What is the main point of the quizmaster study?
a. People will overlook obvious dispositional influences on their behavior.
b. People will attack other people by claiming situational influences are making them behave badly.
c. People will defend themselves by claiming situational influences changed their behavior.
d. People will overlook obvious situational influences on behavior.
The Correct Answer and Explanation is :
The correct answer is A: People will overlook obvious dispositional influences on their behavior.
The quizmaster study refers to a famous psychological experiment conducted by Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris in 1967. The study aimed to investigate the fundamental attribution error, a common psychological phenomenon where people tend to attribute others’ behaviors to their dispositions (personality traits, attitudes, etc.) rather than to situational factors.
In the quizmaster study, participants were assigned roles as either quizmasters (who created difficult trivia questions) or contestants (who answered the questions). The quizmasters had an inherent advantage because they had prior knowledge of the questions, while the contestants did not. Despite the quizmasters’ clear advantage, the participants were still more likely to attribute the behavior of the quizmasters to their personal qualities—such as intelligence or skill—rather than considering the situational factor that the quizmasters had been given an easier position in the experiment.
The main point of the study was to show that even when it is obvious that situational influences (such as the advantage of being a quizmaster) are at play, people still tend to overlook these influences and instead focus on dispositional factors, such as the individual’s traits or abilities. This tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations while minimizing situational factors is known as the fundamental attribution error.
This bias is significant because it shapes how we view others’ behaviors in everyday life, often leading to misjudgments. For example, when someone fails a test, we may assume they are not smart, rather than considering external factors such as inadequate preparation time or a lack of sleep. The quizmaster study is critical for understanding how people tend to interpret behaviors and interactions in a skewed way that emphasizes personality traits over the influence of external circumstances.