Chapter 5: Social Attribution - Explaining Behavior Flashcards
DEF What is attribution theory?
a set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of these kinds of causal assessments
DEF What is causal attribution?
the construal process people use to explain both their own and other’s behavior
- linking an event to a cause
- inferring a personality trait is responsible for a behavior
DEF What is explanatory style?
a person’s habitual way of explaining events, assessed along three dimensions
- internal/external
- stable/unstable
- global/specific
What is internal/external (explanatory style)?
do you attribute yourself or some external cause?
What is stable/unstable (explanatory style)?
with this effect remain the same or could it change?
What is global/specific (explanatory style)?
does this effect many areas of life or something specific?
DEF What is a pessimistic explanatory style?
internal, stable, global
i make everything suck all the time
- also a predictor of poor heath in the long term
DEF What is optomistic explanatory style?
external, unstable, specific
something else this one time affected this one thing
- also a predictor of positive health in the long term
What is the correlation between gender and attribution style?
boys attribute failure to lack of EFFORT
girls attribute failure to lack of ABILITY
boys criticized for non-intellectual factors
girls criticized for intellectual failures
boys associate praise with intellect
girls learn that praise is NOT associated with intellect
What is behavior a function of ?
behavior is a function of the PERSON and the SITUTATION
- important to consider both when creating an attribution theory
- important to isolate which cause is more significant for a given situtation
DEF What is the covariation principle?
behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with observed behavior
- concluding that an atrribution is situation or asituational (more related to the individual)
What are the three components of covariation principle?
- consensus
- distinctiveness
- consistency
DEF What is consensus?
- component of the covariation principle
- what most people would do in a situtation
- more about the situtation, not the individual
DEF What is distinctiveness?
- component of the covariation principle
- Is this behavior distinct from what the individual would normally do?
- more about the individual
DEF What is consistency?
- component of the covariation principle
- what an individual would do in a given situation on a different occasion
- are they consistent within their own actions
DEF When is an attribution situational?
consensus = high distinctiveness = high consistency = high
DEF When is an attribution asituational?
consensus = low distinctiveness = low consistency = high
DEF What is the discounting priniciple?
our confidence that a particular cause is responsible will decrease if there are other possible causes
- related to attribution
DEF What is the augementation principle?
our confidence that a particular cause is responsible will increase if other possible causes lead to different outcomes
- related to attribution
DEF What is counterfactual thinking?
thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened had the situation occured differently
- related to attribution
DEF What is emotional amplificiation?
an increase in the emotional reaction to an events that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening
ex bronze medal winners are happier than silver because the silver can more easily imagine winning gold and are even more distraught they did not
- affected by time and distance (easy to imagine something right here right now
- affected by routine or a departure from the norm
DEF What is self-serving attributional bias?
tendency to attribute failure and bad events to external circumstances, and success and good events to oneself
DEF What is the fundamental attribution error?
failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior AND overemphasize the importants of personal dispositions on one’s behavior
fundamental attribution error example
shock experiment
- failure to recognize how the nature of the experiment asked participants to administer the shock so you are more judgemental when the participants do
- believing that the participants must have a cruel disposition because they administered the shock
What are some potential causes of the fundamental attribution error?
- just-world hypothesis
- perceptual salience
DEF What is the just-world hypothesis?
the belief that people in life get what they deserve and deserve what they get
ex. blaming victims of sexual abuse
DEF What is perceptual salience?
how easily a potential cause or explanation comes to mind
- things that capture ones attention are more like to come to mind and be considered a cause
we make attributions for people’s behavior in favor of the fundamental attribution error
- as we observe someone’s behavior, we automatically characterize their behavior to correspond
- we analyze situation context later if at all
ex video of a nervous woman without sound, regardless of what she was reported to be saying, people focused on her nervous tendencies
What are some of the consequences of the fundamental attribtution error?
- put too much value in trust in an interview to accurately portray a person and how they would do their job
Why are we so succeptable to the FAE
- not good at assessing the validity of our own judgments
- we only see people in certain types of situations
DEF What is the actor observer difference?
a difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment
ex describe why you and your friend chose majors
What is the actor prone to?
make situational attributions
What is the observer prone to?
make disposistional attributions
What factors create the actor observer difference?
- assumptions about what need explaining can vary for the actor/observer
ex WHY do you rob banks? vs why do you rob BANKS? - the perceptual salience of the actor and situation is dif for actor/observer
- actors/observers have dif information about the actor and their behavior
How does causal attribution differ across cultures?
western individuals are better at absolute judgement
eastern individuals are better at relative judgement (with context)
westerners fall prey to the FAE more than easterners
