Empathy and attribution: turning observers into actors

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Individuals often attribute their behavior to situational factors, while observers attribute it to dispositional factors (actor-observer bias).
• Jones and Nisbett proposed an information-processing explanation: situational aspects are more salient to actors, while actor characteristics are more salient to observers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally test Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation for actor-observer attributional differences.
• To investigate if altering observers' phenomenological perspective influences their causal attributions.

Main Methods:

• A laboratory experiment was conducted where subjects watched a videotaped conversation.
• Subjects were randomly assigned to either observe a target conversant or empathize with her.
• Causal attributions for the target's behavior were compared between the two groups.

Main Results:

• Participants instructed to empathize with the target made significantly more situational attributions and fewer dispositional attributions.
• These results align with the predictions derived from the information-processing model.
• Altering the observer's perspective, specifically through empathy, impacted attributional patterns.

Conclusions:

• The findings support Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation for actor-observer attributional differences.
• Empathy can effectively shift an observer's perspective, leading to more situationally-focused attributions.
• This study provides insight into the psychological processes underlying empathy and attribution.