Social Psych Lecture 5 2.4

Fundamental Attribution Error: overestimate the role of internal dispositions and underestimate the role of situational factors
- Jones & Harris (1967) "Fidel Castro"
- Two-step Process
Two-step Process:
- Make an internal attribution
- Attempt to adjust the attribution by considering the situation the person was in
- We're likely to move to the second step if we go from automatic to controlled thinking (consciously slow down, cognitively alert, suspicious) (ex.:)
Perceptual Salience: Any stimulus that is vivid or salient in a situation will be seen as the cause of behavior in that situation
- Taylor and Fiske (1975)
- Implication: Lassiter and colleagues (2007; Lassiter, 2010)
  - Videotaped confession
  - Varied perspective
  - Shown to judges, police officers
  - Was confession voluntary or coerced?
Self-serving attributions:
- Take credit for own successes (i.e. internal attributions)
- Blame situation/others for own failure (i.e. external attributions)
- Ex.: Professional Sports
  - Likely to attribute success to themselves, failure to something outside themselves
  - Lvl o/Experience
  - Individual vs Team
Belief in a Just World
- Assumption that ppl get what they deserve and deserve what they get
- Defensive attribution
Culture and Social Perception:
- Holistic vs Analytic
  - American (Analytic, central person)
  - Japanese (Holistic, Background persons)
  - Emotions
- Perceptual Processing
  - fMRI
  - Lines in boxes
  - East Asians/Americans
  - Focus on lines (ignore context)/boxes (attend to context)
  - Most effort...
- Cultural Differences in the Fundamental Attribution Error
  - Miller (1984)
    - Indians living in India/Americans living in US
    - Explain friend's behavior
    - Situational (external)/Dispositional (internal)
  - Hong and Colleagues (2003)
    - Picture: fish in front of a school of fish
    - Why?
    - Bicultural (Hong Kong Chinese)
    - Prime US or Chinese culture or control
    - Chinese prime: situational attributions (fish is being chased)
    - US Prime: dispositional attributions (fish is leading)
Cultural Differences Self-Serving Biases