Topic 4.1 Attribution Theory and Person Perception: explain attribution theory, the dispositional and situational attributions, the fundamental attribution error, self-serving and actor-observer biases, and person-perception effects such as the mere exposure effect.

What this topic is asking

Topic 4.1 opens social psychology with how we explain behavior. The College Board wants attribution theory, the dispositional versus situational distinction, the fundamental attribution error, the actor-observer and self-serving biases, explanatory style, and person-perception effects: the mere exposure effect, the self-fulfilling prophecy, and social comparison.

Attribution theory

The attribution biases

These biases reliably distort social judgment and are favorite exam scenarios. Explanatory style describes a person's habitual pattern of attributions: an optimistic style attributes good events internally and bad events externally and temporarily, while a pessimistic style does the reverse.

Person perception

How we form impressions of others is shaped by several effects:

• Mere exposure effect: repeated exposure to a stimulus (or person) increases liking for it. Familiarity breeds comfort.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: an expectation about someone leads us to act in ways that elicit the very behavior we expected, confirming the belief.
• Social comparison: we evaluate ourselves by comparing to others (upward comparison to those better off, downward to those worse off). Relative deprivation is the sense of being worse off relative to those we compare with.

The unifying theme is that social perception is systematically biased rather than objective. We are not neutral observers of other people; we lean on disposition when situation would be fairer, we flatter ourselves, and we let familiarity and expectation color our impressions. The exam tests this by giving a scene and asking which bias or effect is at work, so the skill is to read whose behavior is being explained (mine or someone else's), the direction of the explanation (internal or external), and whether liking or expectation is involved. A driver blaming another driver's character is the fundamental attribution error; a student crediting their own A to ability but their F to a hard test is the self-serving bias; growing to like a song after hearing it repeatedly is mere exposure.

Try this

Q1. Define the fundamental attribution error and give an example. [2 points]

• Cue. Overestimating disposition and underestimating the situation when judging others; for example, calling a late coworker lazy while ignoring a traffic jam.

Q2. Explain the self-serving bias. [1 point]

• Cue. Attributing our successes to internal factors (ability) and our failures to external factors (circumstances).