Errors of Attribution

1. What is the difference between dispositional factors and situational factors?

• Dispositional attribution is that you think that there is something wrong with person who did something wrong. It's his/her fault.
• Situational attribution is when you are finding the reasons why the person did it wrong, but it's not his/her fault.
• For example.: You are standing in a line to buy tickets for a movie, when someone pushes you and goes ahead. Dispositional Attribution: He is thoughtless, rude and uncivilized. Situational Attribution: He was pushed by someone else; he did not intend to cut the line

2. Explain and give an example of the fundamental error of attribution.

• The fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for behavior while under-valuing situational explanations. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain the behavior of others.
• For example, when a student fails to turn in a homework assignment, a teacher is too ready to assume that the student was too lazy to finish the homework, without sufficiently taking into account the situation that the student could have some trouble with something.

3. Explain and give an example of the self-serving-bias error of attribution.

• attributing dispositional and internal factor for success and external, uncontrollable factors for failure. 
• For Example: Chad wins a poetry competition but fails to get the poem published in a magazine he sent it to. He attributes his success in the competition to his talent. He attributes his failure to get it published to bad luck.

5. What does the study by Miyamoto and Kitayama tell us about cultural differences in attribution errors?

• People from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental-attribution error than people from collectivist cultures. Individualist cultures tend to attribute a person’s behavior to his internal factors whereas collectivist cultures tend to attribute a person’s behavior to his external factors.