer: Watched the quiz. After the quiz, all participants were asked to rate the general knowledge of contestants and questioners. Results: Contestants rated the general knowledge of questioners superior. Questioners did not rate their own knowledge as being superior. Implications: Demonstrates the FAE; contestants attributed the questioners’ ability to answer the questions to dispositional factors rather than situational.

2. Self-serving bias Explanations for one’s own success that credit dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame situational factors. In order to uphold their self-esteem E.g. Correlating success in academics with their own effort, but blaming failures for school/teacher.

Empirical support – lau and russel (1980) Aim: To investigate whether individuals contain self-serving bias. Procedure: - Articles from newspaper articles from 1977, covering 33 major baseball and football were analyzed. Directed quotes were taken to examine whether coaches and athletes would create different reactions for success and failures. 8 undergraduate students identified 594 explanations from 107 articles. Results: 74.9% of winning team’s attribution were dispositional Only 54.9% of loosing team’s attribution were dispositional Less internal attribution for failures. Implications: Individuals do contain self-serving bias.

Links to principles of SLOA: Humans have a social self which reflects their group memberships. Our tendency to attribute reflects on our group memberships, because humans wants to understand the social world and wants to have causal understandings of the behavior of others.