Attribution biases support that people have a tendency to overestimate the power of personal characteristics and underestimate the power of situational issues when they make attributions, researchers called this condition as the “fundamental attribution error”. Fein, Hilton and Miller in 1990 argued that people will not underestimate situational factors to conclude behavior if the other person has strong reasoning for the control of his true attitudes. Also individuals have the tendency to see their own behavior as normal and therefore they explain the “unusual” behavior of others as a result of their personal character known as the egocentric bias. In addition people have a tendency to attribute any success to personal characteristics and any failures to “situational” factors known as the “ego protective bias”. As a result our judgments of attribution alter according to the situation, we are constantly told not to judge others but attribution theory states that we can’t help it. Self-serving biases can take place in several situations and occur because of people’s inclination to take recognition for their successes and deny any personal failures.
In general it’s easy for biases to shade our judgments, they describe a preference towards a particular perspective without being objective due to personal reasons. Harvey , Ickes and Kidd noted three important points of attribution research, starting with people’s negativity against the others where people tend to think that others are more capable of achieving negative rather than positive results, for example if someone failed at a particular task we assume that it’s his own fault but if he succeeds we assume that he is lucky. Subsequently people tend to judge others negatively according to their laziness than their lack of ability and then individuals develop the tendency to judge more harshly according to the others’ economic position.
Kelley’s Cube Model of attribution is based on the analysis of variance and it is a way of perceiving how people determine if someone’s behavior is based on external or internal causes. Cube model was an influential contribution by Harold H.Kelley , supporting that people combine three types of information in order to give a reasonable explanation for an individuals behavior. Refers to “consensus” which is the number of other people who expressed the same behavior giving clues that the certain behavior is not normal and unusual to a particular situation, also refers to “consistency” which is the situation where an individual behaves the same way when in similar conditions and lastly makes a point about “distinctiveness” where an individual’s behavior is very strange according to the situation. For instance, James may observe his sister losing her temper in response to her husband criticizing her in front of the children, James’ personal judging criteria may be that his sister’s behavior is high on consensus because is usual for people in general to lose their temper in that kind of situations. James will also support that the behavior is high in consistency because is typical for his sister to act like this as she has done it before in similar cases and low in distinctiveness as she has done it in many other situations as well. In order to distinguish between internal and external causes Harold H. Kelley noted that internal cause can take place when consensus is low, consistency is high and distinctiveness is low, on the other hand an external cause can be when consensus is high, consistency is low and distinctiveness is high. McArthur in 1972 tried to test Kelley’s attribution theory by presenting participants on the eight possible patterns that may come out as a result of Kelly’s theory. The participants had to attribute causality for the described events , for instance “Lucy falls asleep during professor White’s lectures” in order to discuss this in terms of Kelly’s cube model the event might be attribute to something in the person , circumstances or to the professor.
A theory on achievements that has been widely applied in law, clinical psychology, mental health and education was initially introduced by Weiner’s achievement motivation theory in 1971. It has been used to explain how the thoughts individuals make for failure and success influence their behavior and expectancies. An example in education that is associated with the concept of motivation is when students with high self-esteem and higher achievements in school tend to show success to ability and failure to difficulty. For instance students who repeatedly fail in reading tasks see themselves as less capable of reading in compare to others so students that are less able to read show more effort and failure to ability. Weiner also developed a three-dimensional model of fundamental dimensions, location when the cause is external or internal , controllability where the person has control over the event or not and stability when the cause is lasting or temporary. Kelley’s cube model and Weiner’s achievement motivation theory have dimensional similarities.
Jones and Davis in 1965 introduced the correspondent inference theory which includes two steps to find information about other peoples’ behavior , first there is a need to find out if the behavior was intended to draw a correspondent inference, second it is more likely to know that there is correspondence when the behavior effects are undesirable either because we cannot conclude anything for the fact that we know little or for the reason that the effects are not very pleasant. In this theory there are several limitations, for example correspondent inferences can be also drawn when someone’s actions are appeared to be unintentional, like careless behavior.
Ross L. in 1977 support his theory of false consensus effect which is the tendency of individuals to assume that everyone else thinks in the same ay as they do. You can meet this situation in a group where its members think that their ideas match with most of the population, it’s a tendency to believe that everyone thinks the same way. Ross tried to show evidence that consensus does not exist and when this happens people think that the ones who do not agree with them and not think in the same way are faulty and cannot understand properly the situation. He also supports that biases in attribution are a part of social perception and are used in our everyday life.
Taylor in 1984 according to Fritz Heiner’s conclusions argued that people are not naïve psychologists or scientists but cognitive collectors that use several cognitive shortcuts to arrive at a decision. An example of cognitive collection are stereotypes where people allocate different stimuli, for example they judge people from their race and connect it with certain characteristics and do not objectively care for the individual or the situation. Several stimuli disturb people’s judgments such as gender, sexual orientation, age , disabilities and commonly racial identity in addition to ethnic identity. Festinger in 1957 noted that the only way for people to change their attitudes is when they experience cognitive dissonance and when this internal state is attributed to the inconsistency between their behavior and attitudes.
A contribution was made by Daryl Bem in 1962 in the area of self attributions derived from Skinner’s operant conditioning. Self-perception theory states that individuals are not aware and sure for their feelings and beliefs so they can achieve that by looking at their own behaviors in different circumstances and that the actor is in the same position as the observer that tries to give a causal explanation about the event and the inner state of the actor. Bem noted that by self-perception people learn to understand their inner feelings of anger, happiness, anxiety or hunger, furthermore, people cannot learn their own attitudes and beliefs until they act.
Another assumption that has to do with attribution biases is scapegoat theory where people have the tendency to blame others when things go wrong thus they look for scapegoats to displace their aggression, this might happen to groups or individuals.
Given that nobody knows everything, false attributions are easily made by everyone.People use causal explanations to different situations in order to reduce ambiguity and impose a sense of understanding as it offers them predictability and controls their behaviour by simplifying the current event. Attribution theory explains the course of people’s thoughts and the way to their conclusions. It explains how individuals view their on place in hierarchy at the moment and in the future.
People are naïve psychologists seeking to understand their own and others’ behaviour where they are actually poor scientists biased in many ways.
References
- Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. (2005) Social Psychology ,4th Edition.
- Hogg, M.A. & Vaughan, G.M. (2005). Social psychology, 4th Edition.
3. Article, False consensus effect, physical aggression, anger, and a willingness to escalate a disturbance, Gordon W. Russell *, Robert L. ArmsDepartment of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
- Michael W.eysenck, An international perspective , Psychology , pages 628 – 762, 2004 by psychology Press.
5. Attitudes and Opinions, by Stuart Oskamp, P. Wesley Schultz, published by Routledge, 2005
6. A First Look At Communication Theory, by Em Griffin, published by McGraw-Hill.
7. Weiner, B. (2004). Attribution theory revisited: Transforming cultural plurality into theoretical unity. Pages 13-29.
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