Social Cognition: Judgment Biases and Attributional Biases
...kely attribute expressions of liking to internal causes than the observers. All four of the hypotheses were supported from the research. Although, the self-serving bias was proposed to predict attributions for the person who the behavior belongs to, it can also be used to predict the behavior of observers when the behaviors have personnel implications for the self. Floyde explains: When others’ behaviors carry implications for the self, then the self is motivated to formulate attributions that cast those implications in the most positive manner. When others’ behaviors carry no implications for the self then as the fundamental attribution error suggests, the self should be motivated to conserve cognitive energy and make a dispositional attribution (Floyd, 2000). Self-Serving attributions carry over into all aspects of life. One prime example of self-serving attributions is in sport spectators. Wann & Schrader (2000) examined whether high-identification fans and low-identification fans differ in attribution depending whether the identifying team wins or looses. The researchers discuss previous work done by Hastorf & Cantril (1954) that indicates that spectators will attribute their team’s losses to external causes, and wins to internal causes. Wann & Dolan (1994) found that when the spectators have strong psychological attachments to their team that the self-serving bias is most apparent (Wann & Schrader, 2000). Participants in Wann & Schrader’s study were asked to fill out a questionnaire after watching a basketball game. The questionnaire contained demographic information, the Sport Spectator Identification Scale, and questions measuring the participants’ attributions. The researchers had two main hypotheses. The first hypothesis stated that spectators with high-identification would be less likely to attribute their team’s loss to “controllable and stable causes” after a loss than they would after a win, and spectators with low-identification would be least likely to attribute either a win or a lose to internal causes. The second hypothesis stated that spectators with high-identification would be more likely to attribute their team’s lose to uncontrollable causes and win to controllable causes than spectators with low-identification. The results of the experiment showed that fans who high-identification were indeed more likely to attribute their team’s loses to external conditions and wins to internal conditions. When the teams of the high-identification spectators won the self-serving bias was more likely to be used than when the teams lost. Wann & Schrader speculate that since high-identification fans showed self-serving biases more after their team won than when they lost that the participants had greater interest in boosting their egos, than protecting them. High-identification spectators were also more likely to view the crowd as a causal force on whether their team won or lost (Wann & Schrader, 2000). Adults are not the only ones who are subject to attribution biases. Bernardo Guern (1999) cites research by Abramovitch & Freeedman (1981) that shows children also exemplify the attribution biases. Hewstone’s research (1989) on adults supported the idea that whether a behavior is seen as being caused by situational or dispositional conditions is dependent on whether the behavior is viewed as negative or positive, and what groups the person doing the behavior and the person attributing the behavior belong to. A behavior is more likely to be attributed to dispositional causes if it is a positive behavior belonging to someone in the in-group, or when it is a negative behavior performed be someone in the out-group. Situational attributions are more likely to be made when the negative behavior belongs to someone in the out-group, or when the negative behavior belongs to someone in the in-group (Guern, 1999). For example, a football player may attribute his teammate's fumble to the slippery grass, but the other team’s fumble to their lack of coordination. The idea of intergroup attribution has been heavily studied in adults, but little research has been conducted on children. Guern’s research on children’s intergroup attribution tests this idea in children (Guern, 1999). Guern studied thirty children from New Zealand on how they make attributions. Using someone the children liked and someone the children did not like he had them make attributions on both positive and negative behaviors. Positive behaviors by the friends and negative behaviors of those that the children did not like were considered dispositional by the children. When someone the children did not like performed a positive behavior or when someone the children did like performed a negative one the children considered the causes to be Situational. These results indicate that it is not only adults who exhibit intergourp biases (Guern, 1999). The attribution theory can be applied to people suffering symptoms of depression. While most people exhibit the self-serving bias clients who suffer from symptoms of depression often show patterns of attribution called self-defeating. A self-defeating attribution occurs when people attribute negative outcomes to internal conditions, and attribute positive outcomes to external conditions. This type of cognition results in the people feeling as if they have no control over what happens to them (Baron & Byrne, 2000). Wall and Hayes (2000) examined the attribution process of clients with depression. They were interested how clients with depression attribute causes and solutions of their problems. The results of the experiment found that clients without symptoms of depression do attribute their problems internally less then clients with symptoms of depression. Therefore, clients with symptoms of depression feel that they are responsible for their problems. It was also found that the level of depressive symptoms does not affect the client’s attribution for who is responsible for finding a solution (Wall & Hayes, 2000). Previously, Sweeny et. al (1986) found results that are inconsistent with those of Wall & Hayes (2000). Sweeny et. al (1986) found that clients who show signs of depression will think that positive outcomes are beyond their control, and that their efforts to solve these problems will be ineffective (Wall & Hayes, 2000). Attributions are an everyday part of life that greatly affect people’s social cognition. They can be helpful or hurtful depending on how people process them. Even the self-serving bias that at first