Interactive Psychology People in Perspective

To review the feedback for the incorrect answer choices after you’ve answered this question correctly, refresh this page on your browser. The question will still be marked as complete after you’ve refreshed the page. people's behavior is a direct reflection of who they are (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Jones & Davis, 1965), a tendency called the fundamental attribution error (Jones & Harris, 1967; Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977). For example, say you have just boarded a plane, and you overhear a woman you can't see, but you can hear her insisting to the flight crew that she be moved from her aisle seat to a window seat. How would you perceive her and her request for special treatment? Would you simply assume she's being selfish and unreasonable, holding up the flight? Although your first reaction might be to attribute her request to an internal sense of entitlement and rudeness, consider the possible external factors that might be causing her behavior. Perhaps this woman has a disability that makes it difficult for her to move out of the way of other passengers in her row when they wish to get up. You might eventually realize that there are legitimate facts about the situation, including the passenger's reluctance to inconvenience other people, that explain her insistence on being moved. This example highlights that people can override the fundamental attribution error when they stop to consider things external to the person that might be affecting her behavior. The trouble is, people must be motivated and have the cognitive resources to spend the time and effort doing this mental work (Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988). Although social psychologists originally believed that the fundamental attribution error is the universal default attribution, cross-cultural research has revealed some interest patterns of variation. People raised in collectivistic cultures, where group harmony is valued over individual agency, are more sensitive to situational constraints. They are more likely to think about how individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of the environment, including other people's expectations. When people from collectivistic cultures make attributions for other people's behavior, they tend to provide a more situational account of what caused the actions. A person can override this tendency, too, by making an effort to consider the other person's internal traits and dispositions (Choi & Nisbett, 1998; Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999; Miller, 1984; Morris & Peng, 1994). Although we often rely on our default shortcuts to explain people's behavior, we are more likely to engage in effortful attributions when another person's actions are very surprising or negative. For example, extreme and unusual events, like the school shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018, can inspire efforts to sort out exactly why the shooter engaged in such a horrific act (FIGURE 15.7). When we conclude that a person's actions are unique to them and would be actions they might repeat in that same situation and in other contexts, we assume something internal to the actor best explains the behavior (Kelley, 1973). FIGURE 15.7 Motives for Murder In February 2018, a gunman brutally murdered 17 students and teachers in his former high. school, leaving a Florida community to ask why he had planned out and committed this terrible mass murder.