 You and Leross have written a book about the distinction between the person and the situation. Can you tell me about that distinction? Well, the effort in the book was to examine how people explain their own behavior and how they explain other people's behavior. And there are two broad classes of factors that would help to explain someone's behavior. What kind of situation is the person in and what kind of person you have. And obviously any behavior that you get out of anybody is a function of what's going on, what he's responding to, and what's in the person, what traits, what kind of temperament the person has, what kind of abilities the person has. These are enduring aspects of the person, which we call dispositions. And situational factors are what's the weather? Am I talking to somebody I enjoy talking to? Am I getting paid for this? All kinds of things that have nothing, I mean conceptually, have nothing to do with the person. They're just things that are out there. And the person's attributes and his current state, emotional state and so on, and that situation or what's producing the behavior. We have a problem, however, which is that for other people it's much easier to invoke these dispositions to explain their behavior. Because when I'm looking at you behave, I'm looking at you. I mean that's my focus and I'm not attending that much to other things. They may be literally invisible to me, things that are visible to you, but in any case they're not as salient, because you are what I'm responding to, you're what I'm noticing. This means that I'm going to make errors. I'm going to see more continuity in your behavior from this situation to others than is really there. I'm going to be unaware of some of the very important things that affected your behavior. I'm much less likely to make that mistake to myself. I know what I'm responding to. I know that I'm in a rush. I know that I'm mad at my wife about this thing and I'm trying to avoid thinking about it. I know that I have to pick up my kid at work, I'm thinking about that. All of these kinds of situational factors are much more apparent to me than they are for you because I don't even see them. But even when they're as plain as the nose on my face, I miss them. I tend to just not thinking straight. I don't realize that you were paid to do what you just did. Some of the demonstrations of this are really embarrassing to us as people. You can ask people to read a speech or an essay that was written by someone in a political science class. The instructor said, I want you to take a position in favor of something that the French are doing now. Write a whole essay in favor of that. Other people read an essay written by someone who's opposed to what the French are doing right now. That's the assignment. That's what you were told to do. I read this essay and if the essay is pro-French, I say, oh. Then he asks you, what do you think that guy's attitude is? Oh, he's pretty pro-French. And this other essay that's written by this person was writing an anti-essay. What do you think about him? Well, he's opposed to the French. But of course, this was the assignment. People are missing that. So we make the assumption when we see someone do something or say something, we just take it for granted. It's emanating from the person even when there's something out there that would be totally obvious to us. It still seems to me, though, that people have distinct personalities. That Jason is honest. I'm laid back. Why is it that we latch on to these personality explanations if you're saying that they're not very powerful? Well, some aspects of personality are powerful and people are different from one another and we're very interested in what makes one person differ from another. It's just gossip for us. We enjoy it. But the problem is if we're not paying attention to what the situational factors are that are operating on someone, he was assigned the essay. That's why he did it. It's even worse than that. You can have a subject interact with someone else and say, we want you to find out whether this person is an extrovert or an introvert. Here's the list of questions that you're going to ask. I'm going to tell you which of these responses that subject is to give. The experimenter says, okay, wouldn't you say you've been the life of the party sometimes? Yes, I've been the life of the party sometimes. I have told this person what to say and after I'm through with all that, if I've told him to present himself as an extrovert, you ask me, what do you think that guy's like? He's kind of extroverted, I think. Or in the case of, you know, write this essay, if I put you through the situation yourself, I'm here, I want you to write an essay, pro-French, do that right now. By the way, this guy wrote an essay, pro-French. What do you think? He's probably pro-French. Well, neutral, maybe a little negative. We just don't pick that social influence up, which just seems so obvious to you when you say it like that. Now, as I've said earlier, some people in the world make this mistake more than others. And those people are people of European culture, Americans, Australians, etc. And I think the reason for that is the centuries-old tradition of individualism, of independence. It's characteristic of Westerners. There's been more freedom of action for the West than there is for people in the East. I think that, I could go into detail about why I think that is. I think it has to do a lot with the kinds of occupations, the kinds of agricultural things that people had to do, how they make a living. But at any rate, Easterners have to navigate their lives paying constant attention to what other people are doing, paying constant attention to the context. I