glimpse may seem egotistical has a very important purpose. The self-serving bias allows people to boost their self-confidence, and feel as if they really do have at least some control over their own success. Self-defeating attributions clearly display what can happen when people feel that they are responsible for their problems, but not their solutions. The corresponding bias can also have a negative impact on society and cause people to judge the actions of others more harshly. Why people process social interactions in these ways is yet to be determined, and quite possibly never will be. People’s social interactions and social behaviors are greatly influenced by their decision making and reasoning skills. As important as these skills are to all people, many times these processes are flawed. One major source of errors in decision making and reasoning are judgment biases. Judgment biases are conclusions one forms about himself and others based on a tendency to perform in a certain way regardless of the information presented ( ). Thus, when employing reasoning or decision making skills, people may form erroneous conclusions based on these judgment biases. Reasoning is the process by which people evaluate and generate arguments and reach conclusions. Errors in reasoning often result from heuristics, which are mental shortcuts by which people reach conclusions. Rather than employ an algorithm, which is a systematic procedure that cannot fail to produce a solution, people instead employ heuristics to obtain the same outcome more quickly. People use heuristics because they are low effort and frequently work. However, heuristics can serve as a source for bias in cognitive processes, which in turn can lead to errors. As discussed by ________, the studies by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974, 1982) have described three heuristics that people seem to use instinctively in making judgments. One of the three heuristics is the anchoring heuristic. Use of the anchoring heuristic occurs when a person estimates the probability of an event by adjusting an earlier estimate. This beginning estimate biases the final estimate. “It is as if they drop a mental anchor at one hypothesis or estimate and then cannot move very far from that original judgment.” For example, the anchoring heuristic plays an important role in initial impressions. Once the initial impression is formed, it proves to be very difficult to change( ). A second type of judgment bias is the representativeness heuristic. This heuristic is a way of making judgments based on the extent to which current stimuli or events resemble other stimuli or categories. For example, the more similar an individual is to typical members of a given group, the more likely she or he is to belong to that group. In __________ descriptions of the study by Tversky and Kahneman, participants encountered a man who was orderly, small in build, wore glasses, spoke quietly, and seemed somewhat shy. When participants were asked whether this person was likely to be a librarian or a farmer, most chose librarian. Although the description of the man more closely resembles a prototypical librarian, chances are that this conclusion is false. Because there are more farmers than librarians, more farmers would match this description than librarians ( ). However, because of the representativeness heuristic, people tend to ignore the overall probabilities and focus instead on what is representative of the presented evidence. A third judgment bias described by Tversky and Kahneman is the availability heuristic which states that the easier certain information is brought to mind, the greater its importance or relevance to people’s judgments or decisions. The more information a person can bring to mind, the greater it impacts his or her judgment. The focus of this heuristic is the ease with which a person can bring information to mind and the amount of information one can bring to mind. For example, if someone were asked if more people were killed by fires or by drowning, most would respond with “fires.” However, this response would not be accurate. More people actually die from drowning than fires. Because fires receive more media attention and thus are more easily brought to mind, people tend to respond by saying that fires kill more people than drowning. Even though these heuristics tend to work well, they can also be a source of error in many situations ( ). Also, these three heuristics only represent a few of the types of judgment biases that can greatly affect people’s reasoning abilities. Decision making is the process by which a person chooses one alternative over another, choosing a course of action. Because there are many ways in which a person can choose to behave, there are often errors. Oftentimes, when people think they are making the right decision, the wrong outcome can occur. There are many judgment biases that can affect which course of action a person chooses. The first bias is people’s tendency to be unrealistically confident, or overconfident, in the accuracy of their predictions or responses. As discussed by _______, the experiments performed by Baruch Fischoff and Donald MacGregor (1982) studied this bias by asking participants whether they believed that a certain event would occur. For example, they asked if a certain sports team would win an event. They would also question participants about the level of their confidence about this prediction. After the event in question had occurred, the accuracy of the predictions was compared with the confidence each participant assigned to the prediction. It was found that people’s confidence in their predictions was consistently greater than their accuracy. One reason overconfidence leads to inaccurate decision making is because, even in the presence of objective information that will help a person to overcome other biases and errors of judgment, overconfidence will make a person weight his or her own intuitions more heavily ( ). New research in the field of judgment biases focuses on biases in which people perceive themselves as more charitable, fair, kind, considerate, and cooperative than others. Research by Nicholas Epley and David Dunning (2000) focuses on whether this tendency to believe one’s self as above-average is the result of overly cynical views of their peers and accurate perceptions of themselves or overestimations of themselves and accurate perceptions of others. This experiment consisted of four studies in which participants predicted their own behavior in a given situation...