Chapter 5 Flashcards
Causal attribution
Linking an event to a cause; the process people use to explain behavior
Explanatory style
A person’s habitual way of explaining events, explained across three dimensions
3 dimensions of explanatory style
- Internal / external: What’s responsible?
- Stable / unstable: When will it happen?
- Global / specific: Which areas are relevant?
Counterfactual statements
Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened
*Implicitly posits a cause
Emotional amplification
Increase in emotional reaction to an event depends on how easy it is to imagine the event not happening
What does the Plane Crash Study illustrate?
- Emotional Amplification
- Participants were asked what amount of compensation should the man’s family get. When the man died CLOSER TO SAFETY, the participants asked to give MORE compensation, even though the results are the same (that the man didn’t arrive to safety).
Most people instinctively choose ____ causes to address their mistakes, because if a behavior seems ____ it feels more ____.
External; Uncontrollable; Forgivable
We use the ____ ____ to determine whether causes are internal or external, which is the idea that…
Covariation principle; Behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along side the observed behavior
Three aspects of the covariation principle
Consensus, Distinctiveness, Consistency
Covariation Principle: Consensus
Do most people act the same as Person A in that situation?
Covariation Principle: Distinctiveness
Does Person A act that way only in that particular situation?
Covariation Principle: Consistency
Does Person A act in the same way in the same situation at other points in time?
High consensus + High distinctiveness =
External
Low consensus + Low distinctiveness =
Internal
Low ____ indicates that the cause of the behavior is UNKNOWN.
Consistency
Situational Attribution
External cause; Stems from the SITUATION and not the individual
Dispositional attribution
Internal cause; Stems from the INDIVIDUAL and not the situation.
Discounting principle
We’re uncertain whether a specific cause produced a behavior if there are other plausible causes for the behavior
Ex. The squirrel is approaching you. Does it want your food or want to bite you?
Augmentation principle
We’re more certain that a specific cause produced a behavior if other causes are present that should have prevented that behavior.
Ex. I don’t have food, therefore the squirrel must be wanting to bite me and make me leave.
Self-serving attributional bias
People tend to attribute their failures to circumstances and their successes to their traits or effort
*20% victories to external elements, 47% of defeats to external elements
Self-serving attribution
Blaming external factors for negative events
Why do we fall prey to Self-serving attribution?
- Motivated cognition: We want to feel better about ourselves
- Connections: We succeed due to our efforts and fail despite our efforts
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to explain other’s behaviors through dispositional rather than situational factors
What does the altruism interview study illustrate?
Even when we KNOW the situation, we still attribute to disposition
Fidel Castro study is a study looking at the …
FAE
Just-world hypothesis
The belief that people get what they deserve in life and got what they deserve
*We want to believe that there is karma in the world
FAE is often ____ and happens automatically, but can be overturned when people ____ their initial judgement
Instinctive; Reconsider
*More cognition devoted to judgement = less FAE
Consequences of FAE
Overestimating our judgement of people’s character and prevent us from finding the best possible person for the job
Why is FAE so prevalent?
- We don’t bother reevaluating our initial judgement
- We often only see certain people in certain contexts
Actor-Observer Bias
The difference in attribution based on whether the actor or the observer is making the attribution (FAE meets self-serving attribution)
*Part of why how YOU see yourself may not match how OTHERS see you.
Causes of the actor-observer bias
- Motivated cognition
- Transparency of our internal states
- Opacity of others’ internal states
- Culture
Perceptual judgement neuroimaging study
Examine the activation of frontoaprietal area (associated with difficult judgement)
- East Asians had more activation when ignoring context
- Westerners had more activation when attending to context
