Week 6 Assignment

For this week’s assignment, I have a great example of the Actor-Observer Effect. I grew up with a girl in high school who just happened to have a nearly identical school schedule as myself; for four years we had nearly every class together. She was bright, but every time she did poorly on a test, she attributed her performance to some situational factor or another. What’s interesting is that these factors differed with nearly every occasion. One time, she told me she didn’t get enough sleep. Another time, the teacher didn’t tell her exactly what to cover. Another time, she just didn’t put forth great effort because the rest of her grades were satisfactory. Yet another time, her dog was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and she was too upset to study (I promise – these are all true). Could the variability in the responses possibly give her more validity as she tried to use situational factors as a cause for her poor performance?

On the other hand, her successes were pretty well boasted about – to the point where she almost became “that girl” in the class who made it aware (whether in subtle ways or not) that she earned a good grade. She would sometimes be coy about it: “Well, you know, the only reason why I did so well was because I started studying last Thursday, you know, before the study guide was even handed out.” Does this method of expression, on the other hand, lend support to the idea that thought she was participating in the Actor-Observer Effect, she didn’t want to proclaim her successes in a way that directly shouted, “Look at me, I’m super”…?