3 - Attribution and Social Explanation Flashcards
Attribution?
The process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour and that of others
Naive Psychologist?
Model of social cognition that characterises people as using rational, scientific-like, cause– effect analyses to understand their world
Internal (or dispositional) attribution?
Process of assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviour to internal or dispositional factors
External (or situational) attribution?
Assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviour to external or environmental factors
Correspondent Inference?
Jones and Davis, causal attribution of behaviour to underlying dispositions
Non-common effects?
Effects of behaviour that are relatively exclusive to that behaviour rather than other behaviours
Outcome Bias?
Belief that the outcomes of a behaviour were intended by the person who chose the behaviour
Personalism?
Behaviour that appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm oneself rather than others
Hedonic Relevance?
Refers to behaviour that has important direct consequences for self
Covariation Model?
Kelley’s theory of causal attribution – people assign the cause of behaviour to the factor that covaries most closely with the behaviour
Consistency Information?
Information about the extent to which a behaviour Y always co-occurs with a stimulus X
Distinctiveness Information?
Information about whether a person’s reaction occurs only with one stimulus or is a common reaction to many stimuli
Consensus Information?
Information about the extent to which other people react in the same way to a stimulus X
Discount?
If there is no consistent relationship between a specific cause and a specific behaviour, that cause is discounted in favour of some other cause
Causal Schemata?
Experience based beliefs about how certain types interact to produce an effect, to deal with the need for multiple observations
Self Perception Theory?
Bem’s idea that we gain knowledge of ourselves only by making self-attributions: for example, we infer our own attitudes from our own behaviour
Cognitive Miser?
A model of social cognition that characterises people as using the least complex and demanding cognitions that generally produce adaptive behaviours
Motivated Tactician?
A model of social cognition that characterises people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, which they choose from based on personal goals, motives and needs
Correspondence Bias?
A general attribution bias in which people have an inflated tendency to see behaviour as reflecting (corresponding to) stable underlying personality attributes
Essentialism?
Pervasive tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and immutable, often innate, properties of people or the groups they belong to
The Actor-Observer Effect?
Tendency to attribute our own behaviours externally and others’ behaviours internally
Self Serving Biases?
Attributional distortions that protect or enhance self-esteem or the self-concept
Self-Handicapping?
Publicly making advance external attributions for our anticipated failure or poor performance in a forthcoming event
Illusion of Control?
Belief that we have more control over our world than we really do
Belief in a Just World?
Belief that the world is a just and predictable place where good things happen to ‘good people’ and bad things to ‘bad people’
Intergroup Attribution?
Process of assigning the cause of one’s own or others’ behaviour to group membership
Ethnocentrism?
Evaluative preference for all aspects of our own group relative to other groups
Social Identity Theory?
Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorisation, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties
