Actor–Observer Asymmetries

Definition

Social psychologists speak of an observer perspective when someone perceives, thinks about, or makes a judgment about another person, and they speak of the actor perspective when someone thinks or makes a judgment about himself or herself. So if Jared storms out the door and Evelyn wonders why he does that, Evelyn is in the observer perspective and Jared is in the actor perspective. When the actor and the observer arrive at different judgments, we are faced with an actor–observer asymmetry.

Importance

Why are actor–observer asymmetries interesting? Actor and observer are the two fundamental perspectives in social cognition: People make judgments either about self or about others; there is no third. So to understand the nature of social cognition, scientists must understand the nature of these two perspectives, especially the conditions under which they differ. That is because some of the biggest challenges of social life involve the discrepancy between actor and observer perspectives. For example, people typically know why they act the way they do, but often they are confused about why others act the way they do. Similarly, to get along with others it isn't enough to understand our own goals and attitudes; we need to understand other people's goals and attitudes as well—especially when they might be different from our own. Actor–observer asymmetries cause gaps in people's understanding of the social world, and scientific research on actor–observer asymmetries tries to identify these gaps and perhaps sharpen people's tools to bridge the gaps—tools such as explanation, perspective taking, and negotiation.

The Classic Hypothesis

The primary actor–observer asymmetry social psychologists have studied is an asymmetry in causal attribution—in how actors and observer explain social behavior or social outcomes. Suppose a student received a D on the statistics exam; why did he or she receive this grade? As observers, we might think the student didn't study or just isn't good at statistics. But if the student is asked to explain the D, the student might say that the exam was very hard or that the teacher must have graded it harshly. This difference in explanations is typically described as one between observers citing person causes—causes that reside in the actor (the student didn't study or lacks ability)—and the actor citing situation causes—causes that lie outside the actor (the exam was hard or the teacher graded harshly). This is in fact what social psychologists Edward E. Jones and Richard Nisbett formulated in 1972 as the now classic actor–observer hypothesis: Actors tend to explain their own behavior with situation causes, whereas observers tend to explain the actor's behavior with person causes. Virtually all textbooks in social psychology and general psychology mention this hypothesis and describe it as a well-established truth. But a hypothesis is only as good as the research evidence that supports it, so what does the research say?

Empirical Tests

Recently, Bertram Malle reviewed more than 100 research articles that had tested the classic actor– observer hypothesis. When the results of all these [Page 10]articles were averaged, there was very little evidence that the hypothesis is true. How little evidence? Researchers can measure the strength of a hypothesis by determining how much better it allows them to predict an event than a blind guess would. If researchers try to predict whether an actor will cite a person cause or a situation cause, they could either guess (e.g., flip a coin), and will by chance be correct in 50% of cases, or they could use the actor–observer hypothesis. If they rely on this hypothesis, they will be correct in 53% of the cases. Thus, the classic actor–observer hypothesis is barely better than a blind guess.

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