Causal Attribution Flashcards
Describe Heider and Simmer’s idea of the attribution theory
- how we come up with causal explanations
- people make complex inferences based on small amounts of info
- seeking simple info to predict
Define causal attribution
- explaining instances by reference to cause and effect
- draws upon social cognition; why we did something
How do we make explanations?
Theory of mind - the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and recognise that others may be difference
Briefly describe the three components of theory of mind?
Physical stance: explanations and predictions from the knowledge of physical laws (mass, energy etc)
Intentional stance: explanations and predictions on the basis of mental states
Counterfactual thinking: what would’ve happened; helps up understand the likely causes (what ifs?) - more causal responsibility to unusual elements
Give evidence of counterfactual thinking
Miller and McFarland:
- customer injured in a store
- either a store they were usually shopping in or one they didn’t
- ppts give more compensation to the customers who were in a shop they don’t usually shop in - less likely it would’ve happened
What is emotional amplification in terms of counterfactual thinking and give an example?
- reactions to counterfactuals are proportional to how easy it is to imagine the alternatives
- dwelling on things that are easy to undo (e.g. dwelling on 2 minutes late for a plane rather than 2 hours)
Example; Silver Medal Syndrome
- more happy with bronze than silver (e.g. first loser)
- counterfactual - almost came first but bronze - at least you got something
What are out of role behaviours?
- more informative than appropriate behaviour
- actions despite the situation; more extreme judgements and more likely to attribute to what the person is like (instead of considering the situation)
What is the discounting principle?
- multiple causes for the same behaviour = reduce the weight of each case
- imagining the alternative and dismissing the likelihood that their personality caused the behaviour
What is the augmentation principle?
- if X causes behaviour in spite of barriers that should prevent
- increases confidence that X is the reason for the behaviour
How can ambiguity effect identifying attributions?
- can’t tell if something is dispositional or situational
- other possibilities decrease the likelihood of a primary cause
What does B= f (P, E) mean?
- behaviour is a function of person and environment
What is the causation principle?
- explanation for B=f(p,e)
- internal causes; their personality
- external causes; the situation/context
What did Kelley suggest about the causation principle?
- forming attributions systematically using patterns of behaviour and the presence of causal factors such as…
- consensus: do most people do it? unique to one?
- distinctiveness: does the person only do this in THIS situation or is it in EVERY situation
- consistency: does the person do this EVERY TIME they are in the situation/a few times
- these figure out whether it is internal or external
What did Weiner suggest about attributions?
- judgement based on three dimensions
- internal vs external
- stable vs unstable
- global vs specific
Explanatory style dimension:
- using internal vs external dimensions to understand causes (e.g. a break up)
- stable vs unstable, global or specific
- pervasive tendency to explain in terms of dimension
- internal, stable and global for negative events = pessimistic and regular perceptions like this can lead to depression or anxiety
How does Weiner’s research apply to self-serving attributional bias’ and self-handicapping?
Self-serving attributional bias:
- tendency to see failures as external
- seeing success as internal
- this, therefore, maintains positive images and self-esteem
Self-handicapping:
- allows one to blame personal failures on external and unstable causes rather than internal/stable
- making external excuses to keep a favourable view of self
How can applied explanations to ourselves affect our motivations? (Carol Dweck)
Incremental vs Entity theory of intelligence
- intelligence - fixed or malleable
- two mindsets: internal but stability changes
Study with kids:
- easy puzzles and reinforced with praise, the kids were more confident
- hard puzzles which they struggled with
- found kids who were praised wanted to continue with easy rather than hard - fixed mindset
Entity: stable/abilities fixed - any failure is a threat to who they are and what they can achieve
Incremental: unstable/malleability - failure is a cue to work harder
What is the fundamental attribution error (FAE)?
- also called correspondence bias
- the tendency to attribute a person’s behaviour to personality instead of the situation
- overestimation of personality - Kurt Lewin
- failure to appreciate the situation even in obvious context
- we are good at inferring mind, intentions very quickly but they can be false as we do not see backstory - more interested in the mind and personal elements
What is ability attribution and give evidence?
- game show, thinking the master is smart even tho they researched the answers prior
Jeopardy Study (Ross):
- subjects assigned to questioner or contestant
- questioner made up Qs (situational advantage)
- asked questioner, contestant and neutral observers who the smartest person is
- questioners rated themselves equal with contestant (understood)
- neutral made attribution purely on what they saw and rated questioner smarter
What are attributions to personality and describe a study?
- Jones and Harris
- ppts given an essay to read that was either pro or anti-Castro
- 1/2 were told the writer freely chose which to write and 1/2 were told they were assigned
- in both conditions, they thought the writer was pro-Castro
How should the attribution process work in theory?
Behaviour and context - interpretation of behaviours significant to context and meaning - then making appropriate inference
- this would assume we are naive scientists but we are actually cognitive misers
How does the attribution process work in reality?
- we anchor in dispositions and only if we are motivated/have resources, we will change
Behaviour - interpret behaviour - attribute to characteristic - inference
- or adjust and infer
Describe the dual-process FAE model and give evidence
- watched a vid of anxious woman
- 1/2 of them were given a list for distraction (using cog resources: cog load)
- told she was either in a) anxiety-provoking convo or was b) neutral
a)
- not distracted, ppts adjusted their judgements about what she’s actually talking about
- when distracted - failure to see the situation and attributed anxiety to disposition
Why do we commit FAE?
Perceptual salience:
- people are more salient in the situation, so more attention directed to them
Taylor and Fiske: - actors opposite each other and observers with different points of view (changing focus). Asked who was driving the convo and thoughts were based on much they saw someone
Just world hypothesis:
- Lerner - assumed the karmic world
- used to explain random accidents/luck as ‘meant to be’
- blaming the victim- easy to see as avoidable instead lof random and scary
- underestimating the privileges and situational advantages are dismissed
- made to think it is fair
Actor-observer difference:
- observer focused on actor and actor focused on the situation
- more salient info, more likely to receive initial causal attributions
- different assumption
- actor = consistency and distinctiveness info about oneself so when they act strange they know it’s the situation
- Frank et al: asked ppts to recall memories in the third person - this caused more dispositional attributions - applying FAE to ourselves
- thus personality is the ultimate explanation
