![]() We may feel angry with someone who cuts in front of us while we're cruising at the designated speed but feels very justified in doing it ourselves if we are in a hurry to arrive someplace on time. We tend to look more favorably on our actions than we do on those of others. If somebody is late for an appointment, we may believe they are being discourteous and are making up excuses for being late, but if we miss our appointments by twenty minutes, it's because something unexpected came up that we had to deal with first. We have an expectancy of other people's actions that don't conform to our own. ![]() As the actor-observer, we are swayed by both behavior and our actions. If even the biases of researchers throw off the finding of their scientific studies, the actor-observer biases of our daily lives throw a complete reality curve. They may justify the qualities of a girl's mathematic skills by stating she had to study harder and take more time to arrive at her math solutions than the boys did. Likewise, a researcher whose opinion is that girls are less capable of understanding math than boys may focus more on how well the boys are doing and less on the successful girls. Our observations may tell us a man who crochets has a strong feminine side, not that he finds crocheting something relaxing to do with his fingers. Typically, people have pre-conceived ideas of the differences in male and female capabilities. One of the greatest observer biases relates to gender association. But his influence on the educational system was great enough for England to separate out the economic classes throughout the 1960s, with the upper-middle-class children attending the more favored schools and the lower-class children attending the less desirable ones. Much of his statistical work included case studies and IQ test results and was later dismissed as observer bias. He believed children of low economic status were most likely to have lower intelligence than those who came from higher economic status. The APA defines observer bias as “any expectations, beliefs, or personal preferences of a researcher that unintentionally influence his or her recordings during an observational study.” Examples Of Observer BiasĪ prime example of observer bias involves psychologist Cyril Burt (March 3, 1883- October 10, 1971), best known for his work on hereditary IQ. Many of them have to do with stereotypical thoughts about people or a group of people based on factors such as race, gender identity, socioeconomic background, etc. Many of our preconceived notions are so subtle and so deeply integrated that we don't acknowledge they are there.
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