Chapter 3

Question 1

We can only understand why people do what they do by

Answer 1

understanding the subjective meaning involved in determining why they did what they did

Question 2

What must we be aware of to predict someone’s behavior

Answer 2

1
How do people characterize the situation so their past experiences can be brought to bear?

2
What did people believe about the contingencies between their actions and outcomes; what the likelihoods they attached to consequences were and what they assumed about the cause effect relationships governing these likelihoods

Objective accounts are not enough because these objective events are subjectively experienced.

Often behaviorists worked around this reality and hence their experiments often failed in the real world

Question 3

Adaption level

Answer 3

When one must judge a stimulus there are two factors

• the value of the stimulus measured objectively
• the subjects adaptation level to a stimuli of a similar sort

e.g. a weight feels heavier if proceeded by other lighter weights and lighter of preceded by heavy ones

Question 4

Framing effect

Answer 4

People judge things with respect to comparisons that are implicit or explicit in the presentation of the problem
-This can be extended as every stimulus recruits comparison to memory against which it is judged

Framing of things are affected by broad systemin effects: We are more motivated to avoid losing something than we are gaining the equivalent amount

Question 5

Comparison with the past

Answer 5

We compare the present with our past. We may find something objectively good as bad if it fails to lead up to our experiences. And so we may perceived them as such.

Question 6

Social comparisons and relative deprivation

Answer 6

People’s assessment of themselves and their lot is inherently comparative
Objectively wealthy people feel poor if they compare with others who have much more
Strategic choice of reference groups can increase self-esteem

Question 7

Non-obvious consequences of reward

Answer 7

Festinger experiments where he tells a ptp to lie about how fun a boring task is

$1 vs 10$

Tasks normally intrinsically valuable became less so if you are rewarded for them

“I found this good and did it because I am paid to > I did this because I am paid to, it is not good”

Question 8

Is there variation about how ppl construe an event

Answer 8

Yes. A lot.

We do not recognize this and so we make poor predictions, then assign blame to traits vs. the situation.

Question 9

The object of judgement

Answer 9

People’s responses to an object is not based on their long-held views about the object. It is in response to the way they construe the object of judgement on THIS SPECIFIC OCCASION

Question 10

Conformity and construal

Answer 10

We use other people’s definitions to help us interpret an object

EXPERIMENT
Undergrads asked to rate prestige off jobs
One was politician
G1 told this was highly rated by peers
G2 told the opposite
Influenced the results and ranking of position
In post experimental interviews, found that this had not changed the subjects views on politicians in general nor were they looking for favor as they believed this was anonymous

Conformity reflected the extent to which their peer ranking dictated the meaning of the term politician
G1 defined politician as a great statesman like figure
G2 as a political hack
They did not yield to the judgement of their peers, rather used it to construct what it was that they were judging

Question 11

Construal of personal attributed

Answer 11

Given lists of personality traits
Made judgements about someone who has these traits
Influence along a warm-cold spectrum
Influence how they constructed the traits

ie intelligence-warm = wise
intelligence-cold= manipulative

Priming effect

Initial traits influenced later ones
Different order = different effects
Former changes the meaning of the later

Question 12

Construal and communicator credibility

Answer 12

Arguments have more impact when they come from a credible source
Asch says the meaning of the message changes as a function of the source it is attributed to

Question 13

Partisanship and perception

Answer 13

Constructs can be manipulated and this effects judgement
Motives do this too!
Football games watched by groups of fans supporting opposing teams will be viewed differently (even if the same)
Two opposing partisans will respond to the same inconclusive evidence by increasing the polarization of their belief
They accept the evidence that supports their view and question/dismiss that which does not

Even handed media may be called biased in this way

Question 14

Reactive Devaluation

Answer 14

Students wanting Stanford to divest of all south Africa during apartheid

2 compromise proposals made
When told uni was considering them, students evaluated them about the same
When one was picked, it was rated as much worse than the other

The act of offering a proposal might lessen its attractiveness and perhaps change its meaning to a recipient.

Question 15

The tools of construal

Answer 15

2 aspects

(1) Labeling/categorizing
Deciding on the kind of thig one is encoding
Forming expectations about the characteristics one will meet

(2) Resolution of ambiguity
The filling in of gaps in information and the possible reinterpretation of information that is incongruent with the label or category one has assigned

e.g. terrorist/freedom fighter

Question 16

The tools of construal (why)

Answer 16

Using pre existing schemas takes less effort

Question 17

Construal is the carrier of individualism

Answer 17

The knowledge structure elicited as well as its contents differ from person to person and occasion to occasion

Question 18

Normative and descriptive principles of attribution

Answer 18

When trying to understand why someone did something

(a) knowledge of how a person has acted in the past situations before
(b) the way other people have acted in the same situation

Cause is then attributed to the factors with which the affect covaries

John recommends a film, is the film good or does this just tell johns tastes?

If john always says films are good and others say the film is poor, we say this does not say much about the film

The other way around = good info about film

If you do not have (a) or (b) = discount any explanation that is explained another way

john likes a film, we discount the film is good if we can explain it another way (like commission from a theater)

Question 19

Attribution theory of the emotion

Answer 19

Peoples subjective emotional experiences may not depend on the nature of physiological effect
Too diffuse to be specific
Instead, emotional experience depends on the inferences we make about the causes of our arousal
if the most plausible explanation is a dog = fear
subjects that get a fake drug have higher pain thresholds when shocked (attribute this to the fake drug)

Question 20

Bems attribution theory of self-reported attributes

Answer 20

People base their attributions about their attitudes and preferences by examining their behavior

Question 21

Awareness of mental properties

Answer 21

Often unaware of metal properties
Very bad at knowing how e made a judgement
Inly see the results (judgement)
Often bling to the idea that others may see something another way
This is not because they have different personalities but because they construed the situation differently

Question 22

False consensus effect

Answer 22

people rate their choice of a response as more common and less representative of personal dispositions than other options

Sign experiment (look at notes)

If people do something other than what someone would have done, they attribute great dispositional value to this (because they think there thing would have been more common)

Question 23

Overconfident personal and social predictions

Answer 23

We are more confident in the predictions we make about each other than is justified
We are also overconfident about prediction our own reactions

Comes from failing to understand the construal process and its role in appraising situations

(1) to predict someone’s response, even if you know them well, you must know the details of the situation and relative attractiveness of the choices to the chooser
(2) If you do know these objective details, you must know the subjective meaning each has to the chooser

Not knowing any of this increases the difficulty of prediction
Not ALLOWING for this uncertainty causes one to overestimate the confidence of their predictions

Question 24

Situational construal and the FEA

Answer 24

Not taking into account different situational causes including construal leads to a dispositional attribution

This is the Fundamental Attribution Error