Social Perception 1

SOCIAL PERCEPTION: Written Report

Shierly A. Protacio

Prof. Jose Abat

PSY 647 Advanced Social Psychology

December 1, 2012

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INTRODUCTION

On Sunday, October 6, 1991, National Public Radio broadcast an interview with University

of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill in which she claimed that the current nominee to the

United States Supreme Court, Federal Judge Clarence Thomas, has sexually harassed her

over a 3-year period while he was the head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil

Rights, and again when he was the director of the Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission. Later that week, seated before the Senate Judiciary Committee and under the

sharp focus of the national media, she painted a vivid portrait for the American public of

what it is like being victimized by sexual harassment – from the feelings of discomfort and

embarrassment when the alleged incidents first began, to the emotional and physical

degradation she experienced as the unwelcomed sexual advances and innuendo resurfaced.

When asked to recall her most embarrassing encounter with Judge Thomas, Professor Hill

responded, “His discussion of pornography involving these women with large breasts and

engaged in a variety of sex with different people or animals.” She spoke of the vulnerability,

humiliation, and frustration she experienced while working under such stressful conditions.

“It wasn’t as though it happened every day,” Professor Hill explained. “But I went to work

during certain periods knowing that it might happen.” She also talked of her fear of being

denied good assignments, losing her job, and perhaps being unable to obtain any job at all

with the Reagan administration (Thomas was a Reagan appointee) if she continued to resist

Thomas’ alleged advances. Under cross-examination by the senators on the committee she

stated, “I am not given to fantasy. This is not something I would have come forward with if I

was not absolutely sure of what I was saying.”

Following Professor Hill’s testimony, Judge Thomas returned to the committee and denied

that any of his behavior could be construed by anyone as being sexual harassment: “I would

like to start by saying unequivocally, uncategorically, that I deny each and every single

allegation against me today.” Professor Hill stated that Judge Thomas had asked her out for a

date five to ten times during the time period in question, but Thomas denied ever asking her

out even for a single date. He also denied ever discussing pornographic films with her.

Instead he proclaimed that he had helped to advance Anita Hill’s career whenever possible

and, until the accusations surfaced the previous week, had considered her a friend. Defiant,

outraged, and clearly disgusted with the events of the past week and the nature of the

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committee’s present inquiry, he asserted, “Some interest groups came up with this story, and

this story was developed specifically to destroy me.”

As people sat in front of their television and watched the drama unfold, they searched they

search for clues to properly define this murky social reality. Prior to these hearings, both

Professor Hill and Judge Thomas were known for their truthfulness and integrity, and during

the hearings witnesses were repeatedly brought forward to reinforce their impressions. Both

has overcome poverty and racial prejudices to achieve great stature in their careers. The

question everybody asked was, “Whom do you believe, the professor or the judge?”

No one except the professor and the judge know for certain who was telling the truth. Within

one week of these hearings, Judge Thomas was confirmed by majority vote of the full Senate,

and he now sits on the Supreme Court. Professor Hill remains a faculty member at the

University of Oklahoma Law School.

This event, although unusual because of the people involved (two highly respected

professionals) and the gravity of the situation (a Supreme Court judge will undoubtedly be

faced with important cases of sexual harassment and discrimination), is actually similar to

events we face on a daily basis. That is, we often attempt to understand other people, to

explain their actions and gain insight into their motives and beliefs.

The way we seek to know and understand other persons and events is known as Social

Perception. This type of perception is not a single, instantaneous event, but rather comprises

a number of ongoing processes. In these judgmental processes, we pay attention not only to

what people say, but also to how they say it. Social perception not only deals with

explanations of people’s past behavior, but also how this information about past behavior can

predict future actions.

