When we make judgements about the cause of an event, this is known and making an attribution. Attributions can be dispositional or situational in nature. Dispositional, or internal, attribution is making a judgement based on the disposition or the individual that the event happened to. Situational, or external, attribution is when it is not the individual that is the cause, but the situation outside of their control or another person. The same event can be seen differently between two people based on the observer's attributional tendency.
It is interesting to note that things like self-serving bias and defensive attribution can make inferences about their own behaviors that can be incorrect. Both of these serve as a way to preserve the view of oneself or the world around them. There is an example of defensive attribution of blaming a burglary victim for being careless with their house as a way to maintain the belief that the world is just. Self-serving bias does exactly that - it makes the individual feel better. They are the reason for their successes and others are responsible for their failures.
With these attributions based on inferences and not fact, it can lead to plenty of misunderstandings. There is an old adage about walking a mile in someone's shoes before judging their actions. I think this applies to the idea of attributions. If nothing else, it is a good reminder to pause and fully look at the different factors in a situation. Realize there might be things that you cannot see.
There is another bias in these attribution tendencies called actor-observer bias. To explain, I will use an event that just happened in my own life.
My daughter has sensory processing challenges. They are not super severe, but she can have explosive outbursts if she is under stress and has too much sensory input going on. This happened at the park recently. She had a doctor's appointment earlier in the day and then had to complete a difficult math assignment. Either one of those things on their own would be enough to put her in a stressful place. So after she was done with her school work, I took her and her brother to the park. Swings and slides in the sunshine usually does the trick to calm her mind. We go to a small neighborhood park to avoid crowds, but this day there were three families there and they all had large dogs. The dogs were barking and playing. To anyone else, this would seem like a picture perfect park time, but for me it was one more red flag that my daughter was taking in a lot of outside stressors. Then, my son cut his finger. It wasn't an emergency, but it was bad enough that it required more than just a bandaid and we needed to leave the park less than 10 minutes after we arrived. When I told my daughter we had to leave, she began screaming "No," and throwing sand toys. A parent at the park had the response, "Wow. You need to teach her to listen. She's too old to be throwing fits like that."
This park parent plays the role of of observer in the actor-observer bias. The park parent only saw a limited view of the situation. They placed the judgment as internal that my daughter had poor manners and didn't listen. My daughter, the actor in this situation, saw that she was trying to calm herself and all of the external factors we causing an emotional breakdown. Her issue was not about leaving the park, it was about not feeling in control of her internal world.
While I am used to these types of judgments, they serve as a reminder to me that I need to think when I place attributions on things and remember that my limited view or my biases might make my view incorrect. BYUI professor, John Ivers, gave a lecture discussing these attributional tendencies. I will leave his challenge and statement last.
"And so always, kind of, question your attributions and think, "Are these cultural attributions reasonable, rational? Reasonable? Logical? Or should I judge things by circumstances?" Sometimes life will just mess you up, sometimes other people will mess you up. Sometimes it's not your fault, sometimes it is your fault. But each circumstance is different. Life is not black and white, it's very, very complex. "
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