Biases in Attributions Made about Self and Others
People may give less weight to circumstances when explaining another person’s behavior than when explaining their own. The passage connects these attribution differences, inflated self-assessments, and overestimates of personal contributions with mistrust and conflict.
THE IDEA
Biases in Attributions Made about Self and Others
Two much-researched attributional biases directly affect interpersonal misunderstanding and enmity. The first bias involves people’s tendency to underestimate the impact of situational or contextual factors on overt action, and as a result to make overly broad and overly “dispositional” attributions about other actors (see Ross, 1977; Ross & Nisbett, 1991; also Jones, 1979, 1990). The second bias involves the tendency for people to give greater weight to situational factors in assessing their own actions and outcomes than those of their peers (Jones & Nisbett, 1971; see also Gilbert & Malone, 1995). These attributional biases, we argue, leave the “losers” in the various struggles of our contemporary world (e.g., the homeless, workers victimized by the global economy, members of stigmatized minorities, and parties to ethnic strife) feeling doubly victimized. They feel victimized not only by the objective privations of their situations, but also by the assessments and suggested remedies offered by their victimizers and others who “do not understand the real situation.” Furthermore, their own accounts of their travails and their proposals for redress are apt to provoke highly negative responses from those whose assistance they seek. These observers are apt to complain about the victims’ “refusal to accept any responsibility for their circumstances” and “unwillingness to do anything to help themselves,” and a downward cycle of misattribution and mistrust is likely to ensue that further compromises opportunities for collaborative problem solving.
Conflict can be exacerbated not only by misattributions about others, but also by biased assessments about the self. Consider the “better-than-average” effect (Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbacker, Yurak, & Vredenberg, 1995; Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989; Kruger & Dunning, 1999), whereby the majority of people believe that their abilities, performances, or attributes exceed those of the “typical” individual. Similarly, consider the tendency for actors to overestimate their own contributions to joint products (Ross & Sicoly, 1979). Such biases may be adaptive in fostering increased effort, enhancing self-efficacy, creating self-fulfilling prophesies of success (see Bandura, 1977; Dweck, 1986), and perhaps even in fostering mental and physical health (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Yet the same biases are apt to leave people feeling overworked, underappreciated, and undercompensated relative to the other parties with whom they transact their affairs. In any negotiations involving allocation of rewards, resources, and opportunities, individuals or groups showing such self-enhancement biases are likely to feel they have been denied outcomes commensurate with their entitlements and further denied the gratitude and recognition they deserve for their past forbearance.
The authors connect these patterns with “naive realism,” the tendency to treat one’s own view as an unbiased reading of the situation.
When to use it
Performance appraisals: Managers should consider situational constraints before attributing poor performance to employee traits.
Negotiations: Both parties can use awareness of self-enhancement biases to recognize when they feel undercompensated relative to others and seek objective benchmarks.
Conflict resolution: Mediators can help disputants see how fundamental attribution error and actor-observer bias escalate tensions, encouraging perspective-taking.
Education: Teachers can reduce blame on students for failures by emphasizing contextual factors and fostering a growth mindset.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
The Homeless and the Stigmatized
Observers might attribute homelessness to personal laziness or poor choices (dispositional) rather than to systemic factors like lack of affordable housing or mental health support (situational). The homeless themselves, however, are more likely to attribute their situation to external circumstances, leading to a cycle of misunderstanding and failed interventions.
Workplace Performance Evaluation
A manager judges an employee's missed deadline as due to carelessness (dispositional), while the employee explains it was due to an unrealistic workload and insufficient resources (situational). Both then feel the other is unfair or unappreciative, harming collaboration.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Recall a recent conflict with a friend or colleague. How might you have made a dispositional attribution for their behavior while they made a situational attribution for their own? How would reframing change the interaction?
In what areas of your life do you believe you are above average? Could these beliefs be influenced by the better-than-average effect? How might that affect your expectations of others?
When evaluating a joint project, do you tend to overestimate your own contribution? How could you check for that bias to improve fairness in future collaborations?
References
- Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. — Ross, L. (1977)
- Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. — Ross, L. & Nisbett, R. E. (1991)
- Jones, E. E. (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions. — Jones, E. E. (1979)
- Jones, E. E. (1990). Interpersonal perception. — Jones, E. E. (1990)
- Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (1971). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. — Jones, E. E. & Nisbett, R. E. (1971)
- Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. — Gilbert, D. T. & Malone, P. S. (1995)
- Alicke, M. D., Klotz, M. L., Breitenbacker, D. L., Yurak, T. J., & Vredenberg, D. S. (1995). Personal contact, individuation, and the better-than-average effect. — Alicke, M. D. et al. (1995)
- Dunning, D., Meyerowitz, J. A., & Holzberg, A. D. (1989). Ambiguity and self-evaluation: The role of idiosyncratic trait definitions in self-serving assessments of ability. — Dunning, D., Meyerowitz, J. A., & Holzberg, A. D. (1989)
- Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. — Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. (1999)
- Ross, M., & Sicoly, F. (1979). Egocentric biases in availability and attribution. — Ross, M. & Sicoly, F. (1979)
- Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. — Bandura, A. (1977)
- Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. — Dweck, C. S. (1986)
- Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. — Taylor, S. E. & Brown, J. D. (1988)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Heuristics and Biases The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment (Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, Daniel Kahneman)