As stated earlier, to understand others, people make use of many cognitive processes. Most of

these processes can be roughly classified into two general areas: impression formation and

attribution. Impression formation is often based on rapid assessments of salient and

observable qualities and behaviors in others. These judgments are obtained by attending to

nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body posture, as well as incorporating more

detailed and descriptive characteristics, such as traits, into an overall impression. Impression

formation is often the first step of social perception. Often, we also want to understand what

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causes people to act in a particular manner. The attribution process goes beyond discerning

current moods and feelings and attempts instead to infer causal relationships underlying

behavior by attending to various social clues. This search for causal explanations often

requires that we observe people’s actions over time and across situations to have greater

confidence in our social judgments.

I. IMPRESSION FORMATION

Example:

Suppose you are visiting a city for the first time and have car trouble downtown in the dead

of night. You begin to scan the faces of passing motorists, looking for someone who will help

you get out of this jam. How can you tell who will be your Good Samaritan? Can you seek

help from the carload of teenagers who have passed by twice in the past five minutes? Or

should you take a chance and try to flag down the neatly dressed and pleasant-looking young

man driving the 1965 Chevy … who, on second thought, bears an uncanny resemblance to

the character of Norman Bates in the movie Psycho? Just as you are bemoaning the fact that

you don’t know anything about the people whom you are about to ask for help, something in

the distance catches your eye. It is a white car with lettering and an emblem on the door, and

a panel of light flashers on the roof. Inside are two people wearing blue uniforms and badges.

Despite the fact that you are certain they are carrying loaded guns and wooden clubs, you

immediately step out in the street and signal them to stop. Are you crazy? You have never

seen these two people before in your life, yet you believe that they will help you. Why?

Impression Formation, [How do we “size up” other people during initial encounters? How do

we arrive at conclusions about their character, needs, and abilities?] is the process by which

one integrates various source of information about another into an overall judgment. The

process of forming impression is viewed by social psychologists as dynamic one, with

judgments being continually updated in response to new information. It is also integrative,

with each bit of information about a person is interpreted within the context of all the other

information we have about him or her. Each “bit” takes its character from the other “bits” as a

whole.

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A. Forming Impression Through Stereotyping

1. The Social Categorization Process

In the hypothetical nighttime dilemmas posed earlier, the reason you might respond in the

manner described is that human beings are categorizing creatures. That is, we identify objects

in our environment according to features and attributes that distinguish them from other

objects. For example, because certain objects such as roses, daffodils, and lilies share the

same features and attributes (for example, petals, pistils, and anthers), we place them into the

same cognitive category, namely that of “flower.” This natural tendency to categorize is

applied to people as well as things, a process called social categorization (Hampson, 1988;

Taylor, 1981).

Research indicates that readily apparent physical features are the most common way to

classify people, especially in the initial stages of impression formation.

Because categorizing others by means of physical features is done so frequently, it becomes

habitual and automatic, often occurring without conscious thought or effort (Brewer, 1988;

Fiske & Neuberg, 1990).

2. From Social Categories to Stereotypes

Social categorization does not typically end with merely grouping people into different

categories. Within these social categories, there often already are certain beliefs about the

individuals’ personalities, abilities, and motives. Like other cognitive frameworks,

stereotypes significantly influence how we process social information. That is, once

stereotype is activated from memory, we habe a tendency to see people within that social

category as possessing the traits or characteristics associated with the stereotyped group

(Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Vonk & Knippenberg, 1995; Wyer, 1988).

A more sensible way to think of stereotypes is that people conceive of them as probability

judgment; that is, they estimate the likelihood that individuals in specific social groups

possess certain attributes (Karlins, Coffman, & Walters, 1969; Linville, Salovey, & Fisher,

1986).

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Stereotypes are “shortcut to thinking” that provide us with rich and distinctive information

about individuals we do not personally know (Anderson & Klatzky, 1987; Gilbert & Hixon,

1991).

B. Nonverbal Behavioral Cues

Nonverbal behavior – communicating feelings and intentions without words.

1. Facial Expressions

The belief that facial expressions reveal a person’s true feelings is not a recently developed

scientific belief. More than 2000 years ago, the Roman Orator Marcus Cicero wrote that the

“face is the image of the soul.”

