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Attribution Error Sociology
2016 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe Sign InSubscribe Barack Obama Barack Obama and The Fundamental Attribution Error By Michael Scherer @michaelschererOct. 13, 2010 Share Read Later SendtoKindle Email Print Share FacebookTwitterTumblrLinkedInStumbleUponRedditDiggMixxDeliciousGoogle+
Attribution Error Communication
Follow @TIMEPolitics In high school psychology, students learn about an odd tendency of the human condition, the so-called "fundamental attribution error." We people are hard wired, it seems, to overvalue the personality-based reasons for someone's behavior, while under-valuing the circumstantial reasons. If a waitress is rude, our instinct is to assume she is a bad person, not that there are circumstances (a home ultimate attribution error foreclosure, a divorce, a sick child) that would explain the rudeness. When a hedge fund manager hits a jackpot, we assume he is just more brilliant, not that he got lucky. Over the last few months at the White House, aides to President Obama have talked in similar terms about their own situation. Though they never use the terminology, they accuse the American public, as read in presidential approval polls, of being mislead by a sort of fundamental attribution error. While many in America attribute the current national malaise to President Obama's leadership, he and his aides are busy pointing at all the situational factors that have nothing to do with the president's leadership-the financial collapse, the intransigence of Republicans, the inanity of the cable news shout fest. The White House press corps reigning dean, Peter Baker, gets right at the heart of argument in his definitive two-year New York Times magazine check-in of the Obama Administration. [F]or all the second-guessing, what you do not hear in the White House is much questioning of the basic elements of the program — Obama aides, liberal and moderate alike, reject com
Insights Into Human Behavior, Delivered Daily Enter your email Thank you for signing up! An error occurred. Please try again. NYMag.com Daily Intelligencer Vulture The Cut Science of Us Select All Grub fundamental attribution error in movies Street Bedford & Bowery Like Us Follow Us Get the Newsletter NewsletterThe Latest Insights Into the fundamental attribution error involves Human Behavior, Delivered Daily Enter your email Thank you for signing up! An error occurred. Please try again. Popular on Science group attribution error of Us Ad will collapse in seconds… CLOSE July 16, 2014 10:20 a.m. The Psychological Shortcoming That Can Help Explain Why We’re Arresting Innocent Moms By Jesse Singal Share Facebook iconShare Twitter iconTweet Google Plus iconShare http://swampland.time.com/2010/10/13/barack-obama-and-the-fundamental-attribution-error/ Email iconEmail Comment iconComment Print icon Print Photo: Courtesy of ABC 6 Generally speaking, when you're trying to understand a news event through a behavioral-science lens, it's not a good idea to roll up to the scene, loudly invoke some psychological buzzword, and then drop the mic as though your work is done. People are complicated, and their actions can rarely be boiled down to any one mechanism. But still, as http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/07/why-were-arresting-innocent-moms.html I've read Jonathan Chait's and Radley Balko's recent articles about parents being arrested for letting their kids play outside without supervision, one such buzzword has repeatedly popped into my head: the fundamental attributionerror.
