Page 188 - The Social Animal

170 The Social Animal

they do and should be held accountable. But by focusing on personal
rather than situational factors, we will endorse different policies for
dealing with social problems such as poverty and crime. For exam-
ple, the attribution “this criminal is a fiend” will result in a policy of
spending more money on bigger and stronger prisons and doling out
longer prison sentences. Perceiving the causes of crime as due largely
to unemployment, poor role models, and illiteracy will result in poli-
cies like increased spending for better schools, better teachers, and
tax credits to businesses that invest in poverty-stricken areas. Don’t
get me wrong: I am not suggesting that dispositional factors such as
laziness, clumsiness, or viciousness do not exist. They do. But most
of us, most of the time, are too prone to invoke a dispositional at-
tribution when the cause of the behavior may well be situational. At
the very least, our knowledge of the fundamental attribution error
should alert us to the possibility that our attributions may not al-
ways be correct and that we should take seriously the motto of the
English Protestant reformer John Bradford: “There, but for the
grace of God, go I.”

The Actor-Observer Bias Another common bias in social
judgment is known as the actor-observer bias—the tendency for ac-
tors to attribute their own actions to situational factors, whereas ob-
servers tend to attribute the same actions to stable personality
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dispositions of the actors. For example, in my judgment, I go to the
beach a lot because the weather is beautiful; but, in my judgment, you
go to the beach a lot because you are probably a beach bum. Politi-
cal leaders often describe wise moves and blunders as largely in-
escapable under the circumstances, whereas private citizens are likely
to see both as a consequence of the leader’s personal characteristics.
Recall the Kitty Genovese murder discussed in Chapter 2. After Ms.
Genovese was murdered in full view of 38 witnesses in New York
City, the eyewitnesses claimed that the situation was ambiguous and
that it was difficult to know what to do; newspaper reporters called
it bystander apathy. In other words, I give myself the benefit of the
doubt; I use situational causes to explain myself. But I don’t give you
the same benefit; when I try to explain your behavior, I make the fun-
damental attribution error.
There is considerable evidence that the actor-observer bias is per-
vasive. For example, studies have shown that (1) in explaining success