Attributions

Question 1

What is attribution?

Answer 1

• The process through which we attempt to understand the reasons behind other’s behaviour
• WHY?? observing behaviour isn’t enough
• It is an important part of social perception, stemmed from our basic desire to understand cause-effect relationships in the social world
• This helps us to understand people better & even predict their future behaviours

Question 2

Give an example of attributing causality..

Answer 2

He bought me flowers because he loves me OR because he’s guilty

Question 3

How can we explain why these things happen?

Answer 3

1) Dispositional attribution
2) Situational attribution
3) Internal & External attributions

Question 4

What is dispositional attribution?

Answer 4

Attributing behaviour to the person’s disposition, personality, or traits e.g. he is a mean child

Question 5

What is situational attribution?

Answer 5

Attributing behaviour to a situation, context or environment e.g. he is behaving like this because he is being bullied

Question 6

What are internal attributions?

Answer 6

Personality, traits, dispositions

Question 7

What are external attributions?

Answer 7

Context of a situation, environment, external influences

Question 8

Attributing causality - relationship research examples

Answer 8

Happy couple = attribute negative behaviours to external factors (situational)
- distress caused is alleviated and the relationship is enhanced

Unhappy couple = attribute negative behaviours to internal (dispositional) factors
- distress caused by negative behaviours is maintained, and the relationship si negatively affected

Question 9

Attributing causality: Gender differences

ABBEY, 1998

Answer 9

Men are more likely to attribute a woman’s friendliness to sexual interest - Misattribution

Question 10

Gender differences in exam results

BEYER (1998)

Answer 10

• 246 students ..
• “Vividly imagine that you are in the following situation. You are currently enrolled in [name of course and course number], which is a required course for graduation at this university. You just received an A [F] on your last exam.”

Findings:
- Males made stronger ability (dispositional) attributions for success than females
- whereas females emphasized the importance of studying and paying attention (situational).
- Males more than females attributed failure to a lack of studying and low interest, but females were more likely than males to blame a failure on a lack of ability.

Question 11

Gender differences

ASSOULINE ET AL (2006)

Answer 11

• gifted female students attributed their success externally
• gifted male students attributed their success internally

Question 12

Maths achievement experiment

MILLER ET AL (1975)

Answer 12

• tested attribution theory using before and after measurements of maths achieving and self esteem
• Scripts for teachers included: attribution training (told students they were doing well), persuasion training (told students that they ‘should’ be good at maths), reinforcement training (‘I’m proud of you’)

Findings
- all had improved self esteem
- but only students who received attribution training had improved scores
- due to students attributing their performance to their own hard work

Question 13

Communication

Hameleers & Schmuck, 2017)

Answer 13

• Attributing blame to others, such as immigrants or the political elites, for causing major societal problems facing the ordinary people
• Investigation into the effects of these blame attributions in populist online messages
• Findings: messages blaming the elites or immigrants bolstered peoples’ populist attitudes, but only for those who supported the source of the message.
• For those who opposed the source, in contrast, populist blame attributions reduced populist attitudes.
• Attribution causality/blame can be used to persuade

Question 14

What are the theories of attributions?

There are 3 ..

Answer 14

1) Heider’s theory of naïve psychology (1953)

2) Jones and Davis correspondent inference theory (1965)

3) Kelly’s covariation model (1973)

Question 15

1) Heider’s theory of naïve psychology (1953)

Answer 15

• We are naïve scientists as we have theories about other peoples behaviour to try and understand them
• We assume that behaviour is intentional and not random
• Try to work out what we can attribute the causes of other peoples behaviour to gain control of social environment, and to understand and predict others (McArthur, 1972)
• People often overemphasise the role of internal processes in behaviour ignoring external influences (fundamental attribution error)

Question 16

2) Jones and Davis correspondent inference theory (1965)

Answer 16

• People make dispositional attributions when they perceive that an actor’s behaviour corresponds to a set of characteristics that are typically associated with that behaviour.
• Look at specific behaviours carefully if we think that they’ll tell us a lot about a person
• overt actions of people can tell us about someone’s traits but someone may act in a certain why because of external factors

SO..

