Attribution Error In Psychology
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Fundamental Attribution Error Social Psychology
message) This article relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this by adding secondary or the fundamental attribution error tertiary sources. (February 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error, also known
Sources Of Error In Attribution
as the correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person's behavior in a given situation. This contrasts with interpreting one's own behavior, where situational factors are more easily recognized and can be taken into account. Contents 1 Examples attribution error refers to a situation in which one 2 Details 3 Classic demonstration study: Jones and Harris (1967) 4 Explanations 5 Cultural differences in the error 6 Versus correspondence bias 7 See also 7.1 Cognitive biases 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links Examples[edit] As a simple example, consider a situation where Alice, a driver, is about to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green and she begins to accelerate, but another car drives through the red light and crosses in front of her. The fundamental attribution error may lead her to think that the driver of the other car was an unskilled or reckless driver. This will be an error if the other driver had a good reason for running the light, such as rushing a patient to the hospital. If this is the case and Alice had been driving the other car, she would have understood that the situation called for speed at the cost of safety, but when seeing it from the outside she was inclined to believe that the behavior of the other driver reflected their fundamental nature (having poor driving skills or a reckles
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Fundamental Attribution Theory
J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z attribution effect Follow AlleyDog Fundamental Attribution Error Imagine this situation, you are at school and someone you know comes by, you say hello, and this person just gives you a quick, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error unfriendly "hello" and then walks away. How would you attribute this situation -- why did this person act this way? If you react to this situation by saying the person is a "jerk" or an "ass", then you have made the fundamental attribution error; the tendency for an observer, when interpreting and explaining the behavior of another person http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Fundamental%20Attribution%20Error (the actor), to underestimate the situation and to overestimate the personal disposition. Maybe the person was having the worst day of their life, just found out a loved one died, failed a test and was feeling devastated, etc. In this case, the situation may have caused them to act in a way that was different than their normal happy self. But, you, as a normal observer, would instead attribute their behavior to them as a person...acted that way because that is the type of person they are. Add flashcard Cite Random Interested in a Graduate Psychology Degree? You can get free information about Adler University's graduate psychology programs just by answering a few short questions. Get Free Info Word of the Day Get the word of the day delivered to your inbox Where would you like to study Garcia Effect? © 1998-2016, AlleyDog.com. All material within this site is the property of AlleyDog.com. This material may not be reprinted or copied for any reason without the express written consent of AlleyDog.com.
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of blame on a persons personality or characteristics rather than situational factors is quite a common one. This is because we tend to focus more on the person involved by assuming that a person is responsible due to their personality/characteristics and not the conditions around them that they could not have had control over in the first place. This phenomena is what you call the fundamental attribution error. An example of fundamental attribution error is when you see someone driving and swerving and crashing into a tree, automatically you would think ''what is this person doing?!'' or ''this person is actually crazy?!'' but the real reason for the accident was not because of the person directly but because a pedestrian ran into the road and so to avoid hitting the pedestrian the driver hit the brakes whilst steering round them where their tyres slipped over a wet patch on the road causing the crash. As an observer watching the whole thing take place you would most likely blame the person driving for being reckless if you had not have known what contributed to the crash. The truth is that these multiple factors such as the surprise pedestrian, the wet patch in the road, etc, would have caused the crash regardless of who was behind the wheel, so it wouldn't have just taken a reckless personality to crash the car in this scenario. A second example of the fundamental attribution error is when you ask a stranger for directions but they give you a seemingly snarky response or they're simply rude to you. Naturally you would peg this person as rude and having a bad personality, but looking past their initial first impression they may have had a bad day putting them in a foul mood or they've just received some devastatingly bad news and you were the first person they have come into contact with since receiving this news. They acted the way they did not because of their natural personality (most people are generally polite to strangers) but their circumstances made them act they way they did, in this case it was just having a bad day which was the cause. Though there hasn't been one widely accepted causal reason for the fundamental attribution error there has been several theories which have been associated with being a root cause for why people are quicker to blame character traits for their circumstances rather than situational factors. One of the reasons is due to culture; for instance western cultures where people who are more individual