To review the case Chait highlighted: Debra Harrell of North Augusta, South Carolina, had been bringing her daughter to her (the mom's) job at McDonald's every day, where she would sit with her laptop. After the family's house was robbed and the laptop stolen, the girl asked to be dropped off at a playground for the day. Another parent called police, and Harrell was arrested for unlawful conduct toward achild. So what is the fundamental attribution error, and how does it apply here? It's simply the tendency to believe people's actions are driven by some fundamental aspect of their character rather than situational factors. In this case, as Chait rightly points out, it's clear this mom didn't have a lot of other options with regard to child care, and she figured her daughter would be safe at what is apparently a well-populated park. In short, it appears she had a pretty good reason to leave her daughter there while she was at work (especially because, despite widespread hysteria over strangers snatching children randomly, such cases are exceedinglyrare). The fundamentalInvestigator Join the Network InvestigatorCenter Menu Recent Articles Newsletter Join PInow Applying Fundamental Attribution Error to the Investigation January 30, 2013 by Amy Thomson Business Tips Tweet On March 11, 2004 four of Madrid’s https://www.pinow.com/articles/1402/applying-the-fundamental-attribution-error-into-the-investigation train stations were hit with what CBS called the deadliest terrorist attack on http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-poor-and-fundamental-attribution.html Europe in decades. Bombs were planted inside trains and near stations, set to explode almost simultaneously during the morning rush hour. The bombs were deliberately timed to fire as the trains were approaching the stations. Commuters were pulling emergency exits only to be forced into hectic train terminals full of people pushing attribution error up the stairs to escape the fire and smoke, encroaching from all directions. Ten explosions occurred between 7:37 and 7:40 a.m., killing 191 people and injuring more than 2,000. Eventually, the culprit was found to be Al Qaeda, after it’s members admitted to executing the attacks on Spain – occurring exactly 911 days after the September 11th tragedy. During the process of convicting Al Qaeda there attribution error in was a serious failure in judgement, known as the “Madrid Error,” where the F.B.I. wrongly accused and jailed American Attorney Brandon Mayfield on the grounds of an erroneous fingerprint match. Criminal Defense Attorney John Rodriguez, a former private investigator and police officer, believes the F.B.I.’s invalid identification was due to fundamental attribution error, a perceiver’s tendency to overvalue personality based aspects of a case, opposed to situational. In this case, the error was based on contextual information. The attorney explains that researchers had discovered a match to the fingerprints found at the Madrid bombing crime scene, but when they took the evidence to the fingerprint experts – they told them that there was no match. Consequently, the fingerprint experts found no match. When applying fundamental attribution error, one can argue that the experts subconsciously came to the same conclusion because that is what they were told before their investigation. “That [contextual] information, that there was no match,” Rodriguez says, “influenced their perception, their objectivity – it created a bias.” People tend to label behavior based on personality traits, as opposed to looking at the circumstances behind the behavior. John Rodriquez David Stout of the Washington Pos
human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God. --Thomas Merton Search Main menu Skip to primary content Skip to secondary content Home Amazon Author Page / Bio and Books Speaking Schedule Support Crescimento Limpo Liam's Wells RSS Feed Post navigation ← Previous Next → The Poor and The Fundamental Attribution Error Posted on 3.11.2013 One of the most important findings in social psychology is what is known as the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is how we tend to revert to characterological, trait-based, personality-driven, and dispositional factors in explaining behavior. For example, I might look at your work ethic and conclude that you are lazy. The problem is intrinsic to your character. Your personality is flawed and is to blame. You're a bad apple. Another way of describing the fundamental attribution error is to say that we tend to downplay or ignore the power of situations. When we see bad behavior we don't tend to look at the environmental context, the situational causes and pressures. We tend to go looking for bad apples. Why do we do this? Because it's easier, quicker and cleaner. It's easier to locate, blame and punish a lone perpetrator than to rethink environments, systems and organizations that produce the "bad" apples. Reimagining and reconfiguring those environments might implicate me, as both cause and solution. I might have to make some changes. And that's no fun. So it's easier to allow the fundamental attribution error to do its work, allowing me to blame people rather than broken environments or toxic systems. And yet, social psychology has long known that the fundamental attribution error is, well, an error. Time and time again social psychologists have pointed to the power of situational pressures in explaining behavior. One only needs to think of some of the most iconic studies in social psychology--like the Milgram Obedience Studies and the Stanford Prison Study--to see this. I bring up the fundamental attribution error to make an observation about how people talk about the poor in capitalistic economies. Specifically, the poor are often blamed for their lot. They are lazy, undisciplined, and lacking in work ethic. "Work ethic" here is a dispositional and characterological trait. A thing intrinsic to the person. But if social psychology is to be believed things like work ethic, thrift, self-control and motivation might be better viewed as environmentally driven. And if that is so then attending to environments, rather than blaming p