Attribution Process and Biases: A Psychology Essay Analysis

This essay examines the attribution process and cognitive biases, focusing on counterfactual thinking and the fundamental attribution error (FAE). Counterfactual thinking, explored through social media analysis, involves considering alternative outcomes to life events, influencing problem-solving and decision-making. The essay highlights how this can lead to positive outcomes or negative feelings like guilt and regret. FAE, on the other hand, is the tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics while overlooking situational factors when judging others. The essay discusses the implications of FAE, including potential for victimization and peer stress, and emphasizes the importance of education and awareness to mitigate these biases. The analysis draws on research articles to support the discussion and suggests that understanding these cognitive processes is crucial for making more informed judgments and avoiding biases in daily life.

Running head: ATTRIBUTION PROCESS OR BIASES 1
Attribution process and biases
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ATTRIBUTION PROCESS OR BIASES 2
Abstract
The two articles chosen for the attribution process addressed counterfactual thinking and
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). In counterfactual thinking, people consider life events
with personal meaning. It can be used to produce both positive and negative outcomes. People
tend to make possible alternatives concerning what has already occurred with references to life
events. It is usually contrary to the outcomes of the event that took place. Furthermore,
Fundamental attribution error gives a big emphasis on the personal characters when something
has occurred and forget to give into consideration situational factor. It can cause victimization
and peer regrets on individuals. Education and training people can make them understand the
importance of considering situation factors when making judgments.
Article one (Counterfactual thinking)
Counterfactual thinking involves a description of the events which did not take place. The
consequences tend to affect the results of problem-solving, decision making, behavioral
regulation and management of the circumstances. It is clear that when people have counterfactual
thinking, they usually take life events with personal meaning. In this study, supervised statistical
and rule-based approaches were used to understand the meaning of counterfactual thinking. In
Psychology, counterfactual thinking is defined as mental representations of more different
alternatives to states, events, and actions of the past (Son, Buffone, Raso, Larche, Janocko,
Zembroski & Ungar, 2017). It has been associated with the perception of life events to be more
important or meaningful. Devine and problem- solving tends to influence it because of the
imagination of the alternative outcomes and the steps that might be needed in its improvement.
The article establishes a language-based model that can be used in recognition of different social

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media texts with emphasis on Facebook and Twitter. The low base rate has been used in
understanding the counterfactual thinking in social media. It was found that two percent of the
people on Facebook are actively making status updates and only one percent in Tweeter. It also
takes various forms or types of natural language. Natural language variability and low base rate
counterfactuals make it hard for recognition when simple statistical features or linguistics are
used in social media texts. It becomes easy to identify disclose relations using different forms
such as classification, subsets or statistical approach. The precision of the counterfactual can be
increased through improved training.
Similarly, counterfactual thinking tends to make people feel guilty or have negative
expectations about the consequences of the event. People can use counterfactual thinking to
avoid the situation or show avoidance behavior. Mostly the situations which are avoided may
make them feel unpleasant, and it can be hard to understand the cause of these events. It is good
to have positive behavior and think in a way that can change the life for the benefits of individual
as well as others. It can be more used when a group of people or one individual has failed to
achieve the set goals. It makes people to creatively and critically think of other alternatives that
are possible in achieving the set objectives or goals. It can act as motivation because people are
already prepared for the results, and they understand that they can be negative. When intentional
behavior is included in the counterfactual thinking, the performance can improve because of
various alternatives. On the other hand, people tend to have negative thoughts about the effects
or the outcomes of the situation (Son et al, 2017). The feeling of disappointments, regrets and
guilty about a certain event. However, functional basis helps in the correction of all those
mistakes and trying to avoid them in the future. The results of the discussion from the
counterfactual thinking showed out that it can be used to understand the behavior of people. This

ATTRIBUTION PROCESS OR BIASES 4
can be achieved through the study of the frequency of them updating status in Facebook and
making Tweets. It considers attributes of people who are professionals, different religion, social
class, well- being and political orientation.
Article two (Fundamental Attribution Error)
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) can also be referred to as a social error. It is the
overemphasizing on the individual characteristics when judging the behavior of other people and
ignoring situational factors. The error occurs because it is hard to know the behavioral cause and
anything that lead to lousy personality drive cause the potentiality of the error. The study shows
that human error can be as a result of oppression implications, moral judgments, victimization
and peer stress. The effects of human error on individuals can be reduced or eliminated through
the creation of awareness through conducting of training. The judgments of FAE show
attributions analysis deviating from the general principles (Zachariah Berry & Joel Frederickson,
2015). External influences and the situational factors mainly affect the behavior of an individual.
Most people tend to omit the situational factor which the person could not avoid when linking it
to the occurrence of a particular event but overemphasize on the personal character. An example
is when an observe causes something to happen to another person, but she or she judges based on
the particular personal attribute. In this case, individual underestimate his influence and judge
based on the behavior of the actor. People commit Fundamental Attribution error on a daily
basis. In most situations, people focus on the negative impacts of FAE implications forgetting
that it has its positives results. A person can commit a human error but based on the judgment,
and the attributions are accurate. When there is insufficient information to support the
discussion for FAE, then adverse outcomes can occur.

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Furthermore, negative outcomes which come as a result of FAE can have far-reaching or
serious outcomes. One member of a group can have stereotypes which are incorrect on another
person. The false stereotype can cause discrimination and misunderstanding among different
groups. One needs to examine and clearly understand the nature of the FAE before making any
judgment (Zachariah Berry & Joel Frederickson, 2015). When people are making attribution
errors, they tend to think of how they are susceptible without putting into considerations the
outcomes to other people. The action of a person can be influenced by the desires and emerging
beliefs of the work of the brain. From the experiences of others, people have developed the
capacity to make judgments, make choices, learn, pursue and achieve their goals. Natural
selection can implement the beliefs of the people depending on the culture and the environment
they are living in. Most of the people depend on intuitions for them to make a judgment which
can consequently affect the decision of the people. Victimization can be as a result of human
error especially when people are making a judgment about others. It is good for people to learn
how to explain the human error to avoid biases. The impacts it can have on people can be very
big, and there is a need to be conversant with the impacts on other people. Education and
awareness creation can be a key in the elimination of the biases and creation of the real motives.
References
Son, Y., Buffone, A., Raso, J., Larche, A., Janocko, A., Zembroski, K., ... & Ungar, L. (2017).
Recognizing Counterfactual Thinking in Social Media Texts. In Proceedings of the 55th
Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 2: Short
Papers) (Vol. 2, pp. 654-658).

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http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P17-2103
Zachariah Berry & Joel Frederickson, Ph.D. (2015). Explanations and implications of the
Fundamental attribution error. Bethel University, USA
http://www.jiss.org/documents/volume_5/issue_1/JISS%202015%205(1)%2044-
57%20FAE.pdf