what does this behavior imply about this person’s personality?). Second, we make a dispositional characterisation (i.e. When we are mentally processing somebody else’s actions, there are three steps we need to go through. This leads us to take cognitive shortcuts (known as heuristics), and also makes us vulnerable to a whole raft of cognitive biases. We have limited cognitives resources, and generally speaking, our brains like to take the route that expends as little energy as possible. In some cases, the FAE seems to happen in part because it takes effort to adjust our perception of somebody’s behavior to be more in line with the situation they’re in. So, why do people commit the FAE even when they should know situational factors might be at play? There are a few different reasons this might happen.Īccounting for the situation takes up mental resources It also shows up when they have been given extra information about the writer, or warned to avoid bias. 7 Other studies have shown that this effect happens independent of participants’ own opinions. The researchers were surprised to find that, even when participants were told the writer hadn’t chosen which side they would be on, they still believed that the author’s opinions about Castro were consistent with the argument they made in the essay. Some participants were told the writer had chosen whether to write for or against Castro, while others were told the writer was assigned a position. In a classic study by Edward Jones and Victor Harris, university students read essays that either defended or criticized Fidel Castro, the leader of the Communist Party of Cuba. However, as research has shown, people often commit the FAE even when they’re fully aware of what’s going on. 6 If we don’t have all the relevant information, obviously we can’t make a reasonable judgment about someone’s behavior. Sometimes, we fail to account for the situation simply because we lack awareness of it. Rather, the FAE comes up when we fail to apply this understanding properly. awareness of the power of the situation). The problem is not that we lack situational theory (i.e. Very few people would try to argue that everybody behaves in exactly the same way, regardless of the circumstances. On an intellectual level, we all understand that people’s behavior is shaped by the situations they find themselves in. In turn, the correspondence bias could lead you to infer from your classmate’s behavior that they must be an anxious person in general. The FAE might cause you to downplay the fact that the situation (giving a class presentation) is stressful for most people. They seem nervous: they’re sweating, fidgeting, and stuttering. For example, let’s say you are watching a classmate give a presentation. While these biases are separate, the FAE can contribute to the correspondence bias. Meanwhile, the FAE speaks to how we underestimate the impact of situational factors. 4,5 Put another way, we assume that people’s actions correspond to their internal attitudes. Technically speaking, the correspondence bias describes people’s tendency to infer things about the personalities of others, based on their behavior. To make things extra confusing, for a long time, the two terms were actually used interchangeably, before a number of researchers started to argue that they were distinct. In other words, while we like to explain our own actions in terms of the various external factors that might have caused us to act the way that we did, when it comes to other people, we are quicker to say that they act the way they do because that’s just the “way they are.” 1Īnother bias that is often confused with the FAE is known as the correspondence bias. According to this cognitive bias, people have a tendency to make dispositional attributions for other people’s behavior, and situational attributions for their own. The FAE is often confused with another, similar phenomenon, the actor–observer bias (also known as actor–observer asymmetry). This can become a barrier to addressing systemic issues in our society. We are particularly likely to commit the FAE when considering certain kinds of behavior, including behavior we consider to be immoral.
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