Attribution Theory

Question 1

Humans as meaning makers

Answer 1

Humans seek to construct and find meaning in the world and in life - often construct casual explanations

Question 2

Humans as meaning makers examples

Answer 2

physical phenomena; sometimes people attribute natural disasters to god.
This is the same as life events when we try to interpret them
Human behaviour; make sense of why people do things including ourselves

Question 3

Humans as meaning makers, why?

Answer 3

Attributions have been argued to be good for psychological functioning - this helps us predict the future in a way and also have a sense of control aswell as anxiety management

Thus giving us that feeling of understanding the world and life

Question 4

Theory of naive psychology, Heider 1958

Answer 4

People hold common sense theories about behaviour, this is naive psychology. Doesn’t have to be true
Construct casual theories about behaviour

Question 5

Behaviour is motivated and not random, Heider-Simmel effect (1944);

Answer 5

some shapes bully each other and move around in random ways and just as I had when I said bully we as humans try to make a reason and rhythm for it

Question 6

Prefer stable and enduring explanations

Answer 6

Helps us develop schemas and patterns in our lives based of past experiences, reinforced when consistent

Question 7

Distinction between internal (disposition) and external (situational ) factors

Answer 7

Infer internal factors from absence of external causatives

Question 8

Do we only prefer internal explanations when an external one is absent?

Answer 8

Often focus on internal attributes - personality based on voice (scherer 1978)
Scherer played a 20 second voice note and people infected their personalities on their speech.

Question 9

Correspondent inference

Answer 9

How we infer dispositions from an individuals behaviour.

Question 10

Correspondent inference 5 cues

Answer 10

5 sources of information;
Act was freely chosen, autonomy
Act produces a non common effect, not expected
Act was not considered socially desireable
Act had a direct impact on us (hedonic reference)
Act seemed intended to affect us

Question 11

Cues lead to…

Answer 11

The act reflects some true characteristics of the person

Question 12

Evidence (Jones & Harris)

Answer 12

Make more inference when stance is freely chosen and socially unpopular (Jones & Harris 1967)
Stance freely chosen had a lot less anti Castro leanings than assigned stances.
Make more inferences when information is socially undesirable (Jones et al 1961)
Extroverted snd introverted responses were different varying on jobs

Question 13

Limitations of the model
jones and Davis 1965

Answer 13

focus on intentionality to make inferences - but we do make inferences on things that are unintentional (e.g., clumsy; careless)

Question 14

Limitations of the model (2)
jones and Davis, 1965

Answer 14

Assumption that we attend to non chosen actions to help draw inferences. little evidence for this idea (Ross, 1977)

Question 15

Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)

Answer 15

Looks at people as scientists (metaphorical) - we identify what factor most Covaries with a behaviour, and then assign that as the cause of the behaviour. Looks to when we assign a thing to external or internal factor

Question 16

Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
Types

Answer 16

We look at 3 types of behaviour; consistency, distinctiveness (does the person react to all stimuli like this), consensus (do other people react that same way to the same stimuli).

Question 17

Covariation model; results of types

Answer 17

If the consistency is low we begin discounting and looking for another cause,
If the all types are high we externally attribute it
If the consistency is high but the other 2 types are low, we begin internally attributing it

Question 18

A03 Covariation model (1)

Answer 18

Support (McArthur 1972)
However distinctiveness> consistency > consensus in terms of approtance

Question 19

A03 covariant model (2)

Answer 19

Can use these dimensions in theory but in practice we are rational and mechanical in our attributions

Question 20

A03 covariant model (3)

Answer 20

Not guaranteed people attend to this information, may often attribute causality to the most salient feature (Nisbett & Ross 1980)

Question 21

A03 covariant model (4)

Answer 21

Might often only have incomplete information e.g consistency and distinctiveness

Question 22

Attribution model of achievement (weiner, 1979)

Answer 22

When considering achievement, we consider three dimensions
locus; actor (internal) or situational (external) causes)
Stability; is cause stable or unstable.
Controllability; extent to which future performance is within control or outside of control

