Causal Attributions and Social Judgements

Question 1

internal attribution vs external attribution

Answer 1

1. caused by something about the person -> “He’s a clumsy doofus”
2. caused by something about the situation -> “It’s slippery out there”

Question 2

internal causal attributions

Answer 2

• perceivers often show a bias toward making internal attributions about the causes of other people’s actions or outcomes rather than situation

Question 3

correspondence bias & fundamental attribution error

Answer 3

people show bias toward making internal attributions about the causes of other people’s actions or outcomes

Question 4

problematic consequences of the fundamental attribution error

Answer 4

1. erroneous inferences about people’s personality traits or attitudes
2. erroneous inferences about people’s aptitudes or abilities
3. erroneous stereotypes about groups

Question 5

erroneous inferences about people’s personality traits or attitudes

Answer 5

• failure to account for the power of the situation
• e.g., someone assigned to write a paper about a topic (e.g., communism) –> readers thinks the writer believes what they wrote even though it was assigned

Question 6

erroneous inferences about people’s aptitudes or abilities

Answer 6

• e.g. the quiz game
• contestants = dumb because they didn’t know answers
• host = smart because they know the answer, but it’s because they made the questions
• in situations where structural inequalities exist, and some people have the advantage of power or control and others don’t: observers are apt to underestimate the extent to which the seemingly positive attributes of the powerful simply reflect the advantages of social clontrol

Question 7

erroneous stereotypes about groups

Answer 7

e.g. people attribute differences in group outcomes to differences in group members’ abilities, even when those differences are caused by well-known structural inequalities

Question 8

why do people make the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 8

FAST:
observe someone’s behaviour -> initial assumption of an internal cause -> inference (he’s a clumsy doofus)

SLOW:
observe someone’s behaviour -> initial assumption of an internal cause -> consideration of possible external causes, with adjustments and corrections to the initial assumption -> inference (it’s slippery out there)

Question 9

when do people make the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 9

• when perceivers’ focus is on figuring out people (vs. figuring out situations) –> initially assumes an internal cause for their behaviour
• when perceivers lack the motivations or capacity for effortful cognition

Question 10

what do individualistic people perceive?

Answer 10

internal cause

Question 11

what do collectivist people perceive?

Answer 11

external cause

Question 12

what happens when someone is cognitively busy?

Answer 12

• lack motivation to engage in effortful thinking or lack the cognitive capacity

Question 13

recipe for pluralistic ignorance

Answer 13

two or more people involved

1. uncertainty
   (people are unsure about the best way to act)
2. social cues
   (people use other people’s behaviour to inform them)
3. fundamental attribution error
   (people erroneously judge that other people’s behaviour reflects those people’s true attitudes, even when it doesn’t)

Question 14

what is the implication for pluralistic ignorance?

Answer 14

everyone does what everyone else is doing instead of doing what they all are privately inclined to do

Question 15

examples of pluralistic ignorance

Answer 15

1. failures to help people in need
2. overconsumption of alcohol
3. missed opportunities for romantic relationships
4. missed opportunities for intergroup contact

Question 16

failures to help people in need

Answer 16

• people are uncertain of what to do -> look at other people to see what they should do
• fundamental attribution error: what people do reflects what they truly think is the right thing to do even when they are just following the crowd

Question 17

overconsumption of alcohol

Answer 17

• look around to see how much you should drink
• people drink more than they really want because they feel uncertain about the amount they should drink

Question 18

missed opportunities for romantic relationships

Answer 18

• don’t want to broadcast their feelings when they are uncertain of other person’s feelings
• don’t want to be embarrassed

Question 19

missed opportunities for intergroup contact

Answer 19

• uncertain about befriending someone not from ethnic/in group
• not seeing cues from the other group that they want to combine groups even if they want to

Question 20

blaming the victim

Answer 20

internal attribution
- it’s caused by something about the person
- people think bad things won’t happen to them

• maintain the comforting illusion that bad things won’t happen to them -> people are motivated to attribute other’s misfortunes to internal causes

Question 21

blaming the victim: external attribution

Answer 21

• caused by something about the situation
• people think that they could find themselves in a similar situation