Defensive attribution hypothesis

A defensive attribution may also be used to protect the person's self-esteem if, despite everything, the mishap does occur, because blame can be assigned to the "other" (person or situation). The use of defensive attributions is considered a cognitive bias because an individual will change their beliefs about a situation based upon their motivations or desires rather than the factual characteristics of the situation.

Research

Walster (1966) hypothesized that it can be frightening to believe that a misfortune could happen to anyone at random, and attributing responsibility to the person(s) involved helps to manage this emotional reaction.

Shaver (1970) recognized that the similarity of the witness to the person(s) involved in the misfortune – in terms of situation, age, gender, personality, etc. – changes the amount of responsibility one is ready to ascribe. Where Walster's work suggested increases in attributed responsibility, Shaver's concept of "defensive attribution" argued for minimization of assigned responsibility based on perceived similarities between the attributor and the person(s) involved. Shaver was able to demonstrate this response by describing events to test subjects; varying the situations and people described to either match or be significantly different from the subjects: as similarity with witnesses increased, attributions of responsibility decreased.

In 1981 Jerry Burger published a meta-analysis of 22 peer-reviewed studies on the defensive attribution hypothesis, in which he found strong evidence to support Shaver's hypothesized negative relationship between similarity and responsibility.