PSYC 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 43: Fundamental Attribution Error, Fritz Heider, Dispositional Attribution
26 Feb 2017
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Module 43: Social Thinking
• Personality psychologists focus on the person – they study the personal traits
and dynamics that explain why different people may act differently in a given
situation
• Social psychologists focus on the situation
• They study the social influences that explain why the same person will act
differently in different situations
The Fundamental Attribution Error
• Our social behavior comes from our social cognition
• Especially when the unexpected occurs, we want to explain and understand
why people act as they do
• After studying how people explain others’ behavior, Fritz (eider proposed an
attribution theory: we can attribute the behavior to the person’s stable,
enduring traits (a dispositional attribution) or we can attribute it to the
situation (a situational attribution)
• Dispositional attributions can be valid because people do have enduring
personality traits
• BUT… sometimes we fall into the fundamental attribution error: we
overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of
situations
• In some experiments, some people attribute behavior to personal disposition
even when they were told that the behavior was completely situational
• The fundamental attribution error appears more often in some cultures than
in others
o )ndividualistic Westerners more often attribute behavior to people’s
personal traits
o People in Asia are somewhat more sensitive to the power of the
situation
• We are most likely to commit the fundamental attribution error when a
stranger acts badly
• Our past self adopts the observer’s perspective and attributes our past
behavior mostly to our traits
• In another 5 - years, your today’s self may seem like another person
• There are social and economic effects of attribution
o Political conservatives tend to place the blame on the personal
dispositions of the poor and unemployed
• The point to remember: Our attributions – to a person’s disposition or the
situation – have real consequences
Attitudes and Actions
• Attitudes are feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose our
reactions to objects, people, and events
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