Question

1-Explain why fundamental attribution error occurs giving four factors and provide an example of this phenomenon that might occur in daily life

Four factors are

1- language

2- cultural

3- motivational

4- percetual

2- what is the difference between the fundamental attribution error and the self serving bias ?

Answer 1

1. Four factors are

1- language: language adds a barrier to the way a person communicates, and this forms as one of the major reasons of fundamental attribution errors. Unless, one person is not able to communicate their words to the other in the most correct manner, there might be misunderstandings and these misunderstandings cause errors in attributions.

2- cultural: cultural differences may result in attribution errors. People, coming from western cultures, are thought to be more prone to errors as opposed to people from the collectivist cultures. Whereas, individualists may be concentrating on other aspects.

3- motivational: a person who is already low on motivation, tends to perceive everything in a negative manner, any statement made against them, is taken up as being negative and overly emphasised in negativity, though, the person talking to them might not really mean to say anything of that sort.

4- perceptual: perception of a person is one of the biggest reasons of attributional errors. For example, someone might just ask us to not talk for a day or two. Without asking them, we might start thinking that they are just trying to avoid us, whereas, in reality, they might actually just going out of the town.

2- what is the difference between the fundamental attribution error and the self serving bias ?

Fundamental attributional errors are defined as the problems in the interpretation of a person in contrast to the claim that is already being made. This may be as a result of external factors that impact what is the interpretation of the communicated situation.

Self serving bias is a perception or cognition problem, where there might be distortion’s in the maintainencd of self esteem as well as enhancement of self esteem of the person, where a person tends to think of themselves in a highly favourable manner.