The fundamental attribution error

1
The fundamental attribution error

• What is it
• Tendency to overestimate influence of
  dispositional factors when judging others
• Why you get it
• Selective exposure (again)
• Perceptual salience
• Different processes underlying attributions
• dispositional ? automatic
• Situational ? controlled

2
Two famous demonstrations

• Jones and Harris (1967)
• Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977)

3
The College-Bowl Study(Ross, Amabile, and
Steinmetz, 1977).
Quiz-master Contestant
high intelligence
low intelligence

• Observers contestants
  quiz-masters
• PEOPLE DOING THE RATINGS

4
Stages of social perception
Observe specific behavior
Identification (encoding)
Inferences about other traits
Inferences about the causes of behavior
(attribution)
Automatic dispositional attribution
Controlled situational correctionbut only if
perceiver has ability and motivation
5
The spotlight effect (Gilovich, Medvec,
Savitsky, 2000)
6
Ideology and attribution

• Do conservatives and liberals tend to make
  different types of attributions? (e.g. Zucker
  Weiner, 1993)
• In some domains (e.g. perceptions of poverty)
  conservatives are significantly more likely to
  make dispositional attributions compared to
  liberals
• Flattering vs. unflattering portraits of liberals
  and conservatives
• The bad conservative framing
• The bad liberal framing

7
Belief in a just world (Lerner, 1980)

• Good things happen to good people, bad things
  happen to bad people
• Two ways of conceptualizing
• Cultural belief system
• Individual difference variable

high
low
8
Belief in a Just World and RiskLambert,
Burroughs, Nguyen, 1999

• Belief in a just world
• But we find only weakly related to perceived
  riskWHY?
• Buffering hypothesis!
• Maybe just world beliefs only matter when world
  is viewed as threatening in the first place
• Who sees world as threatening?
• High RWA

9
Right-wing authoritarianism
Belief in a just world
World perceived as a dangerous, scary place?
Personal buffer against threat?
YES
NO
HIGH PERCEIVED RISK
YES
NO
LOW PERCEIVED RISK