Attributional biases are Cognitive bias is any of a wide range of observer effects identified in cognitive science, including very basic statistical and memory errors that are common to all human beings (first identified by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman) and drastically skew the reliability of anecdotal and legal evidence. They also significantly... cognitive biases which affect In copyright law, attribution is the requirement that an author be given credit for their work in any context in which it is used. It is required by most copyright and copyleft licenses, such as GNUFDL and CC-by. Attribution is often considered the most basic of requirements made by... attribution -- the way we determine who or what was responsible for an event or action.

Such biases typically rely on actor/observer differences, which is the way people involved in an action and those outside of it view things differently.

Often they are caused by asymmetry in The availability heuristic is an oversimplified rule of thumb, or heuristic, which occurs when people estimate the probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome is to imagine. As such, vividly described, emotionally-charged possibilities will be perceived as being more likely than those that are harder to... availability (frequently called "salience" in this context). The behavior of actors is easier to remember than the background settings; or, our own inner turmoil is more available to ourselves than it is to others. As a result, our judgments of attribution are often distorted along those lines.

In some experiments, for example, subjects were shown only one side of a conversation or were able to see one of the faces of the conversational participants. Whomever the subjects had a better view of were judged by them as being more important, influential, and having a greater role in the conversation.

Interestingly, there is some evidence that more intelligent and socially apt people are more likely to make errors in attribution.

The most well-known and representative example of an attributional bias is the In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (sometimes referred to as the actor-observer bias) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. In other words... fundamental attribution error.

Attributional biases include:

• Egocentric bias occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would. Besides simply claiming credit for positive outcomes, which might simply be self-serving bias, people exhibiting egocentric bias also cite themselves as overly responsible for negative outcomes of... egocentric bias
• The false consensus effect refers to the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. People readily guess their own opinions, beliefs and predilections as being more prevalent in the general public than they really are. The bias is commonly present in a group setting... false consensus effect
• In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (sometimes referred to as the actor-observer bias) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. In other words... fundamental attribution error
• The group attribution error is a group-serving, attributional bias identical to the fundamental attribution error except that it occurs between members of different groups rather than different individuals. Group members are more likely to attribute a fellow group members actions to their arbitrary circumstances, while attributing a non... group attribution error
• Group-serving bias is identical to self-serving bias except that it takes place between groups rather than individuals, under which group members make dispositional attributions for their groups successes and situational attributions for group failures, and vice versa for outsider groups. For instance, the fundamental attribution error is... group-serving bias
• The negativity effect is an attributional bias that occurs when subjects are asked what they think caused actions of other people whom they dislike. Under these conditions, the positivity effect is reversed and people rate the positive behavior of those they dislike to the situation and their negative behavior to... negativity effect
• The positivity effect refers to the tendency for people to attribute the positive behavior of other people whom they like to their disposition, while attributing negative behavior to their situation. It is thus an attributional bias. The opposite effect is called the negativity effect in which the opposite bias in... positivity effect
• There are two cognitive biases which might be called the positive outcome bias: Publication bias -- the tendency for researchers to publish research which had a positive outcome. Positive in this sense means eventful as opposed to uneventful. Positive outcome bias (prediction) -- a bias in prediction in which people overestimate the... positive outcome bias
• Self-serving bias occurs when people are more likely to claim responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests. Dale Miller and Micheal Ross first suggested this attributional bias. For instance, a... self-serving bias
• Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. This may be because our own internal states are much more observable and available to... trait ascription bias

See also: Attribution theory is a field of social psychology, which was born out of the theoritical models of Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. Attribution theory is concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behavior of others. It explores how individuals attribute causes... attribution theory, The fallacy of the single cause, also known as joint effect or causal oversimplification, is a logical fallacy of causation that occurs when it is assumed that there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient... causal oversimplification, This article is about causality as it is used in many different fields. For its use specifically in physics, see Causality (physics) The philosophical concept of Causality or Causation refers to the set of all particular causal or cause-and-effect relations. The Differentia (distinguishing properties/characteristics) of Causality which... causality, Cognitive bias is distortion in the way we perceive reality (see also cognitive distortion). Some of these have been verified empirically in the field of psychology, others are considered general categories of bias. anchoring anthropic bias attribution, attributional bias Barnum effect base rate neglect behavioral confirmation belief perseverance bias blind... list of cognitive biases

References

• Block, J., & Funder, D. C. (1986). Social roles and social perception: Individual differences in attribution and "error." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1200-1207.

External links

• Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: Biases in Perception of Cause and Effect (http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19104/art14.html)