Some Implications of Observer Attributional Biases for Psychological Theory and Practice.

The author reports research documenting the tendency for actors to attribute their own behavior to external causes while observers attributed the same behaviors to the internal disposition of the actor. Psychologists, like other observers of behavior, may have a bias toward attributing an actor's behavior to internal causes, and their inferences about the causes of behavior may be most vulnerable to this observer attributional bias when the actor's behavior is very novel, or the actor's physical appearance is relatively atypical. Psychologists' inferences may be least vulnerable to observer attributional bias when the actor's behavior is rather unobtrusive or the actor's environment is particularly salient to the observer psychologist. (Author/LAA)