Charles Darwin (1872) proposed that facial expressions not only play an important role in

communication, but that certain emotional expressions are innate and thus are understood

throughout the world. He believed that this ability to recognize emotion from the observation

of facial expressions was genetically programmed into our species and had survival value for

us.

Six primary emotions: happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust (Buck, 1984;

Matsumoto, 1992).

2. Eye Contact

Another nonverbal cue figuring into our impressions of others is eye contact. We can learn

how others feel by attending to the direction and intensity of their gaze. For example, the

more in love two people are, the more often they gaze into one another’s eyes (Rubin, 1970).

Yet it is also true that the more competitive people are, the more often they will attempt to

engage in prolonged eye contact with other opponents in competitive situations (Exline,

1972).

This latter form of eye contact, known as staring, does not indicate amorous intentions.

Rather, it is recognized as a sign of dominance seeking and aggression (Tomkins, 1963).

Most people become tense and nervous if others stare at them (Strom & Buck, 1979) and they

will withdraw from the situation in order to escape the attention (Ellsworth, Carlsmith, &

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Henson, 1972; Greenbaum & Rosenfield, 1978). If withdrawal is not possible, people will

often avoid eye contact in an apparent attempt to reduce potential conflict. This gaze aversion

is often interpreted by others as a submissive gesture.

3. Body Movements

Besides facial cues, the body as a whole can convey a wealth of information. For example,

research indicates that people who walk with a good deal of hip sway, knee bending, loose

jointedness, and body bounce are perceived to be younger and more powerful than those who

walk with less pronounced gaits (Montepare & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988).

If the body can convey rich information of this sort, think back to the hypothetical vignette of

the midnight walk down a dark city sidewalk. Let’s expand this scenario by imagining that

the man walking toward you is a seasoned criminal who is deciding whether he should mug

you. It’s likely he will be paying close attention to your body movements as he draws near to

determine how difficult a target you will be for him. What type of body movements will he

be scrutinizing?

In an innovative attempt to answer this question, Betty Grayson and Morris Stein (1981)

showed a group of prison inmates convicted of assault a series of videotapes of people

walking on a city sidewalk, and asked them to individually rate the “walkers” as potential

victims in terms of how difficult they would be to assault. The videotapes of the walkers who

were perceived by a majority of the inmates as either easy victims or clearly nonvictims were

then evaluated by trained dance analysts in a number of movement categories. The prime

difference between the perceived victims and nonvictims was that the nonvictims had an

organized quality to their body movements, and they functioned gracefully within the context

of their own bodies. In contrast, the body movements of perceived victims seemed to

communicate inconsistency, as if the body was working against itself or not functioning

smoothly.

What this findings suggest is that potential victims of crime may unwittingly and nonverbally

be communicating a sense of vulnerability to criminals, similar to the way that wounded

animals invite attack from predators in the wild (Tinbergen, 1969).

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4. Do people differ in using nonverbal cues?

Taken as a whole, nonverbal cues expressed by the face and other body parts do seem to

provide an important source of information to those who attend to such social stimuli. The

question is, to what extent do people really note this alternative avenue of communication?

Research indicates that people recognize the important role that such nonverbal behavior

plays in impression formation and often consciously employ nonverbal cues in their self-

presentation strategies (DePaulo, 1992; Tucker & Riggio, 1988). For example, have you ever

forced yourself to smile at someone you really didn’t like? Or have you ever deliberately

fixed someone with a cold stare to convey your displeasure or your feeling of social

dominance over them? In such instances, we attempt to manipulate the impression others

have of us through the use of nonverbal signals.

One personality trait that appears to identify individuals who are more motivated to

consciously use nonverbal cues in managing their social relationships is self-monitoring. It is

the tendency to modify one’s own self-representations so they are consistent with the

demands of the current situation.

