Lect 4 Social Inference

Question 1

What was this lecture split into?

Answer 1

Attribution (Theories)
– Attribution theories
– Kelley’s Covariation Theory

Attributional biases
1. Fundamental attribution error
2. Actor-observer effect
3. Self-serving attribution bias
4. Ultimate attribution error

Question 2

What do attributional theories do?

Answer 2

Describe how people develop causal
understanding of human behaviour

Question 3

Attributional theory: Kelly Covariation Theory (1967).

Answer 3

He developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristic (dispositional) of the person or the environment (situational). He looked at 3 types of evidence:

• Consensus
  – Do most people behave this way in this situation? – One way to observe how many people do a particular behaviour at large. If no, dispositional, if yes, situtation
• Consistency
  – Does the person always behave this way in this situation? Again, if no, dispositional, if yes, situational
• Distinctiveness
  – Is the behaviour only performed in a particular situation and not in other
  situations?

The Covariation model
– Judgement of how strongly things are related
– Behaviour is attributed to possible causes that go together with the
behaviour. Features of this model are the above (consenscus, consistency, distinctiveness)

Question 4

What is the 1) Fundamental attribution error
(correspondence bias)

Answer 4

• We overestimate the role of dispositional
  factors
• We underestimate the significance of
  situational factors
• We over-attribute other people’s actions to

Question 5

What is a study on this?

Answer 5

Jones and Harris (1967) ran an experiment of this fundamental attribution error.
Students read essays of other students
– Essay pro-Castro or anti-Castro position
– Students knew that writers either “free to choose” whether pro or anti or “instructed”
* Dependent variable
– Ratings of writer’s attitude to Castro

Question 6

NEED TO FINISH REST OF LECTURE