Practice question · Multiple choice
In Jones and Harris's study, readers judged an essay writer as genuinely pro-Castro even when told he had been assigned that position and given no choice. Why is knowing about the constraint not enough to prevent the error?
Hints
- The participants were told about the constraint. So the problem is not that they lacked information.
- Two steps: infer the disposition, then adjust for the situation. Which one is effortful?
Show the answer
C. Because dispositional inference is fast and correction is effortful.
Why
The correction fails despite the information being right there. Inference runs in two stages, dispositional characterisation is fast and automatic, adjusting for constraint is effortful and often skipped, which predicts that the error grows under time pressure. It also explains the actor-observer asymmetry: of someone else you have only the behaviour.
Practise Attribution Theory and the Fundamental Attribution Error
The app has 6 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Psychology I is free to start.
More questions on Attribution Theory and the Fundamental Attribution Error
- The same event - a colleague missing a deadline - is explained four ways. Put the explanations in order from…
- Each judgement below is biased. Identify which attribution bias it displays.
- Sort each explanation by the kind of cause it appeals to.
- Select every statement that is TRUE of the attribution biases as this lesson describes them.
- You explain your own lateness by the traffic and a colleague's by their disorganisation. Both were late. Why…