Social Cognition

Two Ways to Explain Any Behavior

• Every explanation of why someone did something points at one of two places.
• Internal (person) attribution: The behavior happened because of something about the person, such as their personality, attitudes, or character.
• External (situational) attribution: The behavior happened because of something about the situation the person was in.
• The same behavior can be explained either way, and the facts do not settle which one is right.
  • Ex: A cashier is short with you. “She is rude” points at the person. “She is in the ninth hour of her shift” points at the situation.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

• Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to overestimate person-related factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining someone else’s behavior.
  • Ex: A classmate never speaks in class, and everyone decides he is shy. Actually, he works nights and is asleep on his feet.
  • Ex: A stranger sits in the seat reserved for Rosa Parks on a memorial bus, and riders judge him disrespectful. Actually, the sign marking the seat is small and easy to miss.
  • Ex: A friend does not text back for two days, and you decide she is done with you. Actually, her phone was cut off for nonpayment.
• The situation is usually harder to see than the person, so people usually explain the behavior by the person.

The Castro Essay Study

• The Castro essay study (1967): Participants read an essay that argued for or against Fidel Castro’s government. Half were told the writer chose the side, and half were told the writer was assigned the side by a debate coach.
  • Finding: Participants rated writers of pro-Castro essays as more pro-Castro than writers of anti-Castro essays, even when they knew the side was assigned.
• Being told “the writer had no choice” reduced the effect but did not remove it.
• The situation (an assignment) was stated out loud, and people still explained the essay by the writer’s own views.

The Quiz Show Study

• The quiz show study (1977): Pairs of students were assigned by coin flip to be questioner or contestant. Questioners wrote ten hard questions from their own knowledge, and contestants tried to answer them. Observers watched.
  • Finding: Contestants answered about four of ten. Contestants and observers both rated the questioners as more knowledgeable than the contestants. The questioners did not rate themselves that way.
• The questioner’s advantage was the role, which everyone in the room knew was decided by a coin.
• People who watch a person perform explain the performance by the person, even when the situation was announced.

Why the Error Happens

• Perceptual salience. The person is what you are looking at. The situation is around the person and mostly not looked at.
• The two-step process. Explaining behavior by the person happens automatically. Correcting for the situation takes attention, so it happens second and only when attention is available.
• The busy observer study (1988): Participants watched a silent video of a woman fidgeting nervously while discussing either anxiety-provoking topics or neutral ones. Half were also given a memory task to do while watching.
  • Finding: Participants who were not busy took the topics into account. Participants who were busy rated the woman as an anxious person regardless of what she was discussing.
• Knowing about the error does not stop the first step. It only makes the second step possible.

The Actor-Observer Difference

• Actor-observer difference: The tendency to explain other people’s behavior by their personality but one’s own behavior by the situation.
  • Ex: “He cut me off because he is a jerk. I cut him off because I was late.”
  • Ex: “She snapped at me because she has a temper. I snapped at her because it had been a long day.”
• Two reasons, both from the last slide.
  • Actors look outward and see the situation. Observers look at the actor.
  • Actors know their own history and what is usually true of them. Observers only see today.

The Error Is Stronger in Some Cultures Than Others

• The crime coverage study (1994): Researchers compared how American and Chinese newspapers explained the same two murders, one by a Chinese graduate student and one by an American postal worker.
  • Finding: American reporters explained both crimes mostly by the killer’s personality. Chinese reporters explained both mostly by the killer’s situation and relationships.
• Cultures differ in what they value. Where the individual’s rights, choices, and character matter most, people notice the person and overlook the situation more. Where duties to family and community matter most, people pay more attention to the situation the person was in.
• The error appears in both, but it is stronger where the individual is the focus.

Exercise: Supply the Situation

For each one, give an internal (person-related) and an external (situation-related) explanation.

1. A student fails the first exam. “She is lazy.”
2. A coworker is late three days in a row. “He is unreliable.”
3. A relative never calls. “She does not care about this family.”