The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent?

Watson, David

doi:10.1037/0033-2909.92.3.682

Cited by 227 publications

(151 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…People consider their own behaviour to be influenced by the situation and the pressures exerted by circumstances, whereas they are more likely to believe the actions of others are influenced by stable traits such as character or temperament. 40 These theoretical perspectives appear to be supported by our findings. For example, those not in a persons own professional grouping are referred to above as lacking in expertise, elitist, or uncooperative -all more stable trait dispositions rather than being influenced by a particular situation.…”

Section: Comparison With Existing Literaturesupporting

confidence: 79%

Judgements about fellow professionals and the management of patients receiving palliative care in primary care: a qualitative study

Walshe¹,

Todd²,

Caress³

et al. 2008

Br J Gen Pract

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Section: Comparison With Existing Literaturesupporting

confidence: 79%

Judgements about fellow professionals and the management of patients receiving palliative care in primary care: a qualitative study

Walshe¹,

Todd²,

Caress³

et al. 2008

Br J Gen Pract

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“…They use Attribution Theory and, in particular, the notion of the 'Fundamental Attribution Error' (Jones and Nisbett 1971) to explain why this might be so. Attribution research has shown that people tend to interpret the behaviour of others as indicative of character, while tending to attribute their own behaviour to circumstances (Watson 1982). In other words, if a Member of Parliament writes a bounced cheque it is because she is untrustworthy; if I write a bounced cheque it is because I was so busy that I forgot to first make sure I had sufficient funds.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science in Society: Re-Evaluating the Deficit Model of Public Attitudes

2004

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The 'deficit model' of public attitudes towards science has led to controversy over the role of scientific knowledge in explaining lay people's attitudes towards science. The most sustained critique has come from what we refer to as the 'contextualist' perspective. In this view, people's understanding of the ways in which science is embedded within wider political, economic and regulatory settings is fundamental for explaining their attitudes towards science. Most work adopting this perspective has relied on qualitative case studies as empirical evidence. In this paper we challenge the de facto orthodoxy that has connected the deficit model and contextualist perspectives with quantitative and qualitative research methods respectively. We simultaneously test hypotheses from both theoretical approaches using quantitative methodology. We use data from the 1996 British Social Attitudes Survey to investigate the interacting effects of different domains of scientific and contextual knowledge on public attitudes toward science. The results point to the clear importance of knowledge as a determinant of attitudes toward science. However, in contrast to the rather simplistic deficit model that has traditionally characterised discussions of this relationship, this analysis highlights the complex and interacting nature of the knowledge-attitude interface.

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“…This difference has been widely accepted, although its actual generality and empirical support is more modest than is usually believed (see Robins, Spranca, & Mendelsohn, 1996;Watson, 1982). The actor -observer distinction has continued to inspire research over the 30 years since its introduction (e.g., Kruger & Gilovich, 2004;Malle & Pearce, 2001;Storms, 1973).…”

Section: Actor Vs Observer or Agent Vs Recipientmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morality and competence in person- and self-perception

Wojciszke

2005

European Review of Social Psychology

447

456

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Morality and competence are posited to constitute two basic kinds of content in person-and self-perception. Moral content dominates person-perception because it typically has a direct and unconditional bearing on the well-being of other people surrounding the person who is described by the trait (including the perceiver). Competence dominates self-perception because it has a direct bearing on the well-being of the perceiver. A comprehensive research programme is reviewed showing that morality of others matters to the perceiver to a much higher degree than his/her competence. When forming global evaluations of others, the perceiver is more interested in their moral than competence qualities, construes their behaviour in moral terms, and his or her impressions and emotional responses are more strongly based on morality than competence considerations. Just the opposite is true for selfperception and self-attitudes. Own behaviours are construed more readily in competence than moral terms, and own competence influences self-evaluations and emotional responses to a higher degree than own morality.Person-perception and self-perception processes are strongly saturated with evaluations and other affective processes. Evaluative responses are ubiquitous, primary, and partially independent of access to stimuli descriptive meaning. Frequently, these responses are also effortless, unconscious, very fast, unintentional, and automatically related to behavioural tendencies (cf. Bargh, 1997;Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001;Zajonc, 2000). Most probably, the ubiquity and prominence of evaluation is a consequence of the basic function of social cognition-discerning between beneficial and harmful social objects or environments in the service of approach vs avoidance behaviour. All organisms have at least one mechanism for differentiating agreeable from (Caccioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1997) and global impressions of others. Social information processing is, of course, highly flexible and depends on the perceiver's current goals. Nevertheless, the approach -avoidance dimension looms in every nook and cranny searched by modern social cognition students, and ''evaluation is a pervasive and dominant response for most people across the many situations and objects they encounter'' (Jarvis & Petty, 1996, p. 173).Using the computer metaphor of mind, one may say that forming global evaluative impressions serves as a default option in the person-perception process. Evaluative impressions of encountered persons are routinely formed, apparently without effort and specific purposes. Evaluation may be based on various criteria (depending on the perceiver's specific goals) but the basic and most frequently used is probably the criterion of self-interest broadly defined as preserving the perceiver's immediate well-being. If so, evaluation should be strongly underlain by concepts instrumental in locating others (target persons) on the approach -avoidance dimension. Peeters (1992) called such concepts other-profitable traits, i.e., traits that have a direc...

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The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent?

Cited by 227 publications

References 38 publications

Judgements about fellow professionals and the management of patients receiving palliative care in primary care: a qualitative study

Judgements about fellow professionals and the management of patients receiving palliative care in primary care: a qualitative study

Science in Society: Re-Evaluating the Deficit Model of Public Attitudes

Morality and competence in person- and self-perception

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