Page 130 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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Attribution Error
We tend to get the idea that attribution is a highly rational process in which
individuals seeking to identify the causes of others’ behaviour follow orderly
cognitive steps. To a large extent, this is so, but we should not overlook the
fact that, attribution is subject to several forms of error-tendencies that can
lead us into serious errors concerning the cause of others’ behaviour.
Suppose you are sitting in your college library when you notice two men
trying to lift and move a large cupboard. They lift and tip the cupboard;
as they do this, four drawers come flying out and one hits one of the men
on his head. You think to yourself, ‘Obviously they are a pair of dim-witted
men’. Why did you arrive at this conclusion? Perhaps both the men were not
dim-witted. May be the lock of the drawers broke. Or may be there is some
other reason for the mishap.
We tend to spontaneously attribute the behaviour of others to internal
and personal characteristics, while downplaying or under-estimating the
effects of external situational factors. This bias is called attribution error.
Even though it is entirely possible that situational forces act behind another
person’s behaviour, we tend to automatically assume that the cause is an
internal and personal one.
Let us look at another aspect of attribution, which is an interesting excep-
tion to the fundamental attribution error. When it comes to explaining our
own behaviour, we tend to be biased in the opposite direction; we are more
likely to use an external-situational attribution than internal and personal
attribution. This common attributional bias is called the actor–observer
discrepancy because there is a discrepancy between the attribution you
make when you act in a given situation and those you make when you are
the observer of other people’s behaviour.

Impression Formation and Impression Management
What exactly are first impressions? How are they formed? What steps can
we take to make sure that we make a good first impression on others? And
finally how accurate are first impressions and social perceptions in reality?
Some aspects of social perception, such as attribution, require a lot of
hard mental work; it is not always easy to draw inferences about others’
behaviour or traits by looking at them. In contrast, forming first impres-
sions seems to be relatively effortless. We look at a person and immediately a
certain impression of his character forms itself in us. A glance or a few spoken
words are sufficient to tell us a story about a highly complex personality.

1. Have you ever wondered how we manage this feaure? How do we
form unified impressions of others in the quick and seemingly effort-
less way that we often do? First impressions, it is believed, are very

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