In one study conducted by Howard Friedman and Terry Miller-Herringer (19910), result

suggests that people high in self-monitoring are not only more attentive to their nonverbal

behavior in social settings, but they are also better able to modify or suppress nonverbal

gestures that might be considered socially inappropriate. In this respect, then, high self-

monitors appear to be better at using their nonverbal behavior to convey a desired self-

presentation to others.

C. Detecting Deception in the Self-Presentations of Others

“Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude

shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and

poetical men; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before

them; they create what they imagine.” – Marquis de Custine (1790-1857)

Given the fact that people sometimes try to conceal their true feelings and intentions from

others, how do we, as social perceivers, respond to the possibility of such subterfuge?

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Sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) contended that when we judge other people’s self-

presentations, we pay attention to two different types of social stimuli, which he called

expressions. First, there are expressions that people freely “give” to others in what is typically

thought of as their traditional communication patterns. These expressions given consist of

verbal and nonverbal symbols that people are consciously aware of transmitting. Besides

these strategic gestures, there are also expressions that people “given off,” which are mostly

nonverbal in nature. Expressions given off, also known as “nonverbal leakage,” cover a wide

range of behavior unintentionally transmitted and of which people are much less aware.

For instance, imagine that you are invited over to the home of a new acquaintance for dinner,

and your host serves lentil burgers as the main course. Being a proud meat and potatoes

person, you are not eager to send this Mc-mutant “bean food” patty down your intestinal

tract. At the same time, you don’t want to offend your host by demanding “real food for real

people,” so you decide to lie, lie, lie. Looking your host straight in the eye, you smack your

lips and exclaim, “Oh boy! Lentil burgers! I love ‘em!” You then proceed to swallow your

pride, hoping that it and the main course will stay down through the duration of the evening.

During the meal your host, perhaps realizing that a lentil burger is a fairly exotic and unusual

food for the average American, is likely to attend to your expressions given off more than

your expressions given. Therefore, while you may expound at length about how tasty the

burger is and how much you enjoy its texture, your host will be particularly attentive to your

facial expressions as you chew and swallow the burger, and the amount of beverage used to

wash it down. No matter what praise you lavish upon your host, if you look as if you’re being

tortured as you eat, your words are likely to be disregarded.

This tendency to tune into the silent language of nonverbal behavior when we believe others

are attempting to deceive us is a common strategy employed in judging social reality. Under

such circumstances, people pay more attention to others’ facial expressions, then body

posture, and least of all words (Mehrabian, 1972).

Despite the attempts at self-control, the face can reveal the lie for the acutely attentive

perceiver. How so? Before people can monitor and mask their facial expressions following an

emotion-provoking event, they emit microexpressions. These expressions are fleeting facial

signals lasting only a few tenths of a second, and are difficult to suppress. Due to the

difficulty in masking this observable expression of emotion, microexpressions can be quite

revealing about one’s actual state of mind (Ekman, 1985; Ekman & Friesen, 1975). The eyes

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can also reveal the lie. When individuals avoid the gaze of others, or blink frequently, this

may be a signal of deception (Kleinke, 1986).

Besides the face, we also rely on the sound of another’s voice and the not-so-subtle

movements of the body. When people deceive, the pitch in their voice often rises slightly, and

their speech is filled with many pauses (“ahs” and “uhms”) and other sentence hesitations

(DePaulo, Lanier, & Davis, 1983; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981). Deception is

also signaled by fidgety movements of the hands and feet, and restless shifts in body posture

(Ekman & Friesen, 1974).

D. Forming Personality Impressions

1. Additive or Averaging Model? – based on a number of studies, averaging model is more

accurate than additive model.

2. Central Traits – traits that exert a disproportionate influence on people’s overall

impressions, causing them to assume the presence of other traits.

