Describe Smith and Whitehead’s (1984) study of how individualism and collectivism influence the fundamental attribution error.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: Two studies clearly illustrate this cultural difference in making attributions. Smith and Whitehead (1984) had participants from the United States and India rate possible reasons for a person’s promotion or demotion. The American participants rated levels of skill and effort higher than did the Indian participants. On the other hand, the Indian participants rated potential factors, such as the difficulty level of the job, a relationship with someone on the job, and corruption in the situation, more highly than the American participants. Thus, Americans tended to favor internal explanations, and Indians tended to favor external explanations. In a study also involving people from the United States and India, Miller (1984) had participants generate explanations for things that people had done wrong and for behaviors people had exhibited that benefited someone else. Although children from the two countries showed few differences in attributions, there were marked differences for adults. American adults tended to favor people’s general dispositions to explain both positive and negative behaviors, whereas Indian adults tended to favor contextual explanations for both.