Explain one error in attribution. (8 marks)

Attribution is how humans explain behaviour by attributing qualities to individuals. This is done by observing individuals and how they react in a situation. Behaviour is attributed to situational and dispositional factors. Situational factors are factors in the environment that affect behaviour, for example, a student failing an exam due to not having the correct resources, like a good teacher or a textbook. Dispositional factors are factors due to an individual's characteristics that affect behaviour, for example, a student failing an exam because they were lazy and did not study. An attribution error is when humans make a mistake in attributing a behaviour wrongly to either situational or dispositional factors. One error in attribution is Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). This is where we tend to attribute another person's behaviour to their characteristics, rather than their environment, hence, dispositional factors are overestimated and situational factors are underestimated. FAE can still occur when there are clear situational factors present, yet we tend to ignore them.
A study that demonstrates FAE is Ross et al. (1977) with the aim to know if FAE would occur even when participants knew an actor was playing a role. Participants took part in a mock game show and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: the game show host, who would create the questions based off their own general knowledge; the constants, who would answer the questions; and the audience members. After the game show, the audience members were asked to rank the intelligence of the game show host and contestants. They were aware that the game show hosts selected information based upon their own general knowledge and therefore would know the answer regardless of intelligence. They also were aware that assignment to categories was random. Nevertheless, the findings consistently showed that participants ranked the host as the most intelligent and the contestants as less intelligent, even though assignment was random and the hosts were neither more nor less intelligent than the contestants. It demonstrates an error in attribution as behaviour was attributed to dispositional factors (the host was more intelligent) and not to the real cause - a situational factor (the host was assigned the role and retrieved the information from their own prior knowledge). FAE occurs as the participants exaggerated the dispositional factors and ignored the situational factors of the game show hosts. The study proved that FAE can still occur even when it was known that individuals were playing a role.