Attribution

Question 1

How we are achieving social interaction?

Answer 1

Many psychological processes that make social interactions possible performed outside conscious awareness

Question 2

Causal Attributions

Answer 2

The process of assigning a cause to an event or behaviour

Question 3

How do people explain the events in their lives?

Answer 3

Assign blame or credit- Determine who should be punished/rewarded.- Examine feelings about ourselves & other people

Purpose. To guide behaviour…
… but also to make sense of their everyday lives
… controlling events & behaviours (Försterling and Rudolph, 1988)

Question 4

Fritz Heider (1958) naïve scientists/psychologists theory

Answer 4

Person’s intentions as an underlying cause that can explain diverse behaviours

Question 5

Heider’s Theory of Naïve Psychology

Three main principles:

Answer 5

Our own behaviour (and others’) is motivated
Anthropomorphisms (Heider and Simmel, 1944)

We tend to look for stable traits behind people’s behaviour. This aids predictions

Internal (dispositional) versus external (situational) causes

Question 6

Internal attributions:

Answer 6

Process of assigning the cause of our own behaviour to dispositional factors

Question 7

External attributions:

Answer 7

Assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviour to environmental factors

Question 8

Correspondent inference theory

Answer 8

People attempt to infer whether person’s action caused by internal dispositions and they do so by looking at factors related to the action (Jones and Davis 1965)

Question 9

Correspondent inference -

Answer 9

The attribution of a personality trait that corresponds to an observed behaviour

Question 10

Kelley’s Covariation Model

Answer 10

People typically attribute the cause of behaviour to a factor that covaries most clearly with the behaviour.

Question 11

Covariation principle -

Answer 11

The attribution of events to conditions that tend to be present when the event happens, and absent when the event does not happen.

Question 12

Kelley’s Covariation Model

Three key component of a social situation:

Answer 12

i. Person who displays a particular behaviour
ii. An object or stimulus towards which the behaviour is directed
iii. A particular time or occasion.

Question 13

Kelley (1967) Covariation Model

ANOVA model:

Answer 13

attribute causes of behaviour to factor that covaries most closely with behaviour

Question 14

ANOVA model

Three classes of information:

Answer 14

Consistency
Extent to which a person reacts in the same way to a stimulus on many other occasions

Consensus
extent to which other people react in the same way to a particular stimulus.

Distinctiveness
whether the behaviour happens to this specific stimulus or to all similar stimuli

Question 15

Covariation Model

Problems with this model

Answer 15

People won’t always use these three dimensions

Some evidence that people are bad at assessing covariation (Alloy & Tabachnik, 1984)

Difficult to tell what principals people are using for attributions (Nisbett & Ross, 1980)

This would be naive: covariation is not causation! (Hilton, 1988)

Question 16

Weiner’s (1979) attribution theory

Answer 16

According to this theory in making an achievement attribution (e.g. why we did well or failed an exam)

Question 17

Weiner’s (1979) attribution theory

we consider 3 dimensions

Answer 17

Locus – is the performance caused by the actor (internal) or situation (external)?

Stability – is the internal or external cause a stable or unstable one?

Controllability – to what extent is future performance under the actor’s control?

Question 18

Cognitive misers

Answer 18

Attempts to save on cognitive load

Question 19

Motivated tacticians

Answer 19

Cognitive strategies available and chosen depending on goal

Question 20

Biases in Attributions

Answer 20

Fundamental attribution error

Actor-observer bias

Self-serving bias

False Consensus effect

False Uniqueness effect

Question 21

Fundamental attribution error

Criticisms of FAE

Answer 21

Is it actually ‘Fundamental’?

Dependent on these factors:
Culture: Stronger in the West (Nisbett, Peng, Choi and Norenzayan, 2001)
Age: young children explain behaviour in terms of specific factors within the situation (White, 1988)
Distraction: lack cognitive resources to process (Gilbert, 2002)

Is it actually an ‘Error’?

When people have sufficient time, concentration, information and motivation, they do not irrationally overlook situational causes of behaviour (Gilbert and Malone, 1995; McClure, 1998).

Question 22

Actor-observer bias

AKA Self-other effect (e.g .Jones and Nisbett, 1972)

Answer 22

The tendency for actors to attribute their own behaviours to the situation and for observers to explain behaviours in terms of personality traits (Malle, 2006)

Question 23

Actor-observer bias

Two key explanations

Answer 23

Perceptual focus (different perspectives)

Informational differences (we know about own behaviour)

Question 24

Self-serving bias

Answer 24

We tend to attribute our successes to internal factors

We tend to attribute our failures to external factors

Cross cultural finding (e.g. Fletcher & Ward, 1988)

Ego serving (self-enhancing) (e.g Snyder et al, 1978)

Anticipatory attributions (self handicapping)

Illusion of control + “belief in a just world”

Question 25

False consensus effect

Answer 25

We are very poor at determining consensus information

Question 26

False uniqueness effect:

Answer 26

We tend to overestimate the uniqueness of our positive characteristics

Question 27

‘Attributional style’ of people with depression:

Answer 27

negative events to internal, global and stable causes. (Abramson, Metalsky and Alloy, 1989)
e.g. I failed because I am stupid

Question 28

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) -

Answer 28

is training people to stop explaining events in their lives in an overly pessimistic, self-defeating way (Beck, Rush, Shaw and Emery

Question 29

Formation

Answer 29

Facilitate communication and understanding

Question 30

Maintenance

Answer 30

Stable personalities constructed, so limited attributions

Question 31

Dissolution

Answer 31

Increase in attributions to regain understanding

Question 32

Attributional conflict (Horai, 1977)

Answer 32

Divergent interpretations – dissatisfaction

I withdraw because you nag/ I nag because you withdraw

Question 33

Happily married spouses: partners +ve behaviour =

Answer 33

internal, -ve = external (e.g. Fincham & Bradbury, 1991)

Question 34

Attribution style has causal impact on…

Answer 34

relationship satisfaction (Sanchak & Leonard, 1993)

Question 35

The self-serving bias in sport

Answer 35

Table tennis players: winners made more internal, stable and controllable attributions (McAuley &Gross 1983)

Newspaper accounts of football/baseball.
Though not as high as after a win, internal attributions were always above 50% (Lau & Russell 1980)

Internal attributions were 81% following wins, and 58% following losses (Watkins 1986)

When result is expected people tend to make more internal attributions - when unexpected they tend to make more external attributions.

win = positive outcome, loss = negative outcome

Question 36

Mastery motivation -

Answer 36

Making students more motivated to learn

Question 37

Performance motivation -

Practicalities

Answer 37

Making them more motivated to achieve high grades (Haynes, Daniels, Stupnisky et al. 2008)

Question 38

Why we mix dispositions with situations

Answer 38

“When we label someone aggressive we are not concerned that this is merely a description masquerading as an explanation. It furnishes us with a rule: ‘avoid/don’t annoy/placate this person’” (Langdridge and Butt 2004)

Child minder hitting a child = don’t use this childminder

Question 39

DP:

Answer 39

in real life we often use attributions in talk to ‘do’ something (i.e. to blame someone or to deny responsibility) rather than being disinterested passive perceivers of reality.

Question 40

Attributions =

Answer 40

= Process of assigning cause to an event/behaviour

Question 41

Different theories of Attributions:

Answer 41

Heider’s Theory of Naïve Psychology
Jones and Davies’ Correspondent Inference Theory
Kelley’s Covariation Model
Weiner’s Attribution Theory

Question 42

Biases in this process –

Answer 42

motivation for making self-serving attributions