The blogosphere and fundamental attribution error

Recently released reporter Carroll renounced her coerced video statements.

''During my last night of captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video..."
''They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed."
[Carroll's] statements in a recent video -- in which she praised her captors and spoke out against the American military presence in Iraq -- do not reflect her personal views, she said...
Those statements had set off a torrent of criticism on talk radio and among bloggers on the Internet. Some suggested Carroll was suffering from Stockholm syndrome, where captives begin to identify with their kidnappers. Some contributors to blogs suggested her kidnapping was staged to provide propaganda for the insurgents, and called her no better than her captors. One blogger said Carroll should be charged with treason upon her return, and some alleged she was indicative of a media biased against the war.

These critics in particular are judging Carroll's statements from a dispositional standpoint, preferring to conclude that she was acting upon her own volition, rather than acting under duress. It appears that these particularly critical bloggers were evincing fundamental attribution error.

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (sometimes referred to as the actor-observer bias, correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. In other words, people tend to have a default assumption that what a person does is based more on what "kind" of person he is, rather than the social and environmental forces at work on that person. This default assumption leads to people sometimes making erroneous explanations for behavior. This general bias to over-emphasizing dispositional explanations for behavior at the expense of situational explanations is much less likely to occur when people evaluate their own behavior.

This behavior on the part of some bloggers was not surprising. In fact, we should expect conservative bloggers to evince fundamental attribution bias more often, as people who are prone to fundamental attribution bias would tend to come to conclusions which fall in line with conservative stances on social issues. This phenomenon is well-known to psychologists. In fact, an explanation of why psychologists seem more liberal can be found in this passage in a column titled A Line on Life: Errors in Explaining Behavior – Why Psychologists Are So "Liberal" by David A. Gershaw, Ph.D.

... psychologists are more aware of the biases of attribution, so they are more likely to be aware of situational factors. This view makes us seem more liberal. As a nation, we are greatly concerned with reducing crime. If we see criminal acts as dispositional – as do most conservatives – we will emphasize stiffer penalties and more prisons. If we emphasize situational factors – as more liberals do – we will promote improving conditions for disadvantaged children to prevent them from becoming criminals.

In line with expectations from psychology, the most critical bloggers advocated stiff penalties in the form of charges of treason.