E. Biases in Personality Judgment

1. Implicit Personality Theory

Where do these judgments come from? As suggested by Asch’s research on central traits, our

knowledge about people is structured by our prior set of beliefs about which personality traits

go together. These assumptions or naïve beliefs systems that we have about the associations

among personality traits have been called an implicit personality theory. In this scientific

theory of personality, there is a strong tendency for people to assume that all good things

occur together in persons and that all bad things do so as well, with little overlap between the

two.

In an implicit personality theory, as in impression formation generally, there appears to be

operating a principle of evaluative consistency – a tendency to view others in a way that is

internally consistent. Even when contradictory information is made available, we still

generally persist in viewing people as either consistently good or bad. In this effort toward

consistency, we will often distort or explain away contradictory information.

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2. Self-Concept and False Consensus Bias

Accompanying this tendency to associate certain traits with one another is the fact that our

self-concept can also serve as the lens through which we view others (Higgins, King, &

Mavin, 1982; Krueger & Clement, 1994). False consensus bias – the tendency to exaggerate

how common one’s own characteristics and opinions are in the general population.

3. Positivity Bias

Another general evaluative bias operating in impression formation is to view people in a

favorable light. Known as the positivity bias, it is the tendency for people to evaluate

individual human beings more positively than groups or impersonal objects.

4. Negativity Bias

It may seem contradictory, but because people are biased toward perceiving others in a

positive light, when they learn that someone has negative traits they place more weight on

these unfavorable attributes in forming an impression of the person. Known as the negativity

bias, it is the tendency of people to give more weight to negative traits than positive traits in

impression formation ( Coovert &Reeder, 1990; Skowronski & Carlson, 1989). This

tendency to direct attention to negatively evaluated stimuli, like the tendency to notice fearful

and angry faces in a crowd, is believed to have survival value for human beings (Pratto &

John, 1991). Unfortunately, although this automatic vigilance may protect people from

immediate harm, it may also contribute to harsher than warranted social judgments. The

increasing use of “negative campaign ads” in politics is testimony to the power of the

negativity bias.

5. Primacy and Recency Effects

There is on other simple and basic factor influencing impression formation, and it is related to

the order in which we learn bits of information about someone. Known as the primacy

effect, it is the tendency for the first information received to carry more weight in one’s

overall impression than later information.

Why does early information figure more prominently than later information in our impression

of others? One possible explanation is that the early bits of information we learn about

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another provide a cognitive schema or mental “outline,” which we then use to process later

information. If the later information contradicts this schema, we are likely to ignore it.

Research suggests that the primacy effect is particularly strong when people are given little

time to make judgments and are not under a great deal of pressure to be correct (Kruglanski

& Freund, 1983).

Although the primacy effect regularly occurs in social perception, it can sometimes be

reversed if people are warned against making hasty judgments or told that they will be asked

to justify their impressions of a target person (Jones & Goethals, 1972; Tetlock & Kim,

1987). In such circumstances, the last bits of information learned may be given grater weight

than earlier information. This is known as the recency effect.

II. MAKING ATTRIBUTIONS

In forming impressions of others, we attempt to determine what characteristics in each person

explain their behavior and cause them to act the way they do. Yet in attempting to understand

others, we do not solely focus on personality traits. In seeking explanations for their behavior

we also take into account the situation context, as well as the influence that others may have

on them. Beyond trying to understand people as individuals, when we perceive events in

general, we often are irresistibly drawn to understand why they unfold in the observed

manner. This tendency is strongest when the events are the actions of other people (Zajonc,

1980), and are unexpected, unusual, or distressing (Hastie, 1984; Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood,

1984; Wong & Weiner, 1981). The process by which we use such information to make

inferences about the causes of behavior or events is called attribution.

A. Heider’s Naïve Psychology

Fritz Heider (1958) was the first social psychologist to formally analyze how people attempt

to understand the causes behind behavior. He believed that everybody has a general theory of

human behavior – what he called a naïve psychology – and that they use it to search for

explanations of social events.

