Lecture 10: Person Perception Flashcards
What are personal attributions?
Heider 1958:
*Attribution to internal characteristics of a person (ability, personality, mood, effort).
What are situation attributions?
Heider 1958:
*Attribution to factors external to a person (the task, other people, luck).
What is Kelly’s 1967 theory of the attribution theory?
*People make personal or situational attributions based on three factors:
*Consistency
Does the person usually behave this way in this situation? (Does the mother beat this child more often?) YES = INTERNAL
*Distinctiveness
Does the person behave differently in different situations (Is this the only child she beats?) NO = INTERNAL
*Consensus
Do others behave similarly in this situation?
(Do other people beat this child?) NO = INTERNAL
What is the Fundamental Attribution error?
*According to Ross (1977)
*The tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors on other people’s behaviour.
Example:
Parents are surprised that their child usually naughty at home, is so friendly at school.
Why does the fundamental Attribution error occur?
- People have an impulsive tendency to accept what they encounter as true.
- Culture teaches us to commit to FAE.
- Dispositions in behaviour are caused by a perception bias.
What did Lassiter et al 1986 find about FAE?
- Participants saw a police interview with a suspect. The suspect confessed.
- One group saw only the detective, the other group saw only the suspect. Both groups could hear suspect and detective.
- to what extent was the suspect coerced into a confession according to the participants.
- Participants were more likely to be coerced if the detective was visible compared to when the suspect was visible.
What two biases are there to do with FAE.
- Fae is a bias in explaining somebody else’s behaviour.
- Self - serving bias is a bias in explaining our own behaviour. Tendency to attribute success to ourselves and failures to others or to the situation.
What are the results of the self - serving bias?
- Most business people see themselves as more ethical than average business people.
- 86% of the people rate their job performance as above average.
- Most people see themselves as less prejudiced than others in the community.
- Most drivers believe themselves to be safer and more skilled than the average driver.
- Most people perceive themselves as more intelligent than their average peer.
- Most college students believe they will outlive their predicted age by about 10.
What is a special form of self - serving bias?
- Blaming people for their own misfortunes (blaming the victim).
- unemployed people are lazy
- Traffic victims are careless drivers.
What reasons are there for blaming the victim?
- Self protection - if victims can’t influence own misfortunes, i can be the next victim.
- Fundamental Attribution Error - underestimation of external factors.
What is self - efficacy?
- Bandura 1986
* A sense that someone is competent and effective.
What is learned helplessness?
*Talking away responsibility leads to passive behaviour.
What is locus of control?
*It refers to the extent to which individuals believe they can control events affecting them