AP Psychology: Attribution Theory and Person Perception (Drill 19)

Question 1. Marcus is driving to work when another car cuts sharply in front of him. He immediately thinks, "What a jerk, that driver must be selfish and aggressive." That afternoon, Marcus himself cuts in front of another driver because he is running late for a meeting. When he gets home, he explains that he "had no choice" because of traffic and his schedule. Which pattern of attribution best describes Marcus's thinking across the two events?

• A) Self-serving bias, because Marcus takes credit for success and blames failure on external factors
• B) Actor-observer bias, because Marcus attributes others' behavior to disposition but his own behavior to the situation ✓
• C) Just-world hypothesis, because Marcus believes people generally get the outcomes they deserve
• D) Fundamental attribution error, because Marcus underestimates situational factors in all cases

Explanation: The defining feature of Marcus's thinking is the split: he explains the other driver's behavior with a personality trait but explains his own identical behavior with circumstances. That asymmetry between observer and actor perspectives is actor-observer bias. (D) is a common misconception trap, the fundamental attribution error does describe overattributing others' behavior to disposition, but it doesn't capture the self-exempting half of the pattern. (A) is true-but-irrelevant here because no success or failure is being evaluated. [Practice 1]

Question 2. A student receives an A on a chemistry exam and thinks, "I worked really hard and I'm good at this subject." The following week she receives a D on a different chemistry exam and thinks, "That test was unfair, the questions covered material we barely discussed." Which attribution pattern does her thinking illustrate?

• A) Fundamental attribution error
• B) Actor-observer bias
• C) Self-serving bias ✓
• D) Just-world hypothesis

Explanation: The student attributes her success to internal factors (effort and ability) and her failure to external factors (an unfair test), the self-serving bias, which protects self-esteem by crediting the self for positive outcomes and blaming circumstances for negative ones. (A) is wrong because no judgment about another person is being made. (B) is the most tempting trap, actor-observer bias involves comparing self and other, but here both events are about the student's own behavior, so the relevant asymmetry is between success and failure, not between actor and observer. [Practice 1]

Question 3. A psychologist surveys 300 adults about a news story describing a person who lost their home in a natural disaster. Participants are asked to rate their agreement with statements like "People usually end up in situations they have helped create." Those who scored high in religiosity and belief in fate showed higher agreement with these statements than those who scored low. Which of the following does this finding most directly support?

• A) The just-world hypothesis, the tendency to interpret victims' misfortune as deserved, varies across individuals and can influence how observers evaluate those affected by disaster ✓
• B) Natural disasters cause affected people to develop markedly stronger religious beliefs over time
• C) Religious individuals are less likely than non-religious individuals to help disaster victims
• D) Attribution theory predicts that all observers will blame victims for their misfortune

Explanation: Agreement with "people create their own situations" tracks with the core of the just-world hypothesis: believing that victims somehow deserved their fate. The survey shows that this tendency varies across individuals rather than being universal. (B) reverses the causal direction implied by the data: this is a correlational finding between preexisting beliefs and attributions, not evidence that the disaster caused religiosity. (D) is an overgeneralization, the just-world hypothesis describes a tendency that varies across people and contexts, not a universal response. [Practice 3]

Question 4. A researcher wants to test whether people commit the fundamental attribution error when evaluating a stranger's behavior. She shows participants a video of a student giving a speech that strongly endorses a controversial policy, while clearly telling participants beforehand that the student was assigned the topic and required to argue for that position. Participants are then asked to rate how much the speaker personally agrees with the policy. Which result would most strongly support the fundamental attribution error?

• A) Participants rate the speaker as personally neutral about the policy, reflecting awareness of the situational constraint in this attribution study
• B) Participants rate the speaker as personally agreeing with the policy, as if the speech reflected genuine belief despite being assigned ✓
• C) Participants refuse to rate the speaker at all because the experimental situation was artificial
• D) Participants' ratings depend entirely on whether they personally agree with the policy

Explanation: The fundamental attribution error predicts that observers under-weight situational constraints (the assigned topic) and over-weight dispositional inferences (the speaker "must really believe this"). A finding that participants rate the speaker as personally agreeing with the policy, despite being told the speaker had no choice, is exactly that pattern. (A) would actually be the opposite of what the FAE predicts: it shows participants correctly accounting for the situation. (D) is true-but-irrelevant: participants' own attitudes can influence ratings through other biases, but that isn't what the fundamental attribution error refers to. [Practice 2]

Question 5. A college student who has just failed a job interview explains the outcome by thinking, "I always mess things up; I'm just not the kind of person who succeeds at anything." A psychologist would likely classify this thinking style as an example of:

• A) The self-serving bias, because the student is making an internal attribution
• B) An optimistic explanatory style, because the student is taking personal responsibility
• C) Stereotype threat, because the student is anxious about confirming a negative group stereotype
• D) A pessimistic explanatory style, because the student attributes failure to internal, stable, and global causes ✓

Explanation: The student's thinking hits all three dimensions of a pessimistic explanatory style: internal ("I mess things up"), stable ("always"), and global ("not the kind of person who succeeds at anything"). (B) is wrong because an optimistic explanatory style attributes failures to external, unstable, and specific causes, the opposite of what this student is doing. (A) flips the self-serving bias, which protects self-esteem by blaming external factors for failure rather than attributing failure to a global internal flaw. (C) is true-but-irrelevant: stereotype threat is a real phenomenon, but nothing in the scenario mentions group membership or stereotypes. [Practice 1]