Journal Entry #1

2/18/13

Journal Entry #1

Attribution Errors

Very recently I was on the West Coast touring with my favorite band. Needless to say, it was truly the opportunity of a lifetime. On one of the days of the trip, my group and I had the special opportunity of actually meeting the band members in person and getting a photo with them. After lots of waiting around in hallways, we were finally allowed through the secure doors to greet them. We were guided into the band’s dressing room and upon entering, were greeted by the jubilant bass guitarist, shortly followed by the drummer, and lead singer/guitarist. I am still not quite sure how I managed not to feint. The time came to shake each of the band member’s hands in introduction. My group got into a single file line and I was the first in it to shake each band member’s hand. Everything was going well; the band was lined up in the order of – the bassist, the lead singer, and then the drummer. Unbeknownst to me, as I began to extend my hand toward the bassist – because he was the first in their line – the drummer quickly snuck around from the back of the line to the front. I, however, was already in the process of shaking the bassist’s hand, and by some weird stroke of luck (or maybe due to my long bangs blocking that side of my vision) did not at all see the drummer appear. So of course, I go on to shaking the lead singer’s hand, exchanging a quick “Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you, etc.” After he moves on to the next person, suddenly I am left with empty space. Where I thought the drummer should be – there was no one. I looked back at the rest of the line, hoping to see what had happened. By then he was shaking my other friends’ hands, and I had been totally left out. 

At that point, I wondered if maybe he had skipped me for some reason or if perhaps he just did not want to shake my hand. Feeling kind of bummed, we went on to have a short conversation with the band, and took a picture together, to continue on with the rest of the night with me having the wrong impression.  

Until after the concert, I had not heard about what actually happened. I went on through the day thinking that it was something weird about the drummer that caused him to skip me in line. Naturally, I was making dispositional attributions, thinking what had happened was due to the drummer’s personality. However, there was more to the situation than I gave credit for.

As my friends and I began to relive the moments of meeting the band, I learn that the reason I randomly missed the drummer in line was because he didn't want to be last. However, in the process of him doing so, he was too late to shake my hand and I was then by consequence too late to shake his. Unfortunately, my accidental skipping of him in line made him throw his hands up into the air and make a displeased face. He actually thought I snubbed him on purpose even though I still wanted to greet him! This whole time, he too, was making dispositional attributions for my behavior.

Both of us made the fundamental attribution error – not factoring in the effects of the situation on a person’s behavior. The situation for me was that I was too excited by meeting my favorite band to notice many things going on around me, and I wasn't about to stop in the middle of shaking the bassist’s hand suddenly to shake the drummer’s hand and then awkwardly have to go back to shaking the bassist’s hand. Of course, it is not instinctual to assume this in the 30 seconds that the behaviors occurred between the drummer and me. His first thought was probably that I was a snobby young adult who only like two out of the three band members. I also did not take the drummer’s situation into account when making attributions. I did not think that perhaps he felt left out or that he didn't think he was actually in line. By moving to the front, maybe he thought he was actually getting in line instead of just hanging out on the side of the group. Perhaps he did not realize he had skipped me at all, and was waiting for us to all form a line as well.

This line of thought seems to follow Jones and Davis’ “Correspondent Inference Theory” (1965), in which it is thought that behaviors that are unexpected or socially undesirable are due to someone’s personality, because the situation at the time does not call for those behaviors exhibited. Neither the drummer nor I expected the apparent rudeness of the other because the situation we were in (me being a huge fan and him being the celebrity) called for both of us to be polite to each other.

Hopefully, the drummer was able to eventually reason out that I am not the terribly discourteous person that he probably thought I was at the time. At this point I have gotten over it (mostly).