Cultures and Fundamental Attribution Error

Consider the contrasting orientations between Western “individualist” cultures (whose members tend to believe that persons are autonomous, motivated by internal forces, and responsible for their own actions) and non-Western “collectivist” cultures (whose members take a more holistic view that emphasizes the relationship between persons and their surroundings). . (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, pg. 126, 2014

Attribution Biases

Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in Economics for work on the psychology of judg-ment and decision making. In his newest book, Thinking, Fast and Slo, Kahneman (2011) summarizes a lifetime of research showing that the human mind operates by two different systems of thought. System 1 is quick, easy, and automatic—using a process that one might call “intuitive.” Determining which of two objects is more distant, detecting anger in someone’s face, adding 2 + 2, and understanding a simple sentence are the kinds of automatic activities engaged by this system. In contrast, System 2 is slow, controlled, and requires attention and effort—using a process that feels more reasoned. Looking for a specific face in a crowd, parking in a narrow space, counting thenumber of letters on a page, figuring out how a magic trick works, and filling out taxeare the kinds of activities that require your focused and undivided attention. According to Kahneman, Systems 1 and 2 are both active when people are awake. System 1 runs automatically and guides us until it runs into difficulty, as when something unexpectehappens. At that point the more effortful System 2 is activatedWhen the theories of attribution were first proposed, they were represented by elaborate flow charts, formulas, and diagrams, leading many social psychologists to wonder: Do people really analyze behavior in the way that one might expect of scientists, or computers? Do people have the time, the motivation, or the cognitive capacity for such elaborate, mindful, System 1 processes? The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes noAs social perceivers, we are limited in our ability to process all relevant information, or we may lack the kinds of training needed to employ fully the principles of attribution theory. More important, we often don’t make an effort to think carefully about the attributions we make. With so much to explain and not enough time in a day, people take mental shortcuts, cross their fingers, hope for the best, and get on with life. The probleis that speed brings bias and perhaps even a loss of accuracy. In this section, we examine some of these shortcuts and their consequences. (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, pg. 120, 2014

The Fundamental Attribution Error

By the time you finish reading thistextbook, you will have learned the cardinal lesson of social psychology: People are profoundly influenced by thesituational contexts of their behavior—or, as Samuel Sommers (2011) put it, Situations Matter. This point is not as obviousas it may seem. For instance, parents are often surprised to hear that their mis-chievous child, the family monster, is a perfect angel in the classroom. And stu-dents are often surprised to observe that their favorite professor, so eloquent in the lecture hall, may stumble over words in less formal gatherings. These reactions aresymptomatic of a well-documented aspect of social perception. When people explain the behavior of others, they tend to overestimate the role of personal factors and over-look the impact of situations. Because this bias is so pervasive (and sometimes so mis-leading) it has been called the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977).Evidence of the fundamental attribution error was first reported in the Jones andHarris (1967) study described earlier, in which participants read an essay presumably written by a student. In that study, participants were more likely to infer the student’s true attitude when the position taken had been freely chosen than when they thought that the student had been assigned to it. But look again at Figure 4.4, and you’ll notice that even when participants thought that the student had no choice but to assert a posi-tion, they still used the speech to infer his or her attitude. This finding has been repeatemany times. Whether the essay topic is nuclear power, abortion, drug laws, or the death penalty, the results are essentially the same (Jones, 1990).People fall prey to the fundamental attribution error even when they are fully aware of the situation’s impact on behavior. In one experiment, the participants were them-selves assigned to take a position, whereupon they swapped essays and rated each other. Remarkably, they still jumped to conclusions about each other’s attitudes (Miller et al., 1981). In another experiment, participants inferred attitudes from a speech even when they were the ones who had assigned the position to be taken (Gilbert & Jones, 1986).A fascinating study by Lee Ross and his colleagues (1977) demonstrates the funda-mental attribution error in a familiar setting, the TV quiz show. By a flip of the coin, participants in this study were randomly assigned to play the role of either the questioner or the contestant in a quiz game while spectators looked on. In front of the contestant and spectators, the experimenter instructed each questioner to write 10 challenging questions from his or her own store of general knowledge. If you are a trivia buff, you canimagine how esoteric such questions can be: Who was the founder of e-Bay? What team won the NHL Stanley Cup in 1976? It is no wonder that contestants correctly answered only about 40% of the questions asked. When the game was over, all participants rated the questioner’s and contestant’s general knowledge on a scale of 0 to 100.( (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, pg. 123, 2014)

Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2014). Social psychology (9th ed.).