Attribution Flashcards
What is attribution?
A way to identify and explain the source causing behaviour, cognition and events we encounter in the environment.
Humans like to provide causes at all different times, what are the two variations?
Situational attribution; environmental factors are to blame. homeless man is homeless due to things out of his control.
Dispositional attribution; we are in control of our own destinies.
Humans can link causes to a universal tendency, explain
Dockins proposed the god delusion. religion can explain the unexplainable. Media focused on the strength and rationality of religion.
Science is taking over religion.
What did Wilson propose?
Being a member of a groups extremely important for the development and evolution of the human species.
Humans look for reasons and these reasons can be ascribed to science or god.
Who are the three main theorists of Attribution?
- Fritz Heider
- Harold Kelley
- Jones and Davis
What did Fritz Heider focus on?
Naive Psychology
How does naive psychology describe humans?
Humans are naive scientists looking for causes to explain events and behaviours. Humans are always looking for cause and effect (using examples).
Why do humans look for cause and effect?
To understand the world around them and to make predictions and build expectations.
They use consequences and can predict with relative accuracy.
Explain what it means for a human to construct a causal theory.
Humans have the propensity to seek meaning in the world around them.
They can look at meaningless things and see meaning such as cloud watching
Explain how human prediction is adaptive.
Humans produces fast and accurate responses to increase chances of survival and thrive in a given ecological niche.
Prime example is predicting the speed of a car and crossing a road.
How do we make predictions?
We obtain information and understand physical properties or we can be told information and then we develop logical thinking to make a prediction.
How is knowledge acquired?
By direct experience or by culture.
Knowledge changes your view of the world around you.
Since prediction is adaptive what innate responses do we have?
Greater signal in the amygdala occurs to fearful eye whites. Eye whites detect danger int he environment.
There is also predictive coding in the lower brain regions.
If something is truly adaptive it must have an innate quality.
What is Lewin’s equations and describe it’ use.
Behaviour is a function of the person and the environment.
It expresses how nature within nurture is important.
Genes can predispose you to certain behaviour but they will only be used in certain environments.
What is the locus of causality?
The explanation of what causes events.
Either situational attribution or dispositional attribution.
Explain situational causation.
Cause are due to culture+environment and others. We have little control over such causes. It was out of our hands. Examples include, easiness of tasks, luck, other peoples influence and the environments influence.
Explain dispositional causation.
Causes are due to the self and others. Mainly seen in western cultures. The agent is in control of situation. Examples include, personality traits, mood, ability and effort or attitude.
What are the three main aspects of Heiders theory?
- Causal attribution is obligatory
- Dispositional attribution is strong
- Situational or dispositional causes.
All the above depend on culture, many studies are performed only in western cultures.