ATTRIBUTION BIAS

observers scrutinize their environment, gather information, form impressions, and interpret
behavior in rational, if sometimes unconscious, ways. In actuality, however, observers often
deviate from the logical methods described by attribution theory and fall prey to biases. These
biases may lead observers to misinterpret events and to make erroneous judgments. This
section considers several major biases and errors in attribution.

Over-attribution to Dispositions
One of the best-known attribution biases is correspondence bias – a tendency for people to
over-attribute behavior to stable underlying personality dispositions (Gilbert & Malone, 1995).
This bias was originally called the fundamental attribution error.

Although the correspondence bias and fundamental attribution errors are not identical
(Gawronski, 2004), the terms are often used interchangeably – the change in the preferred
label mainly reflects evidence that this bias or error may not be quite as ‘fundamental’ as
originally.

The tendency to overestimate the importance of personal (dispositional) factors and

to underestimate situational influences is called the fundamental attribution error (Higgins &
Bryant, 1982; Ross, 1977; Small & Peterson, 1981).
This tendency was first identified by Heider (1944), who noted that most observers ignore or
minimize the impact of role pressures and situational constraints on others and interpret
behavior as caused by people’s intentions, motives, or attitudes.
The fundamental attribution error, as identified by Ross (1977), is a tendency for people to
make dispositional attributions for others’ behavior, even when there are clear
external/environmental causes

This bias toward dispositional factors was labeled “fundamental” because it was documented
in study after study over the years and assumed to be universal.
However, more recent research suggests that the bias is less universal than it originally
seemed.
The tendency was mistakenly considered fundamental because early social psychological
research relied almost exclusively on American and Western European participants in surveys
and experiments.
Members of these cultures have a more independent view of the self (Markus & Kitayama,
1991) than those in Eastern cultures, who were seldom studied.
Contemporary social psychologists, now more attentive to cultural differences, find that
members of collectivist cultures (e.g., China, India, Taiwan) tend to favor situational
explanations over dispositional ones—the reverse of the fundamental attribution error (Smith
& Bond, 1994).
Although the term remains the same, through cross-cultural research social psychologists
realize that the bias is not as fundamental as it once seemed.
Overemphasizing the importance of disposition is especially dangerous when it causes us to
overlook the advantages of power built into social roles. For instance, we may incorrectly
attribute the successes of the powerful to their superior personal capabilities, or we may
incorrectly attribute the failures of persons without power to their personal weaknesses.

The fundamental attribution error, or correspondence bias, has been demonstrated repeatedly
both inside and outside the social psychology laboratory (Gawronski, 2004; Gilbert, 1998;
Jones, 1979, 1990; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Correspondence bias may also be responsible for a
number of more general explanatory tendencies: for example, people’s tendency to attribute
road accidents to the driver rather than to the vehicle or the road conditions (Barjonet, 1980);
and some people’s tendency to attribute poverty and unemployment to the person rather
than to social conditions.

OUTCOME BIAS AND ESSENTIALISM

Correspondence bias and the fundamental attribution error are closely related to two other biases: the outcome bias
and essentialism.
The outcome bias is where people assume that a person behaving in some particular way intended all the outcomes of
that behavior; and
Essentialism is where behavior is considered to reflect underlying and immutable, often innate, properties of people or
the groups they belong to.
Hence, Essentialism refers to the pervasive tendency to consider behavior to reflect underlying and immutable, often
innate, properties of people or the groups they belong to.
Essentialism can be particularly damaging when it causes people to attribute stereotypically negative attributes of
outgroups to essential and immutable personality attributes of members of that group.
There is evidence that groups can use essentialism strategically to discriminate against outgroups (Morton, Hornsey, &
Postmes, 2009).
For example, the stereotype of an outgroup as being laid-back, liberal, and poorly educated becomes more pernicious if
these attributes are considered immutable, perhaps genetically induced, properties of the group’s members – the
people themselves are considered to have personalities that are immutably lazy, immoral and stupid.

Self-serving biases
attribution is influenced by our desire for a favorable image of ourselves. Hence, we make attributions that satisfy self-
serving biases.
Self-serving biases imply Attributional distortions that protect or enhance self-esteem or the self-concept. (Reiner, 1975)
Overall, we take credit for our positive behaviors and successes as reflecting who we are and our intention and effort to
do positive things (the self-enhancing bias).
At the same time, we explain away our negative behaviors and failures as being due to coercion, normative constraints,
and other external situational factors that do not reflect who we ‘really’ are (the self-protecting bias).
This is a robust effect that holds across many cultures (Fletcher & Ward, 1988).

