Ross
Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977)
Fundamental Attribution Error
Aim:
To investigate whether knowledge of allocated social roles in a quiz show would affect participants’ judgments of people’s expertise.
Procedure:
- Eighteen pairs of students from an introductory class at Stanford University participated in a simulated quiz game where they were randomly assigned to the roles of either questioner or contestant. In the experimental condition the role of questioner or contestant was randomly allocated to one person in each pair.
- Twenty-four observers watched the quiz.
- The questioners were asked to compose 10 questions based on their own knowledge and the contestants were asked to answer these questions.
- The questioner was instructed to ask each question and then wait around 30 seconds for a response. If the contestants did not answer correctly the questioner gave the correct answer.
- After the quiz, all participants and the observers were asked to rate “general knowledge” of contestants and questioners.
Results:
The contestants consistently rated the general knowledge of the questioners in the experimental condition as superior. The observers did the same.
This was a clear demonstration of the FAE. The contestants and the observers attributed the questioners’ ability to answer the questions to dispositional factors and failed to take into consideration the situational factors that gave the questioners an advantage. The questioners themselves did not rate their own knowledge as being superior to that of the contestants.
Evaluation:
The experimental set-up was ingenious. It clearly gave the opportunity to demonstrate attributional biases because the questioners made up their own questions and this was known by all participants. The participants were university students so there may be sampling bias and it is difficult to generalize the results. The issue of ecological validity could also be raised.