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Fundamental Error Of Attribution

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  • 27-11-2010 11:22pm
    #1
    SparkyTech
    Closed Accounts Posts: 590 ✭✭✭


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

    I remember studying this as part of a psych module last year and it strikes me how much of relevance it still has in human nature today.

    For EG, I clean offices to help fund my way through college and better myself by obtaining a degree and having the carearr I want to achieve. Despite this, I have been looked down, ignored and scored upon several times by (professional white collar) adults who see my job as menial rather then a means to an end. I even overheard a water cooler conversation about me being ''the dirty, unclean cleaner and having no other aspirations then to scrub toilets''. This despite the fact they have little to go on given they hardly know me.

    I think its very apparant in this downturn that anyone who is a banker or politician is attributed with these negative connotations. Are human beings inherently disposed to the Fundamental Attribution Error? Or is it a product of society as a large collective group?


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    #2
    p.pete
    Registered Users Posts: 4,267 ✭✭✭p.pete


    It's a combination of things. We have heuristics (cognitive shortcuts), which are time saving devices in our reasoning. These heuristics mean we make quick assumptions all the time without analysing things fully - they mean we get some things wrong but we don't every waking moment analysing absolutely everything about an infinitely complex world around us, and we get a lot of things right too.

    And there's social group reasons. We see ourselves as belonging to some groups and not to others, and that changes how we deal with people from within or outside these groups. We'll want to act in ways that are consistent with our group, and enhance our identity with the group. If your group is weak, or threatened you may want to act differently to if your group is strong and settled. Also we act differently as central members of groups as oppossed to fringe members (who perhaps could easily be mistaken as being associated with a different group, so perhaps have to increase their actions to make it clearer which group they are on).

    There is several different theories about things going on at different levels, I can't remember most of them!


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    #3
    kitkat.3b4t
    Registered Users Posts: 154 ✭✭kitkat.3b4t


    p.pete wrote: »
    There is several different theories about things going on at different levels, I can't remember most of them!

    Isn't what you're talking about Tajfel and Turner's Social Identity Theory. I thought missattribution theory referred to when you attribute sucesses to internal causes, eg being clever, talented etc. and attributed failure to outside causes eg. always blame someone else, the weather, your mother etc.


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