The Fundamental Attribution Error Flashcards
What is attribution theory?
Concerned with how people make causal explanations for their own & others’ behaviour (Kelley, 1973).
What is Naïve psychology?
Finding out about causes - we want to be able to predict what happens in the future, and have some control over what happens.
What is personal (internal/dispositional) vs. impersonal (external/situational) causation?
A situational or external attribution would be to something beyond the persons control, internal or dispositional attribution would be something within the persons control. Both essentially can say the same thing (give the same causal attribution). Distinction between the two is therefore not clear cut.
What did Gilovich and Regan (1986) find?
Investigated dispositional vs. situational attributions. Participants kept a diary for a week & wrote down a significant event that happened each day. After this asked to indicate how important their personal characteristics had been in producing the event & how important situational factors had been in producing the event. Actions seen as intended, experiences seen as situational.
What is correspondent Inference Theory?
Concerned with the variables involved when people seek out info about dispositions rom observed acts. If someone chooses to do something, you’re more likely to make a dispositional attribution toward that behaviour. Importance of choice, social desirability and social roles.
What did Jones and Harris (1967) find?
Participants asked to read essays on Castro’s Cuba. Told either student had been told to write a essay as a criticism of Castro’s Cuba, told to write a defence of Castro’s Cuba, or told student had free choice about what they wrote. Asked to judge students true attitude toward Castro’s Cuba. In no choice condition, still class pro-castro condition as having a stronger opinion - this is the correspondence bias.
What is the correspondence bias?
The tendency to draw inferences about a person’s unique and enduring dispositions from behaviours that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur.
What is the Fundamental Attribution Error?
The overestimation of personal or trait or dispositional factors. Underestimate situational factors in explaining behaviour.
What did Ross, Amabile and Steinmetz (1977)
Participants randomly allocated to be either quizmasters or contestants. Quizmasters rated their own and contestants’ general knowledge as similar, but contestants saw the quizmasters as above average and theirs below average. This is the fundamental attribution error - underestimate the power of the situation.
Is the fundamental attribution error influence by ‘cognitive load’.
Gilbert et al. (1988) suggest that it is easy to make a dispositional attribution to a behaviour. After initial attribution, go through a process of situational correction. Situational correction takes time and effort. This is also affected by factors e.g. cognitive load.
Is the fundamental attribution error influenced by mood?
Forgas (1998) - experiments show that positive mood increases - and negative mood decreases - the incidence of correspondent inferences. Argue positive mood leads to less systematic processing of info than does negative mood (therefore less ‘correction’).
What are the causes of the correspondence bias?
Gilbert and Malone (1995) - lack of awareness of situational constraints, unrealistic expectations for behaviour, inflated categorisations of behaviour, and incomplete corrections of dispositional inferences.
What are cross-cultural perspectives in the attribution bias?
Evidence of greater use of dispositional inferences about people’s behaviour among North Americans than among Asians: opposite patterns for situational inferences. Cross-cultural evidence that the correspondence bias is less prevalent in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures.
What is the really fundamental attribution error?
Underestimate the importance of certain specific factors. People may attribute incorrectly, and get situational factors wrong.
Evidence from Milgram for the really fundamental attribution error?
Show the power of the situation over their actions. We underestimate the disposition to obey authority - underestimating a personality factor.