In seeking attributions, Heider believed people are motivated by two primary needs: the need

to form a coherent view of the world, and the need to gain control of the environment. Being

able to predict how people are going to behave goes a long way in satisfying both of these

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needs. If we can adequately explain and predict the actions of others, we will be much more

likely to view the world as coherent and controllable than if we have no clue to their

intentions and dispositions.

B. Primary Dimensions of Causal Experience

In making causal attributions, by far the most important social concerns the locus of

causality. According to Heider, people broadly attribute a given action either to internal states

or external factors. An internal attribution consists of any explanation that locates the cause

as being internal to the person, such as personality traits, moods, attitudes, abilities, or effort.

An external attribution consists of any explanation that locates the cause as being external

to the person under scrutiny, such as the actions of others, the nature of the situation, or luck.

Although judgments of the locus and stability of causes are the most important in making

attributions, a third dimension we often consider is the controllability of these causes.

According to Weiner (1982), we think of some causes as being within people’s control and

others as being outside their control. The controllable/uncontrollable dimension is

independent of either locus of stability. Weather is a good example of an uncontrollable

factor.

C. Correspondent Inference Theory

When people watch the actions of others, they not only attend to the behavior itself but are

also aware of the consequences of the behavior. In developing correspondent inference

theory, Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) were particularly interested in how people infer

the cause of a single instance of behavior. According to them, people try to infer from an

overt action whether it corresponds to a stable personal characteristic of the actor. Thus, a

correspondent inference is an inference that the action of an actor corresponds to, or is

indicative of, a stable personal characteristic.

In explaining social events, Jones and Davis argued that people have a preference for making

dispositional attributions (that is, those that are internal and stable), and that external

attributions are merely default options, made only when internal causes cannot be found. The

reason for this preference is the belief that knowing the dispositional attributes of others will

enable one to better understand and predict their behavior. The problem in confidently

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making these attributions, however, is that social behavior is often ambiguous and the causes

are not always readily apparent to the observer. Therefore, to guide them in their attempts to

infer personal characteristics from behavior, Jones and Davis stated that people use several

logical rules of thumb:

1. Social Desirability – people are much more likely to make dispositional attributions about

behavior that is socially undesirable than about behavior that is desirable. Socially

desirable behavior is thought to tell us more about the cultural norms of the group than

about the personality of the individuals within that group. Yet when people are willing to

break from these norms to act in a certain way, such unexpected behavior demands an

explanation. When such action is taken, people realize that the social costs incurred by the

actor may be great, and they are much more confident that the behavior reflects a stable

and internal disposition (Jones, Davis, & Gergen, 1961).

2. Choice – actions freely chosen are considered to be more indicative of an actor’s true

personal characteristics than those that are coerced. Support for the freedom of choice

factor comes from a study in which college students read a speech, supposedly written by

a fellow student, that either supported or opposed Fidel Castro, the communist leader of

Cuba (Jones & Harris, 1967). Some students were told that the student speech writer had

freely chosen his or her position, while others were told that the student was assigned the

stated position by a professor. When asked to estimate what the student speech writer’s

true attitudes were toward Castro, those who believed that the speechwriter had freely

chosen his or her position were more likely to assume there was a correspondence

between the student’s essay (behavior) and his or her true attitudes.

3. Noncommon Effects – we also analyze the chosen behavior in the context of other

potential behaviors. By comparing the consequences of the chosen behavior with the

consequences of other actions not taken, people can often infer the strength of the

underlying intention by looking for unique or “noncommon” consequences.

Taking these rules into account, according to Jones and Davis’ theory, people are most likely

to conclude that other people’s actions reflect underlying dispositional traits (that is, they are

likely to make correspondent inferences) when the actions are perceived to (1) be low in

social desirability, (2) be freely chosen, and (3) result in unique, noncommon effects.

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D. Kelley’s Covariation Model

One theory that specifically attempts to explain attributions derived from multiple

observational points and details the processes for making external, as well as internal,

attributions is Harold Kelley’s (1967) covariation model.

