Trait ascription bias

Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood
while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations.[1] More specifically, it is a tendency
to describe one's own behaviour in terms of situational factors while preferring to describe another's behaviour by ascribing fixed
dispositions to their personality. This may occur because peoples' own internal states are more readily observable and available to
them than those of others.

This attributional bias intuitively plays a role in the formation and maintenance of stereotypes and prejudice, combined with the
negativity effect. However, trait ascription and trait-based models of personality remain contentious in modern psychology and social
science research. Trait ascription bias refers to the situational and dispositional evaluation and description of personality traits on a
personal level. A similar bias on the group level is called theoutgroup homogeneity bias.

Contents
Overview
Evidence
The actor and the observer
Kammer et al.
The "trait" of ascribing traits
Theoretical basis
The availability heuristic
Attribution theory
Big Five personality traits
Mitigation
Criticism
See also
References
Further reading

Overview
Trait ascription and the cognitive bias associated with it have been a topic of active research for more than three decades.[2][3] Like
many other cognitive biases, trait ascription bias is supported by a substantial body of experimental research and has been explained
in terms of numerous theoretical frameworks originating in various disciplines. Among these frameworks are attribution theory
(related to how people determine causes of observed events), theories of personality description such as the five factor model,[4] and
work regarding the circumstances under which personality assessments are valid.[5] Seminal work includes Turner,[6] Jones,[7]
Kammer,[1] and Funder.[8] Incorrectly ascribing traits to other persons based on limited information or observations intuitively plays
a role in the formation and perpetuation of some social phenomena such as stereotypes and prejudice. As such, methods to mitigate
the effect of trait ascription bias on personality assessments outside of the lab are also of interest to social scientists. Although trait-
oriented theories of personality description, and indeed the very notion of universal, enduring traits themselves, have a natural
appeal,[4][9] some researchers are critical of their existence outside of the laboratory and present results which imply trait ascription,
and consequently trait ascription bias, are simply residue of the methodologies historically used to "detect" them.[6][10] Criticism is
based either on the non-existence of personality traits (contrary to five factor descriptions), or suggest divergent interpretations of
results and alternative mechanisms of ascription, limiting the scope of existing work.
Evidence
The empirical evidence supporting trait ascription and the psychological mechanisms underpinning it comes from a diverse body of
research in psychology and the social sciences.

The actor and the observer

Jones and Nisbett[7] were among the first to argue that people are biased in how they tend to ascribe traits and dispositions to others
that they would not ascribe to themselves. Motivated by the classic example of the student explaining poor performance to a
supervisor (in which the supervisor might superficially believe the student's explanations but really thinks the performance is due to
"enduring qualities": lack of ability, laziness, ineptitude, etc.) their actor-observer asymmetry argument forms the basis of
discourse[1][8][11] on trait ascription bias.

Kammer et al.
In a 1982 study involving fifty-six undergraduate psychology students from the University of Bielefeld, Kammer et al. demonstrated
that subjects rated their own variability on each of 20 trait terms to be considerably higher than their peers.[1] Building on the earlier
work of Jones and Nisbett,[7] which suggests people describe the behaviour of others in terms of fixed dispositions while viewing
their own behaviour as the dynamic product of complex situational factors, Kammer hypothesized that one's own behaviours are
judged to be less consistent (i.e. not as predictable) but of higher intensities (with regard to particular traits) than the behaviour of
others. The experiment had each student describe themselves as well as a same-sex friend using two identical lists of trait-descriptive
terms. For example, for the trait of dominance the student was first asked "In general, how dominant are you?" and then "How much
[1] Kammer's results strongly supported his hypothesis.
do you vary from one situation to another in how dominant you are?"

The "trait" of ascribing traits

David C. Funder's work[8] on the "trait" of ascribing personality traits investigates the psychology of individuals who tend not to
grant others the variability (i.e. lack of predictability) they grant themselves, instead preferring to ascribe traits and infer dispositional
explanations of behaviour. It had been generally established[7] that people ascribe more traits to others than to themselves, known as
the actor-observer asymmetry in attribution,[7] but Funder's hypthothesis was that some individuals are more inclined to make
dispositional trait attributions than others, regardless of who they are describing.[8] In the experiment, sixty-three undergraduates
filled out a series of questionnaires which asked them to describe themselves, their best friend, and an acquaintance. For each of
twenty pairs of polar opposite trait terms (e.g. "friendly—unfriendly") subjects either ranked the person on a discrete scale or chose
"depends on the situation", allowing the subject to "not make a dispositional ascription."[8] Based on third-party Q-Sort personality
descriptions of the subjects, certain negative personality traits were correlated with those subjects who tended to ascribe dispositions
to others, while traits such as "charming", "interesting", and "sympathetic" were associated[12] with those who preferred not to
ascribe traits. This result is consistent with the type of personality commonly associated with promoting
stereotypes and prejudice.

