Actor-observer bias
Actor-observer bias is a concept in social psychology that describes the tendency for individuals to attribute their own actions to situational factors, while attributing the actions of others to their inherent personality traits. For instance, when someone is late to work, they might excuse themselves by citing being overworked, but may judge a colleague’s tardiness as a sign of laziness. This bias stems from a deeper understanding individuals have of their own circumstances compared to the limited insight they have into others' situations. The phenomenon relates to attribution theory, which distinguishes between internal attributions (linking behavior to personal traits) and external attributions (linking behavior to situational factors).
The theory was notably advanced by psychologists Edward Ellsworth Jones and Richard E. Nisbett in their 1971 work, which illustrated how people often default to internal explanations for others' behaviors while favoring external ones for their own. Research has shown that this bias is not only prevalent in casual observations but also in more structured assessments, highlighting how individuals interpret social interactions differently based on their roles as actors or observers. While the actor-observer bias provides insight into human behavior, some researchers argue that its applicability may vary across different contexts and cultures.
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Actor-observer bias
Actor-observer bias is a theoretical behavioral model in social psychology. According to the theory, people have a tendency to explain or understand their own actions within the context of situational circumstances, while explaining or understanding the actions of others within the context of inherent personality traits. For example, take the case of an individual and one of his or her colleagues in a professional setting, and assume that both of them are behind schedule on an important project. The individual, as the "actor," might attribute his or her personal situation to being tired or overworked but attribute his or her colleague's situation as an "observer" to laziness or ineptitude. Psychologists believe that actor-observer bias happens because people have a strong understanding of their own situational circumstances and internal states, but they have no inherent understanding of the situational circumstances and internal states of others. The phenomenon is related to another aspect of psychology known as attribution theory.
Background
Actor-observer bias is rooted in the work of Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider, whose research belongs to a branch of psychology known as the Gestalt school. The Gestalt school of psychology holds that people tend to try to organize information and ideas into patterns or synthesized wholes. The term comes from the German word gestalten, which means "configuration." Heider's 1958 work The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations is regarded as the origin of attribution theory as a specific psychological concept. Heider synthesized the theory by drawing on the past work of psychological researchers, from which he developed two central concepts: internal attribution and external attribution.
According to Heider, internal attribution is the psychological process through which people explain behavior by designating its causes to inherent, internal attributes rather than the possible action of outside influences. External attribution is the psychological process through which people explain behavior by designating its causes to outside influences beyond the control of the individual rather than the possible action of internal influences.
Later researchers built on Heider's original attribution theory, leading to the development of the covariation model. Forwarded by the American social psychologist Harold Kelley in 1967, the covariation model created a system for determining whether actions or behaviors should be attributed to internal or external influences. Kelley identified three distinct types of information that can be used to judge the causes of actions and behaviors: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. Consensus occurs when a person displays the same behaviors as another individual when they are both in similar situations. Distinctiveness occurs when an individual behaves in specific ways in certain situations. Consistency describes situations in which a person behaves the same way every time he or she is in the same situation. Consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency can be evaluated as high or low. In evaluating each of these three factors, it is possible to identify causes for specific behaviors and therefore judge whether they arise mainly from internal or external influences.
Overview
With the covariation model emerging as an influential theory in social psychology, American researchers Edward Ellsworth Jones and Richard E. Nisbett collaborated to write and publish "The Actor and the Observer: Divergent Perceptions of the Causes of Behavior" in 1971. The paper forwards their theory of the actor-observer bias, drawing on well-known events and research findings to propose that people have a tendency to explain their own actions via situational influences and the actions of others through internal influences.
In the paper, Jones and Nisbett cite several studies in the field of behavioral and social psychology. One such study, conducted in 1970, gave subjects simple, one-sentence descriptions of actions and asked the subjects to explain why these actions might have taken place. An example of one of the test actions is "George translates the sentence incorrectly." Subjects were then given three initial choices to explain the action, the first of which attributed the action to some aspect of the person, the second of which attributed the action to some aspect of the stimulus, and the third of which attributed the action to some aspect of the situation. For example, the three default explanations for "George translates the sentence incorrectly" included "something about George caused him to translate the sentence incorrectly" (aspect of the person), "something about the sentence caused George to translate it incorrectly" (aspect of the stimulus), and "something about the personal circumstances caused George to translate the sentence incorrectly" (aspect of the situation). If none of these three explanations seemed likely to the test subject, the subject was permitted to offer another explanation. Researchers found that alternate explanations were only offered in 4 percent of cases, while subjects chose the "aspect of the person" explanation 44 percent of the time, which was the most frequent of any of the three default explanations. The researchers concluded that when acting as observers, people default to internal, personal characteristics to explain the actions of others.
Another study cited by the paper asked college students to explain why they chose their particular majors and what they liked most about the person they are dating. It then asked the subjects the same questions with regard to their best friends' choices. The answers to these questions were grouped into two broad categories: stimulus attributions, which explained the choices by referring to situational circumstances, and person attributions, which explained the choices by referring to inherent personality traits. The survey found that subjects were far more likely to use stimulus attributions to explain their own choice of majors and dating partners than they were to explain their best friends' choice of majors and dating partners. Person attributions appeared far more frequently in subject explanations of the choices of their best friends.
Later studies have retested Jones and Nisbett's theory and attempted to explain from where the bias originates. One such theory suggests that it has subconscious origins in the involuntary tendency of people to analyze the actions of others less than they analyze their own. However, other researchers have challenged the assumptions behind Jones and Nisbett's original theory, positing that its initial formulation is limited and that the theory itself is not universally applicable.
Bibliography
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