Chapter 5: Social Attribution: explaining behavior

Question 1

attribution theory

Answer 1

…, the study of how people understand the causes of events.

Question 2

Causal attribution

Answer 2

… is the construal process people use to explain both their own and others’ behavior.

Question 3

Explanatory style

Answer 3

… refers to a persons habitual way of explaining events, and it’s assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific.

Question 4

Consensus

Answer 4

… refers to what most people would do in a given situation. All else being equal, the more an individual’s reaction is shared by others (when consensus is high), the less it says about that individual and the more it says about the situation.

Question 5

Distinctiveness

Answer 5

… refers to what an individual does in different situations. Is a particular behavior unique to a specific situation, or does the person react the same way in many situations? The more someone´s reaction is confined to a particular situation (when distinctiveness is high), the less it says about that individual and the more it says about the specific situation.

Question 6

Consistency

Answer 6

… refers to what an individual does in a given situation on different occasions. Is the behavior the same now as in the past, or does it vary? The more an individual’s reaction varies across occasions (when consistency is low), the harder it is to make a definite attribution either to the person or to the situation

Question 7

discounting principle

Answer 7

, the … says that our confidence that a particular cause is responsible for a given outcome will be reduced (…) if there are other plausible causes that might have produced that same outcome

Question 8

augmentation principle

Answer 8

…, by which we can have greater (…) confidence that a particular cause is responsible for a given outcome if other causes are present that we imagine would produce a different outcome

Question 9

counterfactual thinking

Answer 9

In making causal assessments, we sometimes consider whether a given outcome is likely to have happened if the circumstances were slightly different. Our attributions are thus influenced not only by our knowledge of what has actually happened in the past, but also by … —considerations of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” a few minor things were done differently.

Question 10

emotional amplification

Answer 10

Because our attributions influence our emotional reactions to events, our counterfactual thoughts should do so as well. An emotional reaction tends to be more intense if the event almost didn’t happen—a phenomenon known as …

Question 11

self-serving attributional bias

Answer 11

people are inclined to attribute their failures and other bad events to external circumstances, but to attribute their successes and other good events to themselves—that is, they’re subject to a …

Question 12

fundamental attribution error

Answer 12

the tendency to attribute people’s behavior to elements of their character or personality, even when powerful situational forces are acting to produce that behavior, is known as the …

Question 13

just world hypothesis

Answer 13

Social psychologists maintain that this motive lies behind what’s called the …—the belief that people get what they deserve in life