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Explain 2 errors in attribution

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Explain 2 Errors in Attribution
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Attribution is the analysis individuals make when they perform a particular action to justify their behavior. The interpretation made by the person can either be dispositional or situational. When a dispositional attribute is created, it means an individual attribute that particular behavior to the traits of performs expressing that behavior. Also when we have a situational attribute, it means the individual attribute his/her behavior to external factors such as the environment (Hannibal 2012). Errors in attribution are the mistakes people make systematically when they are explaining the causes of action. Fundamental attribution and self-serving bias error are the two types of attribution errors, and this article will focus on analyzing these two errors.
According to Lau and Russel (1980), humans tend to make a self-serving mistake a mistake that allows an individual to receive credit for our wins, but when it comes to failures, we blame it on other people. Therefore this error of attribution is made every time an individual focuses on obtaining praise and recognition for the things well done but tend to express denial and rejection of his/her behavior when they achieve failure, and they tend to accuse external factors such as severe weather for the case of an athlete. Humans tend to take credit for success by explaining it with disposition I’m smart/I’ve studied instead of “simple test”/”soft marking.” However, they deny responsibility for failure by making situational attributions (We tend to “blame” the situation: “The teacher is bad”/”The test was too difficult” rather than “I didn’t study enough”/”I’m not smart enough.

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When it comes to the 2nd error of attribution, we have a fundamental mistake. This error is made when we accuse dispositional qualities such as low or high mood, belief in something and personality trait for the behavior made by other humans instead of attributing such behavior to attribute such as one role, unfavorable weather, and laws set (Hannibal, 2012). Mostly it occurs when a situational factor reveals itself.
To reveal the difference between these errors of attribution Lau and Russel (1980) decided to carry out a study on 107 journals which were printed in 1977. The content on these journals was the achievement of different soccer clubs in the nation. Each article contained attributions from players, the soccer coaches and from football fans on why a particular team won or lost a particular match. The comments made were either internal or external in that if a player or a coach of a specific team commented on the achievement of his team it was an internal comment and when a fan or a player of another team said on the achievement of another team it was an external comment.
The data obtained proved that humans are willing and eager to receive credit for success and are eager to recognize things such as being in good shape or being talented as the influence of that success. Nevertheless, when the same individual fails or conducts bad behavior, he/she will tend to blame it on dispositional or external factors such as being coached by an incompetent coach or being exposed to the unfavorable environment.
Even with this essential result and data on the differences between attribution errors that the study has both strengths and weaknesses. For example, the power of this study is that it provides strong evidence for the fundamental attribution error. One limitation of this study is that the sample was culturally biased since only Americans engaged in sports were used. Another problem could be the use of self-report data. We don’t know whether people always say what they actually believe is right. On the other hand, other studies support this attribution error. Another strength of this study is of high ecological validity.
References
Hannibal, Jette. Psychology for the IB Diploma. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lau, R. R., & Russell, D. (1980). Attributions in the sports pages. Journal of personality and social psychology, 39(1), 29.

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