The Person and the Situation by Nisbett Richard E. & Ross Lee

Author:Nisbett, Richard E. & Ross, Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinter & Martin
Published: 2011-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE COHERENCE OF EVERYDAY SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

We begin this chapter with a personal confession. Despite all the evidence we have seen from objective studies of behavioral consistency (described in Chapter 4), and despite all we know about cognitive illusions and lay shortcomings in behavioral prediction (described in Chapter 5), we continue to believe that our own social world is inhabited by people who behave quite differently from each other in ways that are, for the most part, quite consistent. We would insist that Chuck, the ebullient clown of the freshman dorm; Norbert, the shy computer whiz who won a scholarship to M.I.T.; and Butch, the bully who long ago terrorized the entire third grade, really were distinct individuals who behaved in markedly different ways from each other and from their peers, not just in one situation but across many situations. We cannot be convinced, moreover, that our stereotypes and expectations about these individuals biased our interpretations of their behavior to such a degree that we saw distinctiveness and consistency where none existed.

We do not deny that our interpretations of people’s actions frequently take into account our knowledge of their past behavior and our general impressions about their personality. We would concede, for example, that while we interpreted Chuck’s bright red suspenders as a comic attention-getting device, we probably would have attributed the same suspenders on Norbert to a strange sense of fashion or a general lack of concern about appearance. Similarly, we remember that when Butch sat quietly off to the side of the playground during the lunch hour, we did not revise our view of his aggressiveness or see his standoffishness as evidence of any inconsistency in character or temperament. On the contrary, we attributed his behavior to sulkiness, and tacitly assumed he was sitting there planning new acts of intimidation. These are attributions we never would have made if the same standoffishness had been displayed by a child with a less aggressive reputation. But in conceding interpretation biases, we are not conceding that we have been guilty of any inferential folly. In fact, we would insist that we were correct to give weight to our prior experiences and more global impressions about people, and that completely “unbiased” interpretation would have led us astray more often than it enlightened us.

We would make similar claims about our performance as real-world prognosticators. While we recognize that we frequently have been guilty of overconfidence, we would insist that many of the real-world predictions we make with a high degree of confidence have an equally high degree of accuracy. We’re sure that Coach Whiplasch will treat his team to some harsh language after their dismal first-half performance, that Aunt Edith will insist on singing at the next family wedding, and that good old Charlie will agree to drive us to the airport early on Sunday morning (and even accept our thanks with a wave of the hand and the assurance that it will be “no trouble at all”). And we insist that our

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