Attribution Flashcards
Lecture 9
What is attribution?
How people explain what they and others do, think, and feel.
The causes people assign to explain the behaviour, thoughts and emotions of themselves.
Heider and attribution
- People naturally attribute causes to the behaviour of themselves and others.
- People are ‘naive scientisits’ that attempt to explain behaviour in as simple (parisimonious) of ways as possible.
- People can make internal or external attributions:
- Internal: attributing behaviour to a person’s personality or traits.
- External: attributing behaviour to the situation.
What is the correspondent inference theory?
Choice, expectation and intended consequences are used to evaluate if internal or external attributions are made:
- If they had a choice, internal attribution is more likely.
- If they intended to achieve something, internal attribution is more likely.
- If the behaviour is non-normative (not expected), internal attribution is more likely.
Kelly’s covariation model of attention (1967)
If an action can be attributed to either the object (stimulus) of the action, or the time frame, then internal attributions are less likely.
An act can be attributed to the situation (including the other person) when:
1. Most people (or all) act towards the other person in the same way.
2. The person doing the action does not usually act that way.
What is the fundamentral attribution error?
The tendency to underestimate the role of the situation when describing another person’s behaviour or attitudes, but to not do this when describing one’s own behaviour (i.e. to overestimate internal characteristics).
In one study, people were told that a person either had to write a speech in favour of Fidel Castro, or that they had chose to.
Even when participants had no choice but to give a pro Castro speech, people still presumed that the speakers had the corresponding views on Castro.
What is actor-obsever bias?
A refinement of the fundamental attribution error.
Malle (2006) found that the actor-observer bias is much more likely when describing negative events:
- “The instructor stunk, so I did poorly” - describing own poor performance (external).
- “That person did poorly, the instructor was fine” - describing other’s poor performance (personal).
- “I did will, so I am very smart and worked very hard” - describing own good performance (personal).
- “They did well, so they worked hard” -describing other’s good performance (personal).
What is self-serving bias?
Attribution bias that leads people to enhance themselves and protect their own self-esteem:
- Better than average effect.
- People tend to attribute own success to themselves, and their failures to others (or something else external).
- In a team setting, people tend to attribute success more to themselves than other members in a group and more than other group members attribute to them.
- In relationships, each partner tends to report doing more housework than other members in a group.
Motivated reasoning
People tend to make attributions based on their goals, motivations and needs.
Kunda and caffeine consumptions:
- People high in caffeine consumption were less likely to believe research showing that caffeine is bad for you than people who do not consume a lot of caffeine.
- Hence, the researchers did flawed research (they must be stupid, self-motivated or controlled by others, but either way, it is a self-serving attribution).
What is the bias blind spot?
People tend to perceive that they are less susceptible to bias than other people.
This is due to the introspection illusion:
- When evaluating outselves, we rely more on introspection.
- When evaluating others, we rely more on their behaviours.
- Behaviour is more “clear-cut” in terms of biases than introspection.
We also believe we are less susceptible to external influences, and that we have more free will than others - otherwise known as ‘alone in a crowd of sheep’.
‘alone is a crowd of sheep’ effect vs the fundamental attribution error
- On the one hand, we think other people are more likely to conform than we are (alone on a crowd of sheep effect) and to be influenced by mass media (third person effect).
- On the other hand, we think other’s actions are more likely to be caued by who they are then by the situation (fundamental attribution error).
The main variable that seems to determine which one applies is positivity. If being socially influenced is perceived as bad, people attribute less social influence to themselves than others (i.e. third person effect). If it is perceived as good, then the opposite occurd (fundamental attribution error).
Another thing to keep in mind is even when making situation attributions about the self, people still tend to think they are choosing to change in situations.
Naive realism
The bias blind spot is similar to the idea of naive realism.
We tend to think that how we perceive others and the world (hence our attributions) is how the world actually is:
- We don’t see our own motivations and biases often, and when we do, we perceive those motivatons as ‘correct’ anyway.
Hence, if people disagree with us there is a tendency to see them as:
- Controlled by external forces (less likely attribution in this case).
- Misinformed, lacking intelligence, lazy, or otherwise mistaken.
Example:
Anterior cingulate cortex activation and moral beliefs:
- When people read essays counter to their own beliefs, it activates this area of the brain.
- This area is activated by error recognition.
Cognition or motivation
The bias blind spot (and alone in a crowd of sheep effects) have been found to be partially explained by the introspection illusion.
- When evaluating others, we rely more on behaviour.
- When evaluating self, we rely more on intentions, thoughts, emotions, etc. (all the stuff you get from introspection).
- Introspection is limited, so evaluations of self are more biased.
That said, these baises are also due to self-serving motivations, like self and group enhancement.
Naive realism and conflict
Pronin et al. (2006):
- When people were primed to think of terrorists as rationale and having reasonable motivations, they were more supportive of negotiating.
“bias perception spiral” (Pronin):
- People who disagree are seen as biased.
- These biased perceptions can lead to conflict.
- This conflict leads to further perception of bias.
Outgroup homogeneity effect and attribution
Outgroup homogeneity effect:
- We tend to perceive outgroup members as more similiar to each other than we perceive ingroup members to be.
- We are all unique and difference, they are all similar.
Hence, when an outgroup member commits a moral violation, there is a tendency to overestimate how many other people in that group would do the same.
Other attribution biases
Hindsight bias: tendency to think we “knew it all along” when we didn’t.
Negativity bias: tendency for negative information to outweight positive information when making judgements.
Conformation bias: tendency to seek out information that is consistent with the beliefs we already have. We interpret new information in ways that fits the old beliefs (unless we know the info is from a “biased” outgroup”.
