Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings
of social judgement, 1980. Chapter 10.
The authors believe that many inferential errors can be attributed to
emotional or motivational causes. The debate as to whether inferences are
most affected by motivation or cognition has been hotly debated.
Self-serving biases in causal attributions
The first difficulty in this area is inferring internal judgements from
overt attributional behavior (is what they say what they really feel?).
People can be less than candid in public statements. People are reluctant
to give overly glowing or overly critical self-attributions (societal norms).
Thus it dificult to prove self-serving biases in reported causal attributions.
Yet the authors doubt that ego-enhancing or ego-defensive biases in attributions
to be as pervasive as others believe. There may be good cognitive reasons
for people to attribute success to self and failure to circumstance. The
long-term benefits of such activity are low (and can be very detrimental).
However, people can dispassionately view available evidence as proof of
their success attributions, when that evidence may be biased (e.g., they
only associate with people who praise them). Both successful and unsuccessful
people believe, with good justification, that career outcomes are impefectly
correlated with effort or talent. When motivational biases exist, we suspect
that they rarely fly in the face of reality. Motivational bias is perhaps
more prevelant in selective perception of positive evidence and avoiding
of negative evidence.
Ethnic Prejudice: Hearts or Minds?
While the Marxists believe prejudice is economically motivated, the preponderance
of stereotypes percludes such an analysis as totalitarian.
People generate stereotypes because someone told them so. Stereotypes are
maintained because they contain a kernal of truth (however small or unrepresentative)
that is selectively reinforced with subsequent data. Even minimal confirmation
can reinforce the stereotype. People also make causal attributions (that
may refer to sterotypes) that serve to maintain them.
They are also maintained when stereotypes are used to justify actions of
unfairness. People are also outrages when obeservably "evil acts"
like discrimination are explained by other means. "We are reminded
of the psychoanalysi who accused patients who came late of hostility, those
who came early of defensiveness, and those who came on time of compulsiveness".
Psychoanalysis
Researchers have never determined whether an associative link exists in
the mind of the patient or in the analyst. Freud's further belief that once
the "real" meaning of behavior was uncovered, it could be traced
to motive states and dispositions. This elevates attribution error to scientific
principle.
Yet the authors agree with Freud that much of mental life is inaccessible
to conscious experience. The processes that produceaffective judgements
are neither verbal or directly accessible to introspection. They disagree
with the prevalance of repression, however.