It has been suggested that the FAE might arise simply because we take a different perspective on the situation when we are judging our own behaviour from that taken when we are looking at other people’s. One study videotaped a series of two-person conversations, taping each side of the conversation separately and as an individual observer. Then the participants in the conversations were shown the tape from their partner’s and the observer’s viewpoint. When people saw their own behaviour from an observer’s viewpoint, they made more dispositional attributions, and when they saw the conversation from their partner’s side, they changed to situational attributions. This shows that manipulating the focus of people’s visual awareness can influence the attributions they make.
Many explanations for the fundamental attribution error assume that it is a consequence of general cognitive processes. But there is strong evidence that this error is not present in other cultures. It appears to be present in individualistic cultures but not in collectivistic cultures. Miller (1984) showed that dispositional attributions increased with age in American society, suggesting learning was taking place, but remained low and stable with age within Hindu society. These differences could be because of genuine differences in the causes of behaviour within the two cultures.
Despite popular notions that virtually everyone suffers from low self-esteem, one of the most firmly established findings in social psychology concerns the power of self-serving bias, or the tendency to perceive oneself favourably.
In accounting for positive and negative outcomes, people's explanations are coloured by the self-serving bias. Repeated experiments have shown that people attribute their ‘successes’ to their own abilities or efforts, and their ‘failures’ to external factors such as difficulty or bad luck. Similar findings have obtained with car drivers, athletes, married couples, students, teachers and employees. In each case, people attribute successes or greater contributions to themselves and failures or lesser contributions to others.
Another instance of self-serving bias occurs when we compare ourselves with others. In nearly any socially desirable situation, we are likely to rate ourselves as better than average. For example, only 1% of Australians rate their job performance as below average; most Dutch students believe they are more honest, persistent and friendly than average; and 25% of American students believe they are in the top 1% in their ability to get along with others.
Self-serving bias can protect us from the negative effects of low self-esteem, which may include vulnerability to anxiety and depression. Research on depression has shown that mildly depressed individuals have a more accurate picture of themselves and of how others see them. On the other hand, an extreme self-serving bias can make a person egotistical and deceitful, and can interfere with intergroup relations in work and social situations.