mean, the East is all about context. I mean, people are seeing it. They pick up things. You show them a fish tank and say, you've seen the behavior of a picture, a moving picture of a fish tank. And you say, I want you to tell me what you saw. The American says, well, I saw three big fish swimming off to the left. They had pink stipples on their bellies. Japanese said, what did you see? Well, I saw what looked like a stream. The water was green. There were shells and plants on the bottom. There were three big fish swimming off to the left. In other words, they start with context. And you're supposed to start with context. The language says, how good is skiing on that mountain? The Japanese saying, that mountain skiing is good. I say, that skiing is good on that mountain. I mean, they start with context. We start with the action. So since they're constantly paying attention to context, they are able to pick up what's good, what's really going on. And they'll make a correct attribution for behavior. Now, in that study where, before I ask you what that guy thinks about France, I tell you, you've got to write an essay, pro-France. And that has no impact on Americans. They don't get the point at all that they had to do that. And so did that guy. Asians pick it up. So that guy probably doesn't. They make the mistake if you don't put them through the situation and rub the situation in it. So everybody's subject to this, what Lee Ross calls the fundamental attribution error, attributing to dispositions rather than to situations. Everybody makes that mistake to some degree, but Easterners make it much less. They're much more likely to correctly pinpoint situations that are having an impact. Can you tell me more about the fundamental attribution error? Well, actually I'll tell you about the history of the fundamental attribution error. I was doing work a very long time ago where trying to show the differences between the attributions for behavior that the actor makes for his behavior versus the attributions for someone else when it's really the same situation. They ought to be giving the same explanation for both. And the hypothesis that I was pushing was that people are situationists for themselves to a much greater extent than they are. But I know what situations I'm responding to. So I explain my own behavior in terms of situations. I explain other people's behavior in terms of their dispositions. And with absolutely no hesitation, Ross says, yeah, Dick, that's right, you're missing the main point, which is that everybody, for everything, is too much of a dispositionist and too little focus on situation. And then a while later he comes up with the name for that. It's a fundamental attribution error. And that's now become a staple of psychology. Now you read an editorial and someone said that guy made the fundamental attribution error. There's two concepts that people understand about that. Ecolomists, you can count on columnists to know of that from social psychology. That is fundamental attribution error. The other is cognitive dissonance. People's behavior is consistent from situation to situation? Well, much less consistent than we think. And you can show that with data. And again, you understand it for yourself. I mean, you know, sometimes you're sort of introvert. You don't want to be part of the party. Sometimes you're lively as can be. You understand how different you are across situations. Otherwise how different I am across situations. So what we understand for abilities, that is people really do have a level on abilities of some kind. If I get a small sample of the person, that's not clear how much I know about that person. I need a larger sample. We understand that amazingly well. I mean, I was amazed at how well we understand, because it was so terrible for personality. So, you know, I see you being glad-handing at somewhere. So that guy's probably an extrovert. I mean, well, not really. I mean, it turns out you knew those people quite well. You were in a good mood. And most of the time, you're actually kind of bookish. So we don't recognize that a small sample of a person's behavior with respect to personality is just a small sample. It's very off base. But, and I think that's a very hard thing to teach people. I don't know how much success we could have, honestly, with that one. It's just, for Western, especially, it's just so ingrained. It's so compelling. I see that guy behaving that way. It's just so clear to me that's the way he is. How can we reduce the effect of the fundamental attribution error? Well, I think there's a limit to how much you can do. I know that all day long, I'm making the error. I mean, I know that in the abstract. So I think there is a limit. On the other hand, knowing we're subject to it. I mean, if I hear myself say, you know, he's a very hostile guy, I'm like, what exactly is the evidence for that? Well, he shouted at his kid at the picnic. I mean, how good is that evidence, really? So if you have the concept clearly in mind, which you can do by giving people many, many examples, I think it takes many examples, many illustrations for everyday life, of the way that we can make those mistakes. Eventually, it does pack down to the principle that we can sometimes recognize. We can sometimes see the error in ourselves. And you can also point to the consistency with which situations affect people. One thing that strikes me often is that, you know, I say you should see such and such a movie. People are saying it's great. And people's initial reaction to that is, oh, well, you know, I'm me. Listen, if it's getting a 92% on rotten tomatoes, you're going to like it. That's an end to it. You know, every now and then you're not, actually. I