PSY220H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Fundamental Attribution Error, Dispositional Attribution, Explanatory Style
28 Oct 2018
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People think that they"re naive scientists , they try to understand why people behave the way they do. There are a number of influences on our attributions and explanations, like the fundamental attribution error, self fulfilling prophecies and self serving biases: Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate the general importance of personality or dispositional factors compared to situational and environmental influences when explaining why people do what they do. Ross, amabile and steinmetz did the quiz show experiment showing how we underestimate the power of roles in behaviour. The observers, even though they knew that the participants were randomly assigned, failed to acknowledge the impact of the situation and instead attributed what they saw to personal dispositions. They saw the group asking questions as being more smart. Our knowledge of the fundamental attribution error should alert us to the possibility that our attributions may not always be correct.
