We at PsychLaw.net teach that Attribution theory examines how we seek to explain people’s behavior[1]. We typically attribute the causes of behavior to internal events (the person’s personality) or external events (the situation in which people find themselves). When explaining their own behavior ‑ or the behavior of someone with whom they identify sympathetically people usually invoke considerations of external events. When assessing the behavior of others however, people characteristically rely on internal events. Asked why Americans defected to the Soviet Union, for example, 80% of a sample of American college students explained the defections on the basis of internal events or personality factors. The students described the defectors’ personalities as “confused, ungrateful, or traitorous.” When asked why Russians defected to the U.S., however, 90% of the students attributed those defections to the oppressive conditions of the Soviet Union[2]. Continue reading “Attribution Bias”
Month: August 2018
Anchoring Biases of Mental Health Professionals
Mental health professionals typically reach judgmental conclusions very early in their interviews; and then, they cling to those impressions even when confronted with contrary evidence. At PsychLaw.net we consider, for example, a 1964 experiment done by Jerome Bruner at Harvard University[1]. In this experiment, one group of participants (the control group) viewed slightly blurred slides. Nevertheless, the control group participants could identify the objects on the slides with a relatively high degree of accuracy. For the other group of participants (the experimental group), the slides were initially so blurry, subjects could not accurately identify the objects. The experimental group then saw the slides again at a level of clarity equal to what the subjects in the control group saw. At equal levels of clarity, the experimental participants committed a significantly greater number of identification errors compared to the control group. Why did the experimental group commit this greater frequency of errors? Continue reading