Situation and disposition's influence

Behavior is a product of both the situation (e.g., cultural influences, social roles, and the presence of bystanders) and of the person (e.g., personality characteristics). Subfields of psychology tend to focus on one influence or behavior over others. Situationism is the view that our behavior and actions are determined by our immediate environment and surroundings.

In contrast, dispositionism holds that our behavior is determined by internal factors. An internal factor is an attribute of a person and includes personality traits and temperament. Social psychologists have tended to take the situationist perspective, whereas personality psychologists have promoted the dispositionist perspective. Modern approaches to social psychology, however, take both the situation and the individual into account when studying human behavior.

Attributing behavior to persons or situations

Attributional processes

• In the United States, we tend to think that people are in control of their own behaviors, and, therefore, any behavior change must be due to something internal, such as their personality, habits, or temperament. According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people.

Fundamental attribution error

• We often assume that the behavior of another person, especially a person that we don’t personally know, is a trait of that person, and to disregard or underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. We tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution error, as we are erroneously attributing the (poor) behavior to what we think is a fundamental element of the person’s character.

Role of culture in attributions

• Do people in all cultures commit the fundamental attribution error? Research suggests that they do not. People from an individualistic culture, that is, a culture that focuses on individual achievement and autonomy, have the greatest tendency to commit the fundamental attribution error. Individualistic cultures, which tend to be found in western countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, promote a focus on the individual. Therefore, a person’s disposition is thought to be the primary explanation for their behavior. In contrast, people from a collectivistic culture, that is, a culture that focuses on communal relationships with others, such as family, friends, and community, are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error.

The actor-observer bias is the phenomenon of attributing other people’s behavior to internal factors (fundamental attribution error) while attributing our own behavior to situational forces. As actors of behavior, we have more information available to explain our own behavior. However as observers, we have less information available; therefore, we tend to default to a dispositionist perspective. For example, if we or a close friend or loved one cause a minor car accident, we are more likely to mention that we were tired or the sun was in our eyes or try to find fault with the traffic light pattern. When someone else causes the same type of accident, we are more likely to just consider them a bad driver or irresponsible.

How self-perceptions shape our perceptions of others

• We often project our own feelings onto others by imagining ourselves in their position and assuming they experience emotions similar to our own. We may even assume that their actions were motivated by those feelings we’ve imagined them to have based on how we would feel. For example, many people report higher trust in the accuracy of faculty reviews if they are given the information that reviews were provided after all student coursework was graded. If we ourselves would feel hesitant to be completely honest and provide negative information on an instructor who had not finished grading some of our course assignments because we’re worried our feedback could be matched back to our identity, we assume others feel the same way and may not give an accurate negative review. Being informed that all grades for the course were completed helps us imagine that we would be comfortable being honest, so these student reviewers probably felt they could be honest, as well, and we can trust that the neutral and positive reviews are genuine reflections of student experiences.

How perceptions of the environment shape our perceptions of others

• The way we perceive an environment can affect the way we perceive others and even change our judgments about them. For example, if we meet a student at a college football game and they are yelling out the school cheers and dancing along with the band with a beer in their hand, we may assume that they are a “party” student and take nothing seriously. It might be surprising to learn that they are a PhD student in Neuroscience and just won an NIH grant for a major project. That information wouldn’t surprise us if we had met the same student at a STEM graduate student mixer because the context would have likely prompted us to have different perceptions of the individual.