Attribution bias

In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions regarding the cause of their own and others' behaviors; however, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality. Rather than operating as objective perceivers, people are prone to perceptual errors that lead to biased interpretations of their social world. In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions regarding the cause of their own and others' behaviors; however, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality. Rather than operating as objective perceivers, people are prone to perceptual errors that lead to biased interpretations of their social world. Attribution biases were first discussed in the 1950s and '60s by psychologists such as Fritz Heider, who studied attribution theory. Other psychologists, such as Harold Kelley and Ed Jones expanded Heider's early work by identifying conditions under which people are more or less likely to make different types of attributions. After the general study of attribution theory came about, Lee Ross, a renowned psychologist coined the term. This was after an experiment done by Ross and Ed Jones which was written about in a paper published 1977. In this paper, they argue that the fundamental attribution error forms a foundation for the field of social psychology. Attribution biases are present in everyday life, and therefore are an important and relevant topic to study. For example, when a driver cuts us off, we are more likely to attribute blame to the reckless driver (e.g., 'What a jerk!'), rather than situational circumstances (e.g., 'Maybe they were in a rush and didn't notice me'). Additionally, there are many different types of attribution biases, such as the ultimate attribution error, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and hostile attribution bias. Each of these biases describes a specific tendency that people exhibit when reasoning about the cause of different behaviors. Since the early work, researchers have continued to examine how and why people exhibit biased interpretations of social information. Many different types of attribution biases have been identified, and more recent psychological research on these biases has examined how attribution biases can subsequently affect emotions and behavior. Research on attribution biases is founded in attribution theory, which was proposed to explain why and how we create meaning about others' and our own behavior. This theory focuses on identifying how an observer uses information in his/her social environment in order to create a causal explanation for events. Attribution theory also provides explanations for why different people can interpret the same event in different ways and what factors contribute to attribution biases. Psychologist Fritz Heider first discussed attributions in his 1958 book, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. Heider made several important contributions that laid the foundation for further research on attribution theory and attribution biases. He noted that people tend to make distinctions between behaviors that are caused by personal disposition versus environmental or situational conditions. He also predicted that people are more likely to explain others' behavior in terms of dispositional factors (i.e., caused by a given person's personality), while ignoring the surrounding situational demands. Building on Heider's early work, other psychologists in the 1960s and 70s extended work on attributions by offering additional related theories. In 1965, social psychologists Edward E. Jones and Keith Davis proposed an explanation for patterns of attribution termed correspondent inference theory. A 'correspondent inference' assumes that a person's behavior reflects a stable disposition or personality characteristic. They explained that certain conditions make us more likely to make a correspondent inference about someone's behavior: In 1973, Kelley discussed attribution theory and how people make casual assumptions based off their perceptions in a journal titled, The processes of causal attribution. Kelley's idea of the attribution theory states that the biases people make, make sense and are logical based on themselves and the people around them. He began wondering how people choose when a human behavior is independently acted by a person, or when it is a function of the group that they are a part of. This would later on evolve into the ideas of individualistic and collectivist cultures. Soon after Jones and Davis first proposed their correspondent inference theory, Harold Kelley, a social psychologist famous for his work on interdependence theory as well as attribution theory, proposed a covariation model to explain the way people make attributions. This model helped to explain how people choose to attribute a behavior to an internal disposition versus an environmental factor. Kelley used the term 'covariation' to convey that when making attributions, people have access to information from many observations, across different situations, and at many time points; therefore, people can observe the way a behavior varies under these different conditions. He proposed three factors that influence the way we explain behavior: Kelley proposed that people are more likely to make dispositional attributions when consensus is low (most other people don't behave in the same way), consistency is high (a person behaves this way across most situations), and distinctiveness is low (a person's behavior is not unique to this situation). Alternatively, situational attributions are more likely reached when consensus is high, consistency is low, and distinctiveness is high. His research helped to reveal the specific mechanisms underlying the process of making attributions.