Talk:Attribution bias

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 May 2019 and 5 August 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Matthew09031999Barnes.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:59, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Vague
This article is very vague and needs clarification. Its vagueness leads to confusion, for example the whole intelligent and more socially apt clause in the article seems to be in itself a fundmanental attribution error.

As of June 27 2008 There is still no citation given for the sentence that claims intelligent / socially adept people are more likely to make this attributional error since October 2007, so had been removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.229.83.223 (talk) 10:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC) I agree with the above comments, in fact, when I saw this article on July 7 2009, I considered it to be one of the worst articles I had ever seen in Wikipedia. "Attributional biases typically take the form of actor-observer differences in attribution"  - who says this? In fact, the actor-observer effect is only one of many attributional biases. There is nothing in this article on the controversy about whether these biases are caused by motivational or cognitive factors (I do wish people who work on articles such as this would have read papes such as that by Tetlock and Levi in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology", 1982 - although I do not agree with these author's cognitive bias, at least that would be a source citation. Finally, why is this article under the watchful eyes of the WikiProject group for philosophy,but not that of Psychology? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Suggested Outline for Improvement
Attribution Bias -- Definition and Intro
 * Remove third paragraph of intro (will discuss this example later in the article with more detailed references and citations
 * Explain the notion of availability more coherently.

History of Attribution Theory
 * Social Psychology -- Fritz Heider & Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, Theories of Causality with the model for the three dimensions of causality

Types of Attribution Bias
 * Include a brief description (1-3 sentences) of each type, beyond the existing list of types. Still include links to other articles about each type, but include a description for better referencing.
 * Self-serving bias
 * Group-serving bias
 * Actor-Observer bias
 * Defensive Attribution Bias
 * Positivity Effect
 * Negativity Effect
 * Trait Ascription Bias
 * Positive Outcome Bias
 * Hedonistic Relevance
 * Group Attribution Error
 * Fundamental Attribution Error
 * False Consensus Effect
 * Egocentric Bias

Implications and Importance of understanding Attribution bias
 * Social Interactions
 * Better approach to doing and interpreting scholarly research

Citations Crisp, R., & Turner, R. (2010). Essential social psychology. (2 ed., pp. 42-57). London, England: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons

Jones, E. E. (1976). How do people perceive the causes of behavior? American Scientist, 64(3), 300-305.

Sears, R. R. (1936). Experimental studies of projection: I. attribution of traits. The Journal of Social Psychology, 7, 151-163.

Shepperd, J., Malone, W., & Sweeny, K. (2008). Exploring causes of the self-serving bias. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(2), 895-908.

Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207-232.

Taylor, D. M., & Doria, J. R. (1981). Self-serving and group-serving bias in attribution. The Journal of Social Psychology, 113(2), 201-211.--Bthomas2 (talk) 17:25, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Toyama, M. (1982). On some problems of attribution theory. Japanese Psychological Review, 25(3), 232-248.

This looks like a comprehensive and great outline. Since you have listed several types of biases, please make sure you link them to their relevant and existing Wikipedia articles. Looking forward to your article! -EM Testaccountpy242 (talk) 16:56, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Revised Outline for Improvement
Attribution bias - Introduction and definition
 * why humans infer about the causes of the behavior of others in social interaction
 * how people make these attributions and what information is used
 * attribution bias arises because people make inferences using only partial information, information gathered from personal experiences, individual perspective, etc.

History
 * attribution theory - Fritz Heider, theories of causality

List of attributional biases
 * expand upon largest/most common types of biases such as:
 * Fundamental Attribution Error
 * Actor-Observer Bias
 * Group-Serving Bias
 * Self-Serving bias
 * keep links to remaining biases of list

Limitations Some scientists criticize that the theory does not apply universally. Cultural differences may exist in the way people commonly form attributions and biases, as well as variations throughout different social contexts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mfrigon (talk • contribs) 03:23, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

A large scale revision
In order to improve the academic integrity of the article, it has undergone a large-scale revision, guided by the advice listed above. Extensive citations were added in order to provide evidence for all claims and research findings. The article now provides an overview of the topic, a brief history of attribution theory and the development of research on attribution biases, an overview of some common types of attribution biases, and several current areas of research relevant to this topic. The article also contains a thorough list of citations, as well as external links to relevant research articles and other Wikipedia pages.

Hschacter (talk) 19:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Overall, great revision
The extensive revisions made to this article are really great and thorough overall. It seems like some of the information in the history section is a little repetitive considering there is a whole article on Wikipedia already devoted to Attribution Theory. Possibly the article would be more useful if the information on biases was talked about more at the beginning of the article. The section discussing implications for behavior was particularly informative and added a lot to the article.

Bthomas2 (talk) 23:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Jones' and Nisbett's original explanation
The article includes reference to the actor-observer effect in social psychology, and says "Jones' and Nisbett's original explanation did not hold". It does not really state clearly what Jones' and Nisbett's original explanation was. It says people tend to attribute their own behaviour to the situation because, when they are actors, their attention is focussed on the situation, whereas when they are observers, their attention is focussed on the person. Ergo, they make dispositional attributions for other people's actions. Vorbee (talk) 15:32, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Merge with Attribution (psychology)
I found another page, highly similar to this page. Maybe we should consolidate them into one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blacktc (talk • contribs) 09:56, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Given that there has been no support over more than a year, wwitching to WP:SUMMARY form rather than merging. Klbrain (talk) 08:49, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Planned Changes
Hi all,

I will be publishing some changes on this page in the next few days, and I wanted to give a general outline of what I plan to do to any editors interested. I already have most of my changes made in my sandbox, but I will be gradually introducing them to the page so you guys (other editors) have the chance to give me input/feedback on these proposed changes. I am very open to any criticism/advice, as I am new to the community. Thanks so much in advance.

1. Reorganization of the sections: many of the sections don't seem to have a logical flow to them, and so I have renamed and rearranged some of the sections (ex. moving the contents of "Consequences for behavior" to the "Current theory" section, and eliminating the "Consequences" as a section). 2. Copyediting: I plan to edit for grammar, cohesion, clarity, and tone (specifically focusing on giving the article more of an objective, formal style). 3. Internal citing: many of the credible sources in the citations section are not yet internally cited yet, so I will be attempting to match the citations with the evidence presented

If you have any questions/concerns, I am happy to discuss with you! Go team. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hannahpierdolla (talk • contribs) 20:19, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Attribution bias in conflict situations and Motive Attribution Asymmetry
I can use help from someone who knows this subject better than I do.

In Confirmation bias and conflict, I note the following:
 * Collateral damage that "they" commit proves to "us" that "they" are at best criminally misled and must be resisted by any means necessary.
 * Meanwhile, collateral damage that "we" commit is unfortunate but necessary from "our" perspective -- but proves to "them" that "we" are at best criminally misled and must be resisted by any means necessary.

In this I cite.

However, I now wonder about the following:
 * 1) Waytz et al. (2014) is not cited in this present article on "Attribution bias". Should it be? Or is it too narrow or, worse, generally rejected by most leading experts on attribution bias?
 * 2) Should "confirmation bias and conflict" talk primarily about attribution bias more generally? And perhaps it should not mention "motive attribution asymmetry" at all, or at least reduce the number of words devoted to that paper?

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:14, 22 May 2021 (UTC)