Question 23

Attribution model of achievement (weiner, 1979)
Example

Answer 23

Exam performance;
Internal attributes;
controllable = typical effort (stable), unusual effort (unstable) (going above and beyond)
Uncontrollable= ability (stable), mood (unstable )

External;
Controllable =consistent help/hinderance (Stable), unusual help or hinderance (unstable)
Uncontrollable = task difficulty (stable) luck (unstable)

Question 24

A03 attribution model of achievement (1) MEYER

Answer 24

empirical support for 3 factor structure of attributions for success and failure in relation to hypothetical student outcomes (Meyer 1980)

Question 25

A03 attribution model of achievement (2) applicability

Answer 25

Applied used to education, work, sport, etc. -achievement motivation (Weiner 1980) approach motivation(motivated to approach goals) , avoidance motivation (fear of failure)

Question 26

Unbias

A03 attribution model of achievement (3)

Answer 26

Attributional process isn’t as objective or unbiased as they seem. They are not free from error

Question 27

A03 attribution model of achievement (counter to 3) Fiske Taylor

Answer 27

Are we naive scientists or instead cognitive misers? FISKE and Taylor 2013
Heuristics are rules of thumbs that provide simple and quick adequate answers even if they are not exclusively correct
They are satisfactory and work in interior notices

Question 28

Correspondence Bias (Gilbert & Malone, 1995)

Answer 28

Also known as fundamental attribution error
We underestimate influence of situational stuff and overestimate dispositional factors

Question 29

Castro study in terms of correspondence bias

Answer 29

People ignored situational context, told stance was assigned, people still disregarded this as they still formed opinions on people based if they agreed or not.
This has applied uses in traffic instances; we presume they’re reckless drivers and ignore other external factors.

Question 30

Reasons for correspondence bias (1) focus of attention

Answer 30

Focus of attention (Taylor & FISKE 1978
Actor stands out more than background environment, therefore over represented casually in our attributions
Priming situational causes decreases this bias (Rholes & Pryor, 1982)

Question 31

Reasons for correspondence bias (2) differential forgetting

Answer 31

Situational cues are forgotten more quickly than dispositional ones, so bias occurs and increases with time
- contradictory evidence (Miller & Porter 1980) may depend on focus of information processing that occurs immediately after

Question 32

Reasons for correspondence bias (3)
Linguistic facilitation Nissbett & Ross 1980)

Answer 32

English language facilitates dispositions inferences (e.g honest person) v situational (e.g “honest situation”) that sounds less correct than the honest person.

Question 33

Universality of correspondence bias

Answer 33

Perhaps it’s not fundamental? It seems like it may be a result of cultural norms and correspondence bias is a result of individualist cultures. Independent v interdependent self (Chiu & Hong 2007)

Question 34

Universality of correspondence bias (2)

Answer 34

Evidence suggests there is a slight developmental trajectory as when we get older there is a larger need for individualism especially in NA over somewhere like India (Miller 1986)

Question 35

Actor observer effect (correspondence bias)

Answer 35

Wether we attribute internally or externally is a result of attributing others behaviours to internal dispositions and external behaviours to own behaviour

Question 36

Actor observer effect… why?

Answer 36

Perceptual focus(Storms 1973): when observing persons behaviour stands out. When acting, you cannot see how you behave

Question 37

Actor observer effect… why? (2)

Answer 37

Informational differences (James & Nissbet 1972) we have greater information about how we behave in other contexts, we know we get angry due to certain stimuli and therefore it’s easier to understand causality.

Question 38

False consensus (attribution error)

Answer 38

A tendency to see our behaviour as typical and common, therefore assume people would generally behave the same way as us.

Question 39

False consensus example

Answer 39

Ross 1977
Wearing a sign in the name of science
Hypothetical scenario v actual behaviour
Hypothetical
65% wore sign, and thought 31% would not wear it
35% did not and thought 69% would not

Behaviour
60.8% would wear it and thought 43 would not
39.2 did not and thought 57 would not wear it

Question 40

False consensus error support

Answer 40

Over 100 experiments (Miller 1987)
Stronger in domains and beliefs that are important to us (granberg 1987)