Demo-A-Concept Blog: The One About My Friend, Driving, and The Actor-Observer Effect

Most people would like to think they are mindful and unbiased when regarding other people and situations. Unfortunately, we commonly fall prey to biases, especially when we are stressed or tired, because they make processing and interpreting the information around us easier. The biggest and most pervasive of the biases is the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is the tendency to focus on personal attributes rather than situational attributes when explaining a behavior (Ross, 1977).

The classic (and first) experiment that looked into this phenomenon was one in which participants read a student’s essay, and then were told that the student was either assigned the position they took in the essay or they freely chose it (Jones & Harris, 1967). Overall, the participants were more likely to infer the student’s true attitude when they were told the position had been freely chosen than if it had been assigned. But the participants were still likely to infer, though not as greatly, the student’s true attitude even if they knew the position had been assigned. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in many other studies, but the concept I am aiming to demonstrate in this blog is more of a subset of the FAE, the Actor-Observer Effect.

The Actor-Observer Effect is the tendency people have to explain their own behavior using situational attributes, but use personal attributes to explain others’ behavior (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Watson, 1982). An example of this is, when asked to explain why inmates committed their crimes, prison counselors spoke of stable personal characteristics, while the prison inmates talked about unique situational factors (Saulnier & Perlman, 1981).

In my video I first ask a friend about a situation in which someone cuts her off while driving, and how that would make/made her feel. She responds by saying she gets immediately angry and calls them names, and is frustrated. On the other hand, when asked about a situation in which she cuts someone off, she responds by talking about situational reasons for it, such as being in a rush or the person in front of her driving too slowly. None of these situational factors were mentioned when she was being cut off, instead only anger and naming calling was brought up, but when she was the one cutting people off, many possible reasons came up. This, of course, does not make my friend a bad or self-centered person, since we all fall prey to the Actor-Observer Effect from time to time.

But why do we fall prey to such things as the Fundamental Attribution Error and the Actor-Observer Effect? One theory is that social perception, or interpreting a situation, is a two part process (Gilbert & Malone, 1995). The first part includes identifying the behavior and making a quick personal attribution. The second part is an adjustment or correction in our assessment in order to account for situational factors. The first part is easy and always happens; the second part is harder to do and therefore doesn’t always occur. One explanation for why it’s so easy to attribute others’ behaviors to personal factors is that we have a perceptual bias that causes us to focus more on the actor than the situation as a whole, which causes the actor to become highly salient (Heider, 1958). Therefore, we attribute behaviors to what is salient to us, which in most cases is the person. Salience can also play a role in why the Actor-Observer Effect occurs. In other words, reasons for our own actions, such as situational factors, are highly salient to us, while reasons for other people’s behaviors might not be as known and therefore not as salient. For instance, when we cut people off we know exactly why we did it, which makes it easy for us to explain our behavior with situational attributes. But when someone else cuts us off, we have no idea why they did this or what situation they are in, so we fall back on what is easier, which is making personal attributes for the behavior.

Gilbert, D.T., & Malone, P.S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21-38.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.

Jones, E.E., & Harris, V.A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1-24.

Jones, E.E., & Nisbett, R.E. (1972). The actor and observer: Divergent perceptions of causality. In E.E. Jones, D.E. Kanouse, H.H. Kelley, R.E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp.79-94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 174-221). New York: Academic Press.

Saulnier, K., & Pearlman, D. (1981). The actor-observer bias is alive and well in prison: A sequel to Wells. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 7, 559-564.

Watson, D. (1982). The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent? Psychological Bulletin, 92, 682-700.