3- Attributions Flashcards
What does the Heider-Simmel illusion test for?
The hypothesis that people see shapes moving around as having personalities and intentions
What do we want to do according to the Heider-Simmel illusion?
To come up with adequate explanations for ours and others’ behaviours
What do people have a strong natural tendency to do?
See random shapes moving as rational beings with feelings and intentions
What is an attribution?
Action of making inferences about behaviour
Who proposed the naive psychologist theory?
Heider, 1958
What does the naive psychologist theory believe about people?
People are intuitive psychologists
What do people want to come up with according to the naive scientist theory?
Theories that are causal
What do we want to use? (Naive psychologist theory)
Stable and enduring properties
Why do we want to use stable and enduring properties? (naive psychologist theory)
To make it easier to control and predict
What do people stick to? (naive psychologist theory)
Internal explanations in spite of evidence for external
What are the three principles of the naive psychologist theory?
- Behaviour is motivated- we look for causes of people’s behaviours
- We search for stable and enduring properties
- Two explanations- internal (dispositional) or external (situational)
What is involved in internal (dispositional) explanations?
Personality and ability
What is involved in external (situational) explanations?
Situations and social pressure
Who came up with the correspondent inference theory?
Jones and Davis, 1965
What is the key question investigated by the correspondent inference theory?
When do we infer internal causes from people’s behaviour?
What do we like doing according to the correspondent inference theory?
Making correspondent inferences
What do we attribute behaviour to according to the correspondent inference theory?
Underlying disposition
What style is the dispositional cause in the correspondent inference theory?
Stable
What five sources of information/cues are needed to make a correspondent inference?
- Freely chosen behaviour
- Behaviour with few non-common effects
- Socially undesirable behaviour
- Important direct consequences for self
- Intention to benefit/harm us
What do non-common effects provide?
Inferences about someone’s disposition
What is the problem when there is none or a few non-common effects?
It is difficult for us to make a correspondent inference when there are none/few non-common effects
Why is socially undesirable behaviour more useful than socially desirable behaviour?
Socially undesirable behaviour gives us a better basis to make a correspondent inference
What is hedonic relevance?
Important direct consequences for the self
What is personalism?
The intention to benefit/harm us
Who came up with the covariation model?
Kelley, 1967
What is the key question involved in the covariation model?
How do we explain people’s behaviour?
What do we aim to do according to the covariation model?
Assign a causal role of a factor by identifying which factor (internal/external) covaries most closely with the behaviour
What are the three classes of information to assess in the covariation model?
- Consistency- how the person acts in response to the same stimulus over time?
- Distinctiveness- how the person acts in response to similar stimuli that are not the same?
- Consensus- how other people act in response to the same stimulus?
What does the covariation model see as the most important indicator of disposition?
Consistency
Who came up with the attributional theory?
Weiner, 1979
What is the key question investigated in the attributional theory?
How do we explain our own task performance and other people’s?
What are the three performance dimensions in the attributional theory?
- Locus- if performance is caused by the actor (internal) or situation (external)
- Stability- stable or unstable cause
- Controllability- if future task performance is under the actor’s control
Who came up with the fundamental attribution error?
Ross, 1977
What is the fundamental attribution error?
Tendency to see other people’s actions as internally caused, rather than situationally caused even when there are clear external causes
Who investigated the fundamental attribution error?
Jones and Harris
How did Jones and Harris investigate the fundamental attribution error?
US presidents read a pro or anti Castro speech- were either instructed to write or freely chose a perspective
What did Jones and Harris find?
The external cause was still largely disregarded when perspective was freely chosen, and people preferred to make dispositional explanations even when they were instructed to write a perspective
Who came up with the actor-observer bias?
Jones and Nisbett, 1972
What is the actor-observer bias?
The tendency to see other people’s actions as internally caused and own as situationally caused even when explaining the same actions
When were mostly external causes attributed?
When explaining own rudeness towards someone else
When were mostly internal causes attributed?
To the person ourselves when explaining someone else’s rudeness towards ourselves
What are self-serving biases?
We tend to make attributions that satisfy our desire for a favourable image of ourselves
What are the three types of self-serving biases?
Self-enhancing bias, self-protecting bias, self-handicapping
What is the self-enhancing bias?
We make internal attributions to our positive behaviours and successes
What is the self-protecting bias?
We make external attributions to our negative behaviours and failures
What is self-handicapping?
We make a public external attribution for anticipated failures or poor performance
Who came up with the ultimate attribution error?
Pettigrew, 1979
What is the ultimate attribution error?
The tendency to attribute bad outgroup and good ingroup behaviour internally, and to attribute good outgroup and bad ingroup behaviour externally
What was involved in Taylor and Jaggi’s experiment?
Hindus described their own ingroup vs the outgroup (Muslims) who were either behaving in a positive or negative way
What did Taylor and Jaggi find?
We make more internal attributions when explaining ingroup positive behaviour and less when explaining negative behaviour
What does WEIRD research describe?
A lack of diversity in research
What is psychology overly reliant on?
Studies with WEIRD participants
What do WEIRD participants undermine?
Generalisability
What does WEIRD stand for?
Western
Educated
Industrialised
Rich
Democratic
What did Miller find about differences about attributions in individualistic vs collectivist cultures?
People initially don’t differ in the proportion of internal attributions between individualistic and collectivist cultures, but there was a clear difference by age 15
What did Lee and Seligman find?
Self-serving bias is weaker in collectivist cultures
Why is self-serving bias weaker in collectivist cultures?
Because collectivist cultures tend to focus more on the group