mean, but you probably are. If it's getting a 34 in rotten tomatoes, unless you happen to have a real thing for the actress in that thing, you're not going to like it. And I think people find it hard to accept that generalization, actually. But I've come, since I say that so often, I've come to believe in really, I don't go to many movies that haven't been strongly recommended. And I've got a lot better hit rate than when I say, oh, that's the kind of movie I like. No, no, no, specifically how much people like that. Because there's such, there are some stimuli that are just very powerful. And we would, we make a mistake in assuming that, that that's not, we're not going to be one of those people. We way overestimate our own individuality and our own idiosyncrasy. I mean, Americans are constantly being told that. I mean, you're unique. I don't know if it's that way. Is it that way in Britain or in Australia? In Australia? Probably. I think so. Americans are, I'm sure, the most extreme of all. They're constantly being told. You're unique. You're very distinctive. You're your own special person. And of course that's true in some sense. But when it comes to, are you going to like 12 years a slave? No, you are going to like it. Relatedly, are we good at putting ourselves in the shoes of others? Well, since we tend to be blind to some degree about many situational factors that are affecting people, it's going to be hard for us to put ourselves in their shoes. Because we don't even know they're wearing shoes. So if you don't see the situation, it's very difficult. Just a point about, since I mentioned Lee Ross, who's my lifelong friend, he happens to be extremely good for giving advice about how to deal with some problem. Most of our problems, many of our problems are interpersonal problems. I've had a real problem with this guy. And he's amazingly good. I'm saying, oh my god, that probably would work. And then it does work. And I asked him very recently, why are you so good at this? He says, oh, it's easy. Most of the time you say, I'm having this problem with this person. People say, oh, terrible. I mean, it's a terrible person. Who has to terribly have to deal with that? Lee doesn't empathize with you. He says, I'm guessing this is the situation you're confronting. I'm guessing this is what this guy is concerned about. I'm guessing this, you did this thing. So in other words, he's buying it completely out of me. He's trying to scan the situation, suggest things to me that might have been going on. And it's tremendously useful. I don't need somebody's commiseration. I need their help in solving the problem. I need to do that because he is genuinely much more tuned to situations than far more than I am, that's for sure. Can you tell me a little bit about channel factors? Well, this is an idea that's very old in social psychology. You might be interested to know, I don't think most social psychologists know this. The field of experimental social psychology was founded by a physicist. And that has everything to do with the fact that social psychologists are the ones who are telling us what the situations are that people confront that are going to have an impact on them. His notion was the field, that social psychologists focus on the field, and that comes from field theory and physics. I mean, you need to know what's going on the whole field. I mean, it's just in order to understand how to explain behavior. He had a notion that sometimes we want someone to do something or we want some kind of outcome, we just push across the way and say, no, wait, look, there may be a channel there through which you can achieve what you're trying to achieve. Think about what situational barriers you might remove. Think about how you could give the person a plan that would help them to go in a direction you want them to go. And there's a stunning experiment, a very old experiment, done with Yale college students. There was a social psychologist who was scaring the daylights out of these undergraduates about tetanus. I mean, he shows them people with extremes of lockjaw and the terrible kinds of things that can go on. He says, look, it's not just the rusty nail you've heard of. It's all over. I mean, it's just, you don't recognize how susceptible you are. But not to worry because you can go to the health service, which will be available on Tuesday morning, and you're going to get an inoculation. 3% of students go and get their inoculation, even though they're manifestly scared and they believe it. The other students, he gives them a map and says, the health services circled on it. Now these, by the way, Yale seniors, they know where the health service is. But he circles it on the map anyway. He says, what would be a convenient time on Tuesday morning for you to go again in an inoculation? I'm going to say, well, I don't know. 10 o'clock when I'm coming out of my chemistry class. I say, OK, would you mark where your chemistry class is on that map? Would you draw me the line from there? Now the compliance rate is 29%. It's this little trivial situational factor channel that he creates has a massive impact on behavior. And of course, you know, not to get back to the dispositional versus situational explanation, here's Joe who went to get a tetanus inoculation and Sam who didn't. Why did Joe, he's very conscientious, he's very health concerned, and Sam, why did he not do it? He's the sort of guy who doesn't care that much. He's kind of irresponsible, kind of flighty really. So here's a situational factor that affects what goes on by a factor of nine. And I'm going to attribute it as the observer. I'm going to attribute the difference to their personalities. My name is Richard. I think about inference.