• we focus on actions we think will be most informative about a person

Question 17

3) Kelly’s covariation model (1973)

Answer 17

Explains how people make causal attributions about others’ behavior based on three types of information:

1) Consensus information: Information about the extent to which other people behave the same way in a given situation.

2) Distinctiveness information: Information about the extent to which a person behaves the same way in different situations.

3) Consistency information: Information about the extent to which a person behaves the same way in a given situation over time.

• If a behaviour is high in consensus, low in distinctiveness, and high in consistency, the person observing the behaviour is likely to make an internal attribution, assuming that the behaviour is caused by something about the person’s personality or disposition.
• If the behaviour is low in consensus, high in distinctiveness, and high in consistency, the observer is likely to make an external attribution, assuming that the behaviour is caused by something about the situation.

Question 18

What is the co-variation principle?

Answer 18

According to this principle, people try to identify the cause of a behaviour by analysing the pattern of its occurrence across different situations. Specifically, people make attributions based on three types of information: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency

Question 19

Summary of these theories

Answer 19

• Attribution is complex – many theories have been proposed to explain how we attribute causality.
• Heiders theory describes us as naïve scientists testing out our ideas.
• Jones and Davis theory argues that we look at specific behaviours more closely when we think that they can tell us more about someone.
• Kelleys Covariation Model argues we focus on consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness when attributing other peoples behaviour to dispositional or situational factors.

Question 20

What are the 5 attribution biases?

Answer 20

1) Fundamental attribution error
2) Actor observer effect
3) Self serving bias
4) Belief in a just world
5) False consensus effect

Question 21

Fundamental attribution error - Ross 1977

Answer 21

• We tend to overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors
• Tendency to attribute another’s actions to their character or personality while attributing their behaviour to external situational factors outside of their control

Question 22

FAE: Gender differences

(Barret & Bliss-Moreau, 2009)

Answer 22

• Women are more emotional. But they are not
• Perhaps, when people behave emotionally, we are more likely to attribute this to a stable characteristic for women than for men?

Question 23

Actor observer effect: Our point of view

Jones and Nisbett (1972)

Answer 23

• Refers to a tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes while attributing other people’s behaviours to internal causes.
• It is a type of attributional bias that plays a role in how people perceive and interact with other people
• Considered a form of the halo effect in which negative performance is explained by external causes (Forgas & Laham., 2016)

Question 24

Self serving bias

Miller and Ross (1975)

Answer 24

• The tendency to interpret events in a way that assigns credit for success to oneself but denies one’s responsibility for failure, which is blamed on external factors
• It is a cognitive or perceptual process
• Protecting our ego and our self-esteem at all costs!
• Tendency to attribute positive behaviours to ourselves
• E.g. if you do bad in a test – blame it on the external attributions
• But this can be helpful (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Burling & Tibbs, 1992) – can be flipped the other way and has been related to depression – attribute positive events to chance and negative behaviours to self

Question 25

Just world hypothesis

Lerner (1980)

Answer 25

• People have a strong desire/bias or need to believe that the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve
• Bad things happen to bad people
• There is a good reason that happened to them
• Lerner (1980): Blaming the victim (rape victims, depressed people, unemployed, abuse victims etc)

Question 26

False consensus effect

Answer 26

• We assume that our behaviour is ‘typical’, ‘normal’, ‘average’.
• If we haven’t done well in a test – say the test was hard so other people wouldn’t have done well too – self enhancement
• When we seek consensus (in order to explain another person’s behaviour) we find it because we assume that everyone behaves like we do!
• i.e. My behaviour IS the norm. Deviate from what I think is normal and I can attribute your behaviour to your ‘bad’ traits.