While people strive to find reasons for behaviors, they fall into many traps of biases and errors. As Fritz Heider says, “our perceptions of causality are often distorted by our needs and certain cognitive biases”.[11] The following are examples of attributional biases.
Fundamental attribution error[edit]
Main article: Fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to overvalue dispositional or personality-based explanations for behavior while under-valuing situational explanations. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain and assume the behavior of others. For example, if a person is overweight, a person’s first assumption might be that they have a problem with overeating or are lazy and not that they might have a medical reason for being heavier set.[12]
The core process assumptions of attitude construction models are mainstays of social cognition research and are not controversial—as long as we talk about "judgment". Once the particular judgment made can be thought of as a person's "attitude", however, construal assumptions elicit discomfort, presumably because they dispense with the intuitively appealing attitude concept.[13]
Culture bias[edit]
Main article: Culture bias
People in individualist cultures, generally Anglo-America and Anglo-Saxon European societies, value individuals, personal goals, and independence. People in collectivist cultures see individuals as members of groups such as families, tribes, work units, and nations, and tend to value conformity and interdependence. This cultural trait is common in Asia, traditional native American societies, and Africa.
Research shows that culture, either individualist or collectivist, affects how people make attributions.[14]
People from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental-attribution error than people from collectivist cultures. Individualist cultures tend to attribute a person’s behavior to his internal factors whereas collectivist cultures tend to attribute a person’s behavior to his external factors.[citation needed]
Research suggests that individualist cultures engage in self-serving bias more than do collectivist cultures, i.e. individualist cultures tend to attribute success to internal factors and to attribute failure to external factors. In contrast, collectivist cultures engage in the opposite of self-serving bias i.e. self-effacing bias, which is: attributing success to external factors and blaming failure on internal factors (the individual).[citation needed]
Actor/observer difference[edit]
People tend to attribute other people’s behaviors to their dispositional factors while attributing own actions to situational factors. In the same situation, people’s attribution can differ depending on their role as actor or observer.[15] For example, when a person scores a low grade on a test, they find situational factors to justify the negative event such as saying that the teacher asked a question that he/she never went over in class. However, if another person scores poorly on a test, the person will attribute the results to internal factors such as laziness and inattentiveness in classes. The actor/observer bias is used less frequently with people one knows well such as friends and family since one knows how his/her close friends and family will behave in certain situation, leading him/her to think more about the external factors rather than internal factors.[original research?]
Dispositional attributions[edit]
Main article: Dispositional attribution
Dispositional attribution is a tendency to attribute people’s behaviors to their dispositions; that is, to their personality, character, and ability.[16] For example, when a normally pleasant waiter is being rude to his/her customer, the customer may assume he/she has a bad temper. The customer, just by looking at the attitude that the waiter is giving him/her, instantly decides that the waiter is a bad person. The customer oversimplifies the situation by not taking into account all the unfortunate events that might have happened to the waiter which made him/her become rude at that moment. Therefore, the customer made dispositional attribution by attributing the waiter’s behavior directly to his/her personality rather than considering situational factors that might have caused the whole “rudeness”.[17]
Self-serving bias[edit]
Main article: Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias is attributing dispositional and internal factors for success and external, uncontrollable factors for failure. For example, if a person gets promoted, it is because of his/her ability and competence whereas if he/she does not get promoted, it is because his/her manager does not like him/her (external, uncontrollable factor). Originally, researchers assumed that self-serving bias is strongly related to the fact that people want to protect their self-esteem. However, alternative information processing explanation came out. That is, when the outcomes match people’s expectations, they make attributions to internal factors; when the outcome does not match their expectations, they make external attributions.[11] People also use defensive attribution to avoid feelings of vulnerability and to differentiate himself from a victim of a tragic accident.[18] An alternative version of the theory of the self-serving bias states that the bias does not arise because people wish to protect their private self-esteem, but to protect their self-image (a self-presentational bias). Note well that this version of the theory can predict that people attribute their successes to situational factors, for fear that others will disapprove of them looking overly vain if they should attribute successes to themselves.[citation needed]
For example it is suggested that coming to believe that “good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people” will reduce feelings of vulnerability[citation needed]. This belief would have side-effects of blaming the victim even in tragic situations.[11] When a mudslide destroys several houses in a rural neighborhood, a person living in a more urban setting might blame the victims for choosing to live in a certain area or not building a safer, stronger house. Another example of attributional bias is optimism bias in which most people believe positive events happen to them more often than to others and that negative events happen to them less than to minor others. For example, smokers on average believe they are less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.[19]
Defensive attribution hypothesis[edit]
Main article: Defensive attribution hypothesis
The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term referring to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of defending themselves from concern that they will be the cause or victim of a mishap. Commonly, defensive attributions are made when individuals witness or learn of a mishap happening to another person. In these situations, attributions of responsibility to the victim or harm-doer for the mishap will depend upon the severity of the outcomes of the mishap and the level of personal and situational similarity between the individual and victim. More responsibility will be attributed to the harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe, and as personal or situational similarity decreases.[18]
An example of defensive attribution is the just-world hypothesis, which is where "good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people". People believe in this in order to avoid feeling vulnerable to situations that they have no control over. However, this also leads to blaming the victim even in a tragic situation.[11] When people hear someone died from a car accident, they decide that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and so they reassure themselves that an accident will never happen to them. Despite the fact there was no other information provided, people will automatically attribute that the accident was the driver's fault due to an internal factor (in this case, deciding to drive while drunk), and thus they would not allow it to happen to themselves.
Another example of defensive attribution is optimism bias, in which people believe positive events happen to them more often than to others and that negative events happen to them less often than to others. Too much optimism leads people to ignore some warnings and precautions given to them. For example, smokers believe that they are less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.[19]