Theoretical basis
While trait ascription bias has been described by empirical results from various disciplines, most notably psychology and social
[4][13]
psychology, explaining the mechanism of the bias remains a contentious issue in the theory of personality description literature.

The availability heuristic

Tversky and Kahneman describe a cognitive heuristic that suggests people make judgments (including about other people's
personalities[14] ) on the basis of how easily examples of their (other people's) behaviour come to mind.[15][16] This would appear to
be consistent with the arguments of Jones and Nisbett[7] and the results observed by others[1][8] which found that people ascribe
fewer traits to friends than to acquaintances, and fewer still traits to themselves than to friends, implying ease of recall might be a
factor.
Attribution theory
Attribution plays a role in how people understand and judge the causes of the behaviour of others,[2] which in turn affects how they
ascribe traits to others. Attributional theory[17] is concerned with how people subsequently judge behavioural causes, which also
bears relevance to trait ascription and related biases. In particular, attribution (and attributional) theory can help explain the
[18]
mechanism by which individuals defer to ascribing dispositional traits vs. situational variability to observers.

Big Five personality traits

The big five personality traits (or five factor model) arguably[4][13] provides a robust set of traits by which personalities can be
accurately described. It supports the notion that there are cross-cultural, enduring traits which manifest in behaviour and can, if
correctly ascribed to individuals, provide an actor with predictive power over an observer
.

Mitigation
Trait ascription bias, regardless of the theoretical mechanisms underpinning it, intuitively plays a role in various social phenomenon
observed in the wild. Stereotyping, attitudes of prejudice and the negativity effect, among others, involve ascribing dispositions
(traits) to other people on the basis of little information, no information or simply "gut instincts", which amounts to trait ascription
bias. As such, some researchers[19] are interested in mitigating cognitive biasesto reduce their effects on society.

Criticism
Trait ascription bias has received criticism on a number of fronts.[6][13] In particular, some have argued that trait ascription, and the
notion of traits, are merely artefacts of methodology and that results contrary to conventional wisdom can be achieved with simple
changes to the experimental designs used.[1][8][13] Furthermore, the theoretical bases for trait ascription bias are criticized[13] for
failing to recognize constraints and "questionable conceptual" assumptions.

See also
Attribution (psychology)
Attribution theory
Availability heuristic
Bounded rationality
Cognitive bias
Forer effect
Fundamental attribution error
Illusion of asymmetric insight
Illusory superiority
Introspection illusion
List of biases in judgment and decision making
Naive cynicism
Prospect theory
Stereotyping
Ultimate attribution error

