Actor-Observer Biases Of A Rude Person

While figuring out what causes people to behave in the way that they do, we cannot forget the biases that may come along with it. We tend to make snap judgements of people, as the book says we have a “gut feeling.” However, going by these “gut feelings” we tend to choose one attribution over the other and they usually are not very nice attributions. For example, in class when asked to list reasons a person may be rude to you on the road, most of the reasons we came up with were that the person was an asshole or they were annoyed or what not. We tend to blame the person and not the situation. This is part of the Fundamental attribution error. While when talking about other people we often call them annoying or impatient. However, when
we are talking about yourself in the same situation we blame it on the situation. Instead, of us being impatient we are late and instead of us being an asshole and cutting someone off, it was the only place we could fit in. We tend to make ourselves sound like a better person. We do not think that they may be in a rush or it was the only place they could fit in; we do not give them the benefit of the doubt. I know I am equally guilty of using the fundamental attribution error when there is a rude driver. I tend to blame the person and not the situation. I definitely think the person is rude due to an internal attribution. We use Fundamental Attribution error usually when talking about others. Actor-observer bias is very similar to this but is used when describing oneself.
With Actor-observer bias, we tend to make internal attributions about yourself (the actor). For example, we would defend yourself by arguing that I am not a rude person but the situation I am in is making me a rude person. Similar to self- serving bias it makes us feel better about ourself thinking that we wouldn’t purposefully mean to others. However this is true, we are the actor in that situation. When someone is observing us, they may see a rude person that cut you off because it was fun and wanted to speciffially piss you off. They see a dispositional trait of why you were mean. The two people in the actor- observer see things much differently.
-------
Another attribution bias is the self-serving bias.
This is a huge bias that you may not even realize you are doing. With Self-serving bias you contribute your successes to how smart you are or the amount of work you put it. It also states that you are more likely to blame your failures on other people, an unfair test, the room was too cold and the like. They usually blame external things that they cannot control. We use the self-serving bias to protect us and make us feel better about ourselves. There are many times that now when I look back I realize it I have a self-serving bias. I remember a time when I was with a group presenting for my final thesis in high school, we had to make a power point to present. I had done all my slides but my partners did not completely finish their slides. We did not get the best grade and I blamed everyone else. I thought that they were the reason for the failure. I realize now that I probably should have met with them and made sure everything was complete; the grade was equally my fault as it was theirs. I was definitely using an situational attribution to define the problem. I was not thinking how I could have changed it and any internal reasons we may have not gotten the best
score. When dealing with other people and groups of people we often separate them in to intergroup attributions. This is when we place people into them and us. The in-group and the outsiders. It is not always a bad thing like popular and geeky; it can be something as simple as man and woman. This type of separation we usually think about in high school. You always hear about the general groups in high school such as band geek, cheerleaders, jocks, and nerds but they actually go much further than this. Self-Serving bias doesn’t just have to be applied to a single person but it can also be applied to a group. For example, a theater group just put on their very first play for the new year. They were being critiqued and it was going to be published to the towns newspaper. They would contribute the success of the show to their acting but, if they do not succeed it is because the stage crew messed something up or the audience was stupid. As a group they would use the self- serving bias in order to protect themselves and make them feel better if they were to get a bad review.