PSYC 023 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Fundamental Attribution Error, Psych, Walter Cronkite
Document Summary
Fundamental attribution error: tendency to explain others" behaviours in terms of disposition, while ignoring the situational factors. Many consequences, for example: interpreting milgram"s obedient participants we say they were weak or evil instead of seeing it as a strong situation, interpreting others" knowledge we ignore the situation and rely on disposition. Quizmaster they were asked to come up with 10 difficult questions that he knew the answer to. Participants are asked to indicate how smart the contestant and quizmaster were. Contestant, observer, and quizmaster rate the contestant as average. Contestant and observer rate the quizmaster as very smart. **they assume because he came up with the hard questions that he is a genius but it was only because they were questions that he already knew the answer to and that he specialized in. Participants came in and listened to situations where someone did something. As we get older, we learn to make dispositional attributions.
