1. This person is homeless because he is lazy and doesn't want to work. He must be an alcoholic and a drug user.
2. This person has fallen victim to a string of bad luck. At one point he probably had a house, a car, and a job, but then something happened that made him lose it all. Maybe his wife was diagnosed with a terminal condition, he stayed home to care for her, so he lost his job and ran out of money paying for her medical expenses.
Whose Fault is it Anyway?
Blaming the Person vs. the Situation
What do you notice about the two scenarios other than that they are drastically different from one another? You probably noticed that the first scenario places much of the blame on the individual. This person is homeless because of his personal character and the conscious choices that he made. In contrast, the second scenario focuses on situational factors that contributed to his current circumstances. He did not choose to be homeless, nor is he a bad person. His homelessness was merely an outcome of events that he had no control over. He did not want his wife to get sick, nor did he ask to lose his job.The two scenarios illustrate two different ways we can explain a person's behavior. As in scenario 1, we can attribute someone's behavior to something internal to the person, such as their personality or their choices. Or, as in scenario 2, we can attribute someone's behavior to something external to the person, such as the situation leading up to the behavior in question. Which type of attribution do you think is more commonly made? An equally important question for you is which type of attribution do you think is more likely to be accurate?
Please answer in the form of a question.
It turns out that people almost always make internal attributions about the behavior of others, and that internal attributions are almost always wrong. The mistake is so common that it has been named the fundamental attribution error (FAE). In a nutshell, the FAE occurs when people mistakenly believe that a person's current behavior is a result of the person's personality, when it is really a result of the person's situation [1]. In other words, we routinely forget to consider the role of the situation in explaining people's behavior. One classic demonstration of the FAE involved judging people's intelligence [2]. Specifically, volunteers in a psychology experiment were randomly divided into 2 groups. As in the popular game show Jeopardy!, the first group (i.e., the "Questioners") was asked to compose a bunch of trivia questions, which the second group (i.e., the "Contestants") had to answer. After the Questioners asked the Contestants to answer the question, the experimenters asked each group to rate how knowledgable the Questioners and Contestants were. Just like in a real game show, the experimenters also had some other people watch the events unfold (i.e., the "Observers") and rate the knowledge of the people serving as Questioners and Contestants. Before looking at the graph, can you predict how knowledgable each group was rated?
Fig. 1: Results from the three groups when asked to rate the Questioner and the Contestant's general knowledgeability.
An interesting pattern of results emerged. The ratings that the Questioners gave to themselves and the Contestants (i.e., the left-most pair of bars) weren't very different, probably because they knew they were randomly chosen to compose the questions and read the answers. But look at the Contestants' ratings (i.e., the center pair of bars). Contestants rated the Questioner as more knowledgable than themselves. The same was true for those who were watching (i.e., the right-most pair of bars). They really thought the Questioners were smart!
This example illustrates just how fundamental the FAE really is: it is so easy to discount the role of situational circumstances that we often attribute our own behavior to internal rather than external causes. Why else would the Contestants think they were less knowledgable than the Questioners? It turns out that a person has to be highly motivated, and prompted to think very carefully, to avoid falling prey to the FAE.
The STEM Connection
What does this have to do with education? Just knowing about the FAE can make us more empathic towards others, as we are less likely to assume the worst when someone behaves in a less-than-desirable way. In the classroom, knowing about the FAE can make teachers more empathic towards their students. Why is Johnny tired all the time? It could be that he is lazy, or that he values video games over sleep. Because these explanations largely focus on Johnny's character, that would be a internal attribution. Alternatively, maybe Johnny's parents start fighting after he goes to bed, and he can't sleep because he is overly stressed. Believing that Johnny's exhaustion is attributed to his home life would be an external attribution.Probably the most important external/internal attribution dilemma in school is about a student's intelligence (or, colloquially, her "IQ"). Is Sally smart or not? If the teacher makes an internal attribution, then being smart is part of Sally's genetic makeup. If the teacher makes an external attribution, then it might sound something like this: Sally is new to fractions. She might not understand them yet, but she will pick it up with my on-going assistance. It is important to recognize which types of IQ attributions we are making, especially when we consider the impact of the Growth Mindset.
The next time you find yourself harshly evaluating another human being, stop and ask yourself: Is this person like this because that's who they are? Or is it because of the situation, which may or may not be under her control? Thinking about the circumstances that might be driving a person's behavior can make a huge difference in how you react to the person. It is almost always more productive to address issues in the environment that can negatively influence behavior than it is to attribute undesirable person to an immutable characteristic of the person.
Share and Enjoy!
Dr. Bob
For More Information
[1] I realize I am encroaching on the field of Social Psychology, which isn't exactly my area of expertise. But I live with a Social Psychologist, and she gave me some extremely useful feedback (thanks, Leslie!).[2] This task was originally used in Ross, L. D., Amabile, T. M., & Steinmetz, J. L. (1977). Social roles, social control, and biases in social-perception processes. Journal of personality and social psychology, 35(7), 485.
