Videotape and the attribution process: Reversing actors' and observers' points of view.

Abstract

Two actor subjects at a time engaged in a brief, unstructured conversation while two observer subjects looked on. Later a questionnaire measured the actors' attributions of their own behavior in the conversation either to dispcsitional, internal causes or to situational, external causes. Similarly, each observer attributed his matched actor's behavior. Videotapes of the conversation, replayed to subjects before the attribution questionnaire, provided an experimental manipulation of visual orientation. Some actors and observers saw no videotape replay, while other subjects saw a tape that merely repeated their original visual orientations. As predicted for both of these conditions, the actors attributed relatively more to the situation than the observers. A third set of subjects saw a videotape taken from a new perspective—some actors saw a tape of themselves, while some observers saw the other participant with whom their matched actor had been conversing. With this reorientation, self-viewing actors attributed relatively more to their own dispositions than observers. The results indicated the importance of visual orientation in determining attributional differences between actors and observers. Pragmatically, the theoretical framework and results of the study had relevance to the use of videotape self-observation in therapy and T groups. When an individual observes a behavior and attempts to understand its causes, he is concerned with the relative importance of personal dispositions of the actor and the surrounding social and environmental context. Both an observer who wishes to explain another's behavior and an actor who tries to understand his own behavior attempt to make the appropriate causal attributions. There is reason to believe, however, that actors and observers do not always arrive at the same explanation of the actor's behavior. Jones and Nisbett (1971) have argued that when actors seek to explain their own behavior, they are inclined to give considerable weight to external, environmental (i.e., situational) causes. Observers, on the other hand, place considerably more emphasis on internal, personal (i.e., dispositional) causes of the actor's behavior. 1 The research for this article was performed as part of the author's PhD dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology, Yale University. The author wishes to express his appreciation to Richard E. Nisbett, who served as advisor for the thesis and who has contributed many helpful criticisms of the present article. 2 Requests for reprints should be sent to the au