The actor–observer effect

The actor–observer effect

While we tend to attribute other people’s behaviour to dispositional factors, we tend to attribute our own behaviour to situational factors ( Jones & Nisbett, 1972). This is called the actor–observer effect (AOE).
Consider how easily we explain our own socially undesirable behaviour (such as angry outbursts) to extenuating, stressful circumstances, and yet we are less sympathetic when others behave in this way. Instead, we often conclude that the person is intolerant, impatient, unreasonable, selfish, etc. This bias has been found in both laboratory experiments (Nisbett et al., 1973) and applied clinical settings. For example, psychologists and psychiatrists are more likely to attribute their clients’ problems to internal stable dispositions, whereas the clients are more likely to attribute their own problems to situational factors (Antonio & Innes, 1978). There are several competing explanations for the AOE, but we will outline just two of them here.
1 Perceptual salience

As for the FAE, one explanation is perceptual and essentially argues that actors and observers quite literally have ‘different points of view’ (Storms, 1973). As actors, we can’t see ourselves acting. From an actor’s point of view, what is most salient and available are the situational influences on behaviour – the objects, the people, the role requirements and the social setting. But from an observer’s point of view,
other people’s behaviour is more dynamic and salient than the situation or context. These different vantage points for actors andobservers appear to lead to different attributional tendencies, i.e. situational attributions for actors and dispositional attributions for observers.Taylor and Fiske (1975) attempted to test the perceptual saliencehypothesis by placing observers at three different vantage points around two male confederates who sat facing each other engaged in conversation. Observers sat either behind confederate A with confederate B in their direct visual field, or behind B, watching A, or to the side, between A and B with both in sight . After A and B had interacted for five minutes, each
observer was asked to rate each confederate on various traitdimensions, and the extent to which their behaviour was caused by dispositional and situational factors. They also rated how much each confederate (a) set the tone of the conversation, (b) determined the kind of information exchanged and (c) caused the other’s behaviour. Consistent with the perceptual salience hypothesis, Taylor and Fiske found that the two observers sitting behind A, watching B, rated B as more causal, while those sitting behind B, watching A,
saw A as more causal. The observers sitting in between A and Bperceived both confederates as equally influential.
In a similar vein, McArthur and Post (1977) manipulated the salience of two people engaged in conversation through the use of lighting. When one participant was made more salient than the other by being illuminated by bright light, observers rated the behaviour of the illuminated person as more dispositionally and less situationally caused.
2 Situational information

Another explanation for the AOE focuses on information. Actors have more information about thesituational and contextual influences on their behaviour, including its variability and flexibility across time and place. But observers are unlikely to have such detailed information about the actors unless they know them very well, and have observed their behaviour over time and in many different situations. It therefore seems that observers assume more consistency in other people’s behaviour compared to their own, and so make dispositional attributions for others, while making situational attributions for their own behaviour (Nisbett et al., 1973).