Page 334 - The Social Animal

316 The Social Animal

As you know, our need to find a cause for another person’s be-
havior is part of the human tendency to go beyond the information
given. It is often functional. Suppose you have just moved into a
strange town where you have no friends and are feeling lonely. There
is a knock on the door; it is Joe, a neighbor, who shakes your hand
and welcomes you to the neighborhood. You invite him in. He stays
for about 20 minutes, during which time you and he have an inter-
esting conversation. You feel really good about the possibility of hav-
ing discovered a new friend. As he gets up to leave, he says, “Oh, by
the way, if you ever need some insurance, I happen to be in the busi-
ness and I’d be happy to discuss it with you,” and he leaves his card.
Is he your friend who happens to be selling insurance, or is he pre-
tending to be your friend to sell you insurance? It is important to
know because you must decide whether to pursue a relationship with
him. To repeat, in making attributions, the individual must go be-
yond the information given. We do not know why the tight end
dropped the pass; we do not know Joe’s motivation for friendly be-
havior. We are guessing. Our causal attributions may be accurate or
erroneous, functional or dysfunctional.
In an ambiguous situation, people tend to make attributions
consistent with their prejudices. Thomas Pettigrew has dubbed this
29
the ultimate attribution error. If Mr. Bigot sees a well-dressed
white Anglo-Saxon Protestant man sitting on a park bench sunning
himself at 3 PM on a Wednesday, he thinks nothing of it. If he sees
a well-dressed black man doing the same thing, he is apt to leap to
the conclusion that the man is unemployed—and Mr. Bigot is likely
to become infuriated because he assumes his own hard-earned
money is being taxed to pay that shiftless, good-for-nothing enough
in welfare subsidies to keep him in fancy clothes. If Mr. Bigot passes
Mr. Anglo’s house and notices that a trash can is overturned and
garbage is strewn about, he is apt to conclude that a stray dog has
been searching for food. If he passes Mr. Latino’s house and notices
the same thing, he is inclined to become annoyed and think, “Those
people live like pigs.” Not only does prejudice influence his attribu-
tions and conclusions, his erroneous conclusions justify and intensify
his negative feelings. Thus, the entire attribution process can spiral.
Prejudice causes particular kinds of negative attributions or stereo-
types that can, in turn, intensify the prejudice. 30
For example, if people hold a prejudice against women, believ-
ing, say, that women are by nature less competent and able than men,