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Sources of error and bias in attribution, fundamental attribution error, just word hypothesis, actor-observer effect, self-serving attribution bias and the importance of the consequence.

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What are error and bias in the process of attribution?

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Discusses error and bias in the process of attribution.

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Attribution - Sources of error and bias in the attribution process.

Research into the area of bias and error in the attribution process has provided more accurate and detailed accounts of how people actually make causal attributions.

Zebrowitz (1990) defines sources of bias as;

'the tendency to favour one cause over another when explaining some effect. Such faviouritism may result in causal attributions that deviate from predictions derived from rational attribution principals, like co-variation.'

The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

Although our behaviour is both a product of the person and the situation, our causal explanations tend to emphasize one or the other (that is the person or the environment). Jones & Nisbett (1971) suggest that we want to see ourselves as good 'interpreters' of human behaviour, thus we assume that ...

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