Through Mischievous Eyes

My dad and I are two peas in a pod. In fact, it wouldn’t even be an exaggeration to call him one of my best friends. Because of our similarities, whenever I would do something reckless or stupid in high school my mother would be the one to fly into a rage and he wouldn’t think of it as a big deal. School pranks, protests, spending too much time with friends – those were all things he did at my age too.

While my dad would stand by during our arguments, my mom and I would play out our respective roles in the actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Watson, 1982). The actor-observer effect is the tendency for an individual to attribute his or her own actions to a situational cause (e.g., having a bad day, being sick) and to attribute other people’s actions to a personal cause (e.g., being a bad person, being unintelligent). From my point of view I was the “actor” while my mom filled the role of the “observer.”

To illustrate, we’ll use the night I pulled my senior prank – though it was closer to morning by the time our argument played out. As the “actor” I attributed my desired to climb the football stadium lights with 30-ft banners at 2 a.m. to situational factors; pranks are part of high school and it’s important to do something epic to remember it. As the “observer” my mother attributed my actions to my personal characteristics; I was irresponsible, rebellious, and reckless.

Why was I so sure I wasn’t a bad person for doing it? Why was my mother so sure that I was? There are two simple reasons for this: information and perspective.

As the actor, I had more information about myself and how I act in different situations. I knew that climbing 150 feet above the gridiron wasn’t really all that hard or dangerous. I knew that I was a cautious climber and that I hadn’t actually done anything illegal (i.e., I didn’t damage any property in the process). Moreover, I knew that even though I was being a little wild at the time, on any other day I was normally just a regular kid who followed the rules. My mother didn’t have access to this information.

Additionally, from my perspective I could see the factors outside of myself (e.g., everyone’s hope to commemorate their last year with their life-long friends). My mom could only see me, the “actor,” and was oblivious to the surrounding circumstances.

Interestingly, my father, as my mischievous inspiration (viz., the Texas A&M cafeteria armadillo release of 1978), had access to the information and could see things from the perspective that my mother – a Filipino immigrant who attended an all girls Catholic school (with real live nuns and everything!) – could not. In some ways he was an “actor” just like me. Therefore, the actor-observer effect did not interfere with our fun the way it did with my mom and I.

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Jones, E., & Nisbett, R. (1987). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79-94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Watson, D. (1982). The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent? Psychological Bulletin, 92, 682-700.