Phenomenology refers to the study of subjective experience. Phenomenological research studies experiences and meanings to understand how people encounter the world and particular situations.4 Social psychologists have contributed to this field by studying the relationships between perception and interpersonal behavior.
Austrian social psychologist and father of attribution theory, Fritz Heider, began studying these relationships in the 1920s while writing his thesis. Heider was interested in how people perceived qualities within inanimate objects. He soon developed his theory of object perception, which explored why people attribute qualities to objects when those qualities exist only in their minds. The color yellow is a mental construct, but we say that a ball – which exists outside our minds – is yellow. Heider concluded that people attribute sensory information to underlying causes in the world, which causes them to view objects as ‘out there’.5
Later, Heider extrapolated his object attribution theory to people. Just as we perceive characteristics in objects, we perceive and infer the characteristics of people based on their behavior. People’s perception was more complex than object perception because there exists more than observational data: emotions and beliefs also influence our perception of others. In 1958, Heider published The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which likened people to scientists: he claimed that people observe others, analyze their behaviors, and come up with their own cause and effect explanations for their actions.1 He believed that humans engage in this scientific thinking to make sense of the world around them, which is composed of a massive amount of behavioral data.5 Under Heider’s theory, people attribute ‘common-sense’ theories to others’ behavior, which is why it is sometimes referred to as the Common Sense theory.1
In his book, Heider divided behavioral explanations into two categories: external attributions and internal attributions, which are now known as situational attributions and dispositional attributions. Heider’s core hypothesis was that people believe others act intentionally and therefore their actions can be attributed to a cause. Heider wrote that people are “perceived as action centers and as such can do something to us. They can benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or harm them. Persons have abilities, wishes, and sentiments; they can act purposefully, and can perceive or watch us.” 5
In 1965, American psychologists Edward Jones and Keith Davis argued that Heider’s theory was based on the assumption that attributions determine a sufficient cause for action. If we see someone eating, a sufficient explanation would be that they are hungry. We attribute eating to the external cause of hunger. However, Jones and Davis believed that people also make attributions by considering the alternate action available. 6 Attributions are made by considering the perceived degree of choice, how expected the behavior is, and the effects of the behavior.1 Jones and Davis also suggested that people do not make attributions for all the actions of others, but only for those behaviors which impact them directly.
We will always try to make sense of the complicated world we live in. Being able to form links between causes and events to explain behavior can make life seem more manageable. However, we tend to make a lot of mistakes during attribution because of cognitive biases.
The fundamental attribution error, sometimes known as the correspondence bias, refers to our tendency to overemphasize dispositional causes when perceiving another’s actions and underemphasize situational influences. If someone is rude to us, we are likely to blame their personality instead of acknowledging they may have had a bad day. This bias was coined by social psychologist Lee Ross and based on the results from an experiment by Jones and Harris. In their study, Jones and Harris asked participants to listen to pro and anti-Fidel Castro speeches and rate the speech-givers personal attitudes towards this controversial figure. When participants were told the speech-givers had flipped a coin to determine whether they will give a positive or negative speech, participants still believed that those who gave pro speeches had a more positive attitude towards Fidel Castro.8
The opposite of the fundamental attribution error occurs when we explain our own behavior. In 1971, Jones and Nisbett found the actor-observer bias, which describes our tendency to overemphasize external causes when we perform negative behaviors. If you do poorly in an exam, you might blame the fact that the teacher didn’t relay the information properly or that the room you took the exam in was too noisy. You are unlikely to blame yourself for not studying hard enough.9
We also make mistakes when we attribute explanations to positive events. The self-serving bias describes our tendency to explain positive events due to personal, internal characteristics. If you land a job, you’re probably going to chalk it up to your intelligence and hard work instead of external events – like the fact that there were few other applicants. Psychologists believe that the self-serving bias occurs to boost our self-esteem.1
The dissonance between how we explain others’ behaviors and how we explain our own can cause social tension. We are often overly critical of others whilst taking credit ourselves when positive events occur.