What causes injustice and stereotypes? They can happen for countless factors, but what no one knows is that cognitive bias can be one of the causes and that our own brain can trick us into having stereotypes and misjudging people. Cognitive biases affect not only our decision-making processes but also our judgement about other people, therefore influencing the way we treat them. One bias that affects our judgement is the Fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or over attribution bias.
By definition, FAE is the tendency to overestimate the degree to which an individual’s behavior is determined by his or her abiding personal characteristics, attitudes, or beliefs and, correspondingly, to minimize the influence of the surrounding situation on that behavior (APA Dictionary of Psychology). In other words, it means that we assume that people act in a certain way because of their personality, rather than external factors that they cannot control.
The term Fundamental attribution error first appeared in 1977 in the paper The Intuitive Psychologist and his Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process, by Lee Ross, professor at Stanford. The paper concerns the Attribution theory, which he describes as “the attempts of ordinary people to understand the causes and implications of the events they witness” (Ross, 1977: 174). It has to do with the way people interpret their own actions and other people’s actions. Ross coined the term a few years after a popular experiment by Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris. Initially, they “hypothesized that people would attribute apparently freely-chosen behaviors to disposition (personality), and apparently chance-directed behaviors to a situation” (McLeod, 2018), but the result of the experiment overthrew it completely.
The experiment consisted of making people read essays pro- and against Fidel Castro. They were asked to read the writers’ behaviours, and they were divided into two groups: the first was told that the writers had the freedom to write for or against Castro, while the second group was told that the writers were not free to choose. The initial hypothesis was confuted because people still believed that the writers’ behaviour towards Castro was somehow personal, even when they did not choose what to write. The result of the experiment showed that people underestimate external factors, such as the possibility or impossibility of choosing the position in an essay and believe that behaviours are caused entirely by internal factors.
After analysing this and other experiments, Ross concluded that, despite the impact of the situation on a person’s behaviour, people, including scholars and psychologists, are more likely to associate it with a person’s disposition. In order to have a better understanding of FAE, here are some examples of how FAE happens. First scenario: We have an appointment with a friend and this friend shows up late. FAE will make us immediately think that they were late because they are lazy, or unorganized, or have other personal flaws. We may not consider that they are late because of other factors, such as traffic or other complications. Secondo scenario: we meet somebody, and they act rude or distant. FAE will make us think that they are not nice people. However, we might not think that person is acting rude or distant because something is worrying them, or something happened to them.
Although theoretically everyone thinks that people behave according to the situation too, in practice we are still letting FAE influence our opinions. Why? FAE can occur for different reasons:
- Saving up cognitive resources: sometimes our brain uses shortcuts (heuristics) to make quick decisions and waste less mental energy. But these shortcuts can leas us to fast and wrong judgement, as they are fast and do not consider all the factors.
- Mood: the experiments that followed Jones and Harris’ footprints showed that people are more likely to commit FAE when they are in a good mood. In fact, “it seems like being in a bad mood can make us more vigilant and systematic in our processing, which helps us to pay closer attention and retain more information” (The Decision Lab). On the other hand, when we feel happy, we might overlook some details of the situation or person; in fact, “being in a good mood might make us process our environment in a more careless way, making us more susceptible to taking shortcuts” (The Decision Lab).
- Purposely ignoring things: at times when judging something, we might decide to ignore a factor on purpose, even when we have available cognitive resources. Why? Because “we believe that a behavior is highly diagnostic (i.e. indicative) of a specific personality trait” (The Decision Lab). For example, when somebody does something considered immoral, such as stealing, we immediately associate immoral traits with their personality. We fail to consider that there might be external factors that led them to that behaviour. For example, difficult life conditions may lead people to steal.
In conclusion, FAE is something that happens without us noticing. It is very difficult to control some cognitive processes and many times, we may not be able to avoid it. However, we can do little things to reduce the chances of FAE occurring. We can remember to put empathy into play when we judge people and try to imagine how we would act in their place. Most of the times we will find out that we would not like to be judged in that situation and this will prevent FAE from happening.
Francesca Cuomo
References:
Ross L. (1977), The Intuitive Psychologist and his Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
Healy P. (2017), Harvard Business School Online, THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR: WHAT IT IS & HOW TO AVOID IT, https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution-error#:~:text=The%20fundamental%20attribution%20error%20refers,factors%20outside%20of%20their%20control (last access 30/06/2022).
McLeod S, (2018), Simply Psychology, Fundamental Attribution Error, https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html (last access 28/06/2022).
American Psychological Association, Fundamental Attribution Error https://dictionary.apa.org/fundamental-attribution-error (last access 28/06/2022).
The Decision Lab, Why do we underestimate the influence of the situation on people’s behavior? https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/fundamental-attribution-error (last access 30/06/2022).
