Self and Other in the Explanation of Behavior 30 Years Later

It has been hypothesized that actors lend to attribute behavior to the situation whereas observers tend to attribute behavior to the person (Jones & Nisbett 1972). The authors argue that this simple hypothesis fails to capture the complexity of actual actor-observer differences in people’s behavioral explanations. A new framework is proposed in which reason explanations are distinguished from explanations that cite causes, especially stable traits. With this framework in place, it becomes possible to show that there are a number of distinct actor-observer asymmetries in explanation, each stemming from a distinct psychological process by which explanations are generated.