It is impossible to evaluate all the information we receive on a daily basis, especially with the rise of the Internet and social networks, we must make decisions continuously, more or less importantly, based on the information we have or can search for. there are many and we don’t have time to review them, we usually make quick decisions based on heuristics, they cause biases, such as the fundamental error of attribution (Gilbert, 1989).
Also known as a coincidence bias, the fundamental error of attribution, as the name implies, affects and distorts the attributions we make; describes the tendency or willingness to overestimate internal personal motivations or disposition when attempting to explain, attribute, or interpret the behavior observed in others. , underestimating the importance of circumstances.
- Edward E.
- Jones and Keith Davis (1967) designed a study to see how assignments work.
- In particular.
- They wanted to study how we attributed criticism to an unfavorable attitude.
- Let’s move on to the experience.
- Everything will be clearer when we see how it worked.
In the experiment, participants received evidence against Fidel Castro and others in favor of Fidel Castro, subsequently had to nuance the writers’ attitude towards Fidel Castro, the attributions they made were the same ones they attributed to the content of the text. They said those who wrote in favor had a favorable attitude toward Castro, and those who wrote against him were against him.
So far the result has been as expected, thinking that the writers had written freely, the missions they had performed were internal, they all wrote according to their beliefs. However, other participants were informed that the writers had written for or against Castro at random.
The writers had tossed a coin and, according to the result, had to write for or against, the researchers hoped that the assignments would now be external, but on the contrary, the missions remained internal, if the writing was in favor, the author is in favor; if the writing is against it, the author is against it, whatever the reasons that led him to write. Curious about how our mind works, isn’t it?
But what are internal and external responsibilities?These powers (Ross, 1977) refer to motives, causes. Thus, an internal assignment is one that holds a person accountable for a result, especially its internal characteristics, such as attitudes or personality. It will probably attribute internal causes to that fact. He didn’t approve because he’s stupid, he was fired because he’s lazy. Being stupid and lazy are stable characteristics of people.
On the contrary, external powers refer to the influence of situational, changing and dangerous factors in many cases. Following the example above, I failed because I had a bad day and was fired from work because my boss is incompetent. On this occasion, assignments can be based on circumstantial facts, such as a bad day, or on the internal characteristics of others.
There are several theories that try to explain how the fundamental error of attribution occurs, although it is not clear why it occurs, some theories have raised hypotheses, one of these theories is the hypothesis of the just world (Lerner and Miller, 1977). , people would get what they deserve and deserve what they receive. Attributing failures by personality without situations satisfies our need to believe in a just world. This belief reinforces the idea that we have control over our own lives.
Another theory is that of the actor’s communication (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Ploutz-Zinder and Breitenbecher, 2002): when attention is paid to an action, the individual is the point of reference when ignoring the situation, as if it were a mere therefore, the attributes of the behavior are based on the people we observe. When we look at ourselves, we are more aware of the forces that act upon us. Hence external responsibilities.
The fundamental attribution error does not occur in the same way in the world, some researchers have shown that it is more common in individualistic cultures (Markus and Kiyatama, 1991), these more individualistic people will fall in this way more frequently than those of more origin. collectivist. In this way, Asians more often attribute the behavior to situations, while Westerners attribute it to the behavior of the actor.
These differences are driven by each culture. Individualists, more common in Western countries, tend to see themselves as independent agents and are therefore prone to individual goals versus contextual details. On the contrary, more collectivists tend to pay more attention to the context.
In paintings you can find a classic difference, Western paintings represent characters that occupy much of the canvas, without barely developing the background, while in countries like Japan, paintings show very small people in landscapes where every detail is very well developed.
As we have seen before, biases are difficult to avoid because they are influenced by factors such as culture, however, it is not impossible to avoid them. Here are some techniques (Gilbert, 1989) to correct the fundamental attribution error:
Gilbert, D. T. (1989), Think a little about others: automatic components of the social inference process, in J. S. Uleman and JA Bargh (Eds. ), Unintended Thought (p. 189-211), New York: Guilford Press.
Jones, E. E. et Harris, V. A. (1967). Attribution of Attitudes, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1?24
Lassiter, F. D. , Geers, A. L. , Munhall, P. J. , Ploutz-Snyder, R. J. et Breitenbecher, D. L. (2002). Illusory causality: why this happens, Psychological Sciences, 13, 299-305.
Lerner, M. J. et Miller, D. T. (1977). Only global research and the attribution process: a look back and forth. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 1030-1051.
Markus, H. R. et Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and I: implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological review, 98, 224-253.
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his flaws: distortions in the attribution process. ?In L. Berkowitz (Ed. ), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 10, pp. 173-220). New York: Academic press.