1. Covariation Principle – states that for something to be the cause of a particular behavior,

it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not occur – the

presumed cause and observed effect must “covary.”

2. Discounting Principle – whenever there are several possible causal explanations for a

particular event, we tend to be much less likely to attribute the effect to any particular

cause. In describing the locus of causality, Kelley elaborated on the internal/external

dimension by further delineating external attributions into the entity and circumstances,

the entity is the object toward which the actor’s behavior is directed and can be another

person or a thing. Circumstances are simply the conditions in which actions or events

occur.

In assessing covariation, Kelley stated that people rely upon three basic kinds of information.

a. Consensus – information deals with the extent to which others react in the same

way to some stimulus or entity as the person whose actions we are attempting to

explain.

b. Consistency – information concerns the extent to which the person reacts to the

stimulus or entity in the same way on other occasions.

c. Distinctiveness – information refers to the extent to which person reacts in the

same way to other, different stimuli or entities.

Kelley’s Theory predicts that people are most likely to attribute another person’s behavior to

internal causes when consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high. On the

other hand, circumstance attributions are most likely when consensus and consistency are low

and distinctiveness is high. When all three kinds of information are high, people are likely to

make entity attributions.

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III. BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION

Based on the discussion thus far, the attribution process appears to be highly rational.

However, although people seem to follow logical principles in assigning causality to events,

this cognitive process – likened by some to a computer program – has some interesting and

all-too-illogical human “bugs.”

A. The Fundamental Attribution Error

Behavior is generally caused by an interaction of an individual’s internal characteristics and

external factors. However, in explaining other people’s actions, we tend to locate the cause in

terms of their dispositional characteristics rather than to what might be more appropriate

situational factors. Lee Ross (1977) named this tendency to make internal attributions over

external attributions for the behavior of others the fundamental attribution error.

B. The Actor-Observer Effect

When explaining the actions of others, we are especially likely to commit the fundamental

attribution error. But when explaining our own behavior, we tend to give more weight to

external factors. This tendency to attribute our own behavior to external causes but that of

others to internal factors is known as the actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972).

For example, if Cheryl is having a conversation with an attractive male stranger and her

boyfriend, Steve, sees them from a distance, they may well arrive at different explanations for

this social interaction. Although Cheryl may attribute it to an external factor (the stranger was

asking for directions), Steve may assign an internal cause (Cheryl is infatuated with this

guy!).

C. The Self-Serving Bias

Perhaps the best evidence that we are not coldly rational information processors is found in

situation in which our own performance results in either success or failure. When such events

transpire, the nature of the attribution process is decidedly self-protective in failure situations

and self-enhancing in success situations. That is, people tend to take credit for positive

behaviors or outcomes but to blame negative behaviors or outcomes on external causes

(Baumgardner, Heppner, & Arkin, 1986; Olson & Ross, 1988).

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For example, William Berstein, Walter Stephan, and Mark Davis (1979) found that when

students received good grade on an exam, they were likely to attribute it either to their

intelligence (an uncontrollable, yet stable, internal factor), their strong work ethic (a

controllable, stable, internal factor), or a combination of the two. However, if they received a

poor grade on this exam, they were likely to attribute it to an unreasonable professor (a stable,

yet uncontrollable, external factor) or pure bad luck (an unstable, uncontrollable, external

factor). This tendency to assign an internal locus of causality for our positive outcomes and

an external locus for our negative outcomes is known as the self-serving bias. It is arguably

the most robust of the attributional biases and has been documented cross-culturally (Fletcher

& Ward, 1988), although it may be stronger in individualist societies than in those with a

collectivist orientation (Chandler et al., 1981; Kashima & Triandis, 1986).

SOURCES:

Social Psychology. Robert A. Baron, Donn Byrne. -10th ed. Allyn and Bacon. USA.

Social Psychology. Stephen L. Franzoi – Madison, Wisconsin: Brown & Benchmark Pub.,

c1996.

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