Self-serving biases are clearly ego-serving (Snyder, Stephan, & Rosenfield, 1978).
However, Miller and Ross (1975) suggest there is also a cognitive component, particularly for the self-enhancing aspect.
People generally expect to succeed and therefore accept responsibility for success.
If they try hard to succeed, they associate success with their own effort, and they generally exaggerate the amount of
control they have over successful performances.
Together, these cognitive factors might encourage internal attribution of success.
Overall, it is most likely both cognitive and motivational factors have a role and they are difficult to disentangle from one
another.
Self-enhancing biases are more common than self-protecting biases (Miller & Ross, 1975) – partly because people with
low self-esteem tend not to protect themselves by attributing their failures externally; rather, they attribute them
internally (Campbell & Fairey, 1985).
Both of these forms of bias can be muted by a desire not to be seen to be boasting over our successes and lying about
our failures (e.g. Schlenker, Weingold, & Hallam, 1990) – but they are not totally extinguished (Riess, Rosenfield,
Melburg, & Tedeschi, 1981).
One self-serving bias that most of us have exploited from time to time is self-handicapping, a term described by Jones
and Berglas: The self-handicapper, we are suggesting, reaches out for impediments, exaggerates handicaps, embraces
any factor reducing personal responsibility for mediocrity and enhancing personal responsibility for success. Jones and
Berglas (1978, p. 202)
 Self-handicapping Publicly making advance external attributions for our anticipated failure or poor performance
in a forthcoming event.
 Illusion of control Belief that we have more control over our world than we really do.

The actor-observer effect

The actor–observer effect (or the self–other effect) is an extension of the correspondence bias.
It refers to the tendency for people to attribute others’ behavior internally to dispositional factors and their own
behavior externally to environmental factors (Jones & Nisbett, 1972).

For example, not only do we attribute others’ behavior more dispositionally than our own, but we also consider their
behavior to be more stable and predictable than our own (Baxter & Goldberg, 1988).
The valence of the behavior also matters.

People make more dispositional attributions for socially desirable than socially undesirable behaviour, irrespective of
who the actor is (e.g. Taylor & Koivumaki, 1976), and actors are more dispositional in attributing positive behavior and
more situational in attributing negative behavior than are observers (e.g. Chen, Yates, & McGinnies, 1988).

The actor–observer effect can be inverted if someone knows their behavior is disposi tionally caused. For example, you
may ‘adopt’ an injured hedgehog knowing that you are a sucker for injured animals and you have often done this sort of
thing in the past (Monson & Hesley, 1982).

Finally, the actor–observer effect can be erased or reversed if the actor is encouraged to take the role of the observer
regarding the behavior to be attributed, and the observer the role of the actor. Now the actor becomes more
dispositional and the observer more situational (e.g. Frank & Gilovich, 1989).

There are two main explanations for the actor–observer effect:

1 Perceptual focus.
For the observer, the actor and the actor’s behavior are figural against the background of the situation.
However, actors cannot ‘see’ themselves behaving, so the background situation assumes the role of a figure against the
background of self.
The actor and the observer quite literally have different perspectives on the behavior and therefore explain it in different
ways (Storms, 1973).
Perceptual salience does indeed seem to play an important role in causal explanation.
For example, McArthur and Post (1977) found that observers made more dispositional attributions for an actor’s
behaviour when the actor was strongly illuminated than when dimly illuminated.

2 Informational differences.
Another reason why actors tend to make external attributions and observers internal ones is that actors have a wealth of
information to draw on about how they have behaved in other circumstances.
They may actually know that they behave differently in different contexts and thus quite accurately consider their
behaviour to be under situational control.
Observers are not privy to this autobiographical information.
They see the actor behaving in a certain way in one context, or a limited range of contexts, and have no information
about how the actor behaves in other contexts.
It is therefore not an unreasonable assumption to make a dispositional attribution. This explanation, first suggested by
Jones and Nisbett (1972), does have some empirical support (Eisen, 1979; White & Younger, 1988).