Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173-220). Academic Press.
Summary
According to attribution theory, in experiencing an event, an ordinary person (am “intuitive psychologist”) will attempt to judge causality, form social inferences about the attributes of the relevant actors, and finally the person will predict. The Covariance Principle states that an observer attributes outcomes based on the presence of actors. The Discounting Principle says that a social observer will fail to attribute an outcome to an actor if there is “sufficient” situational explanation. These two principle drive the theory of fundamental attribution error, which describes a tendency for people to attribute successes to their own internal factors, while simultaneously attributing failures to external factors. People “underestimate the impact of situational factors” and “overestimate the role of dispositional factors in controlling [one’s own] behavior.” Bierbrauer (1973) showed that students assessing other students in Milgram’s compliance experiment assumed that their actions were the result of their dispositions as opposed to the strong situational factors. This underestimation of situation variables (called “channel factors”) is also apparent in the Darley (1973) Good Samaritan study. Some interpret the inability of personality factors to reliably predict behavior as a result of fundamental attribution bias.
Another trait of the “intuitive psychologist” is that of ”false consensus”, or the tendency to see themselves, their beliefs, and their actions as common (see p. 188 - p. 190 for experiments). Homophily, the tendency to like people similar to us, results in selective exposure to people like us. This results in a sampling bias that produces false consensus. Additionally, social roles are generally underweighted in social inference. For example, Ross’ (1977) randomly assigned “questioners” (participants tasked with generating questions from their own base of knowledge) were perceived as more knowledgeable than “contestants” (participants tasked with answering those questions), both by the participants themselves and observers. Though the contest was plainly unfair, the roles weren’t weighted adequately by all the parties involved. The author also cites dissertation “orals” (part of the comprehensive exams) as an example. Intuitive psychologists also underweight the importance of responses or events not occurring. The heuristics of availability, adjustment, and representativeness further negatively influence the judgment of the lay psychologist. People also weight vivid specifics higher than they do “the pallid abstract character of statistical baselines,” (perhaps this is explained by vividness affecting availability). First impressions are especially difficult to revise, even in the light of new knowledge (see experiment on p. 205). To overcome these biases, small evidence is not sufficient.
Application
The fundamental attribution error is widely applicable in business. Managers evaluating the underperformance of their employees might be inclined to make dispositional attributes, rather than recognizing the more powerful situational factors affecting performance. Similarly, managers evaluating their own successes are more likely to underestimate the situational factors leading to their own success.
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