References
1. Kammer, D. (1982). "Differences in trait ascriptions to self and friend: Unconfounding intensity from variability".
Psychological Reports. 51 (1): 99–102. doi:10.2466/pr0.1982.51.1.99(https://doi.org/10.2466%2Fpr0.1982.51.1.99) .
2. Solomon, Sheldon (1978). "Measuring Dispositional and Situational Attributions".
Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin. 4 (4): 589–594. doi:10.1177/014616727800400419(https://doi.org/10.1177%2F014616727800400419) .
 3. Pronin, E; Ross, L (2006). "Temporal Differences in Trait Self-Ascription: When the Self Is Seen as an Other".
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 90 (2): 197–209. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.2.197(https://doi.org/10.1
037%2F0022-3514.90.2.197). PMID 16536646 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16536646).
4. Costa, Paul T.; McCrae, Robert R. (1992). "Four Ways Five Factors Are Basic".Personality and Individual
Differences. 13 (6): 653–665. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(92)90236-i(https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0191-8869%2892%29
90236-i).
5. Bem, Daryl J.; Allen, Andrea (1974). "On Predicting Some of the People Some of theime".
T Psychological Review.
81 (6): 506–520. doi:10.1037/h0037130 (https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0037130).
6. Turner, Robert G. (1978). "Effects of Differential Request Procedures and Self-Consciousn
ess on Trait Attributions".
Journal of Research in Personality. 12 (4): 431–438. doi:10.1016/0092-6566(78)90069-7(https://doi.org/10.1016%2
F0092-6566%2878%2990069-7).
7. Jones, Edward Ellsworth; Nisbett, Richard E. (1971).The actor and the observer: divergent perceptions of the
causes of behavior (https://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic628923.files/D_jones_nisbett1971pp79-94.pdf) (PDF).
pp. 79–94. In Jones, Edward E.; Kanouse, David E.; Kelley , Harold H.; Nisbett, Richard E.; Valins, Stuart; Weiner,
Bernard (1971). Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235361445
_Attribution_Perceiving_Causes_of_Behavior) . American Political Science Association.
8. Funder, David C. (1980). "The "Trait" of Ascribing Traits: Individual Differences in the Tendency to Trait Ascription".
Journal of Research in Personality. 14 (3): 376–385. doi:10.1016/0092-6566(80)90020-3(https://doi.org/10.1016%2
F0092-6566%2880%2990020-3).
9. Hirschberg, Nancy; Jennings, Susan J (1980). "Beliefs, Personality , Personal Perception: A Theory of Individual
Differences". Journal of Research in Personality. 14 (2): 235–249. doi:10.1016/0092-6566(80)90031-8(https://doi.or
g/10.1016%2F0092-6566%2880%2990031-8) .
10. Vonk, Roos (1993). "The Negativity Effect in Trait Ratings and in Open-Ended Descriptions of Persons".Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin. 19 (3): 269–278. doi:10.1177/0146167293193003(https://doi.org/10.1177%2F01461
67293193003).
11. Hampson, Sarah E (1983). "Trait Ascription and Depth of Acquaintance: The Preference for T raits in Personality
Descriptions and Its Relation to Target Familiarity". Journal of Research in Personality. 17 (4): 398–411.
doi:10.1016/0092-6566(83)90068-5(https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0092-6566%2883%2990068-5) .
12. Gaertner, Samuel L.; McLaughlin, John P. (1983). "Associations and Ascriptions of Positive and Negative
Characteristics". Social Psychology Quarterly. 46: 23–30. doi:10.2307/3033657 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F303365
7). JSTOR 3033657 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3033657).
13. Block, Jack (1995). "A Contrarian View of the Five-Factor Approach to Personality Description".Psychological
Bulletin. 117 (2): 187–215. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.2.187(https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0033-2909.117.2.187) .
PMID 7724687 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7724687).
14. Schwarz, Norbert; Bless, Herbert; Strack, Fritz; Klumpp, Gisela; Rittenauer-Schatka, Helga; Simons, Annette (1991).
"Ease of Retrieval as Information: Another Look at the A
vailability Heuristic". Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology. 61 (2): 195–202. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.195(https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0022-3514.61.2.195) .
15. Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel (1973). "Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability".Cognitive
Psychology. 5 (1): 207–233. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9(https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0010-0285%2873%299
0033-9).
16. Kahneman, Daniel; Tversky, Amos (January 1982). "The psychology of preferences".Scientific American. 246: 160–
173. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0182-160(https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fscientificamerican0182-160)
.
17. Kelley, Harold H.; Michela, John L. (1980). "Attribution Theory and Research".Annual Review of Psychology. 31:
457–501. doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.31.020180.002325 (https://doi.org/10.1146%2Fannurev.ps.31.020180.002325).
PMID 20809783 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20809783).
18. Kenrick, Douglas T.; Funder, David C. (1988). "Profiting From Controversy: Lessons Fromthe Person-Situation
Debate". American Psychologist. 43 (1): 23–34. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.43.1.23(https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0003-06
6x.43.1.23). PMID 3279875 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3279875).
19. Ariely, Dan (2009). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions(https://books.google.com/bo
oks?id=kApgNtTsAccC). HarperCollins Publishers.ISBN 9780007319923.

Further reading
 Gilbert, Daniel T.; Malone, Patrick S. (1995)."The Correspondence Bias"(PDF). Psychological Bulletin. 117 (1): 21–
38. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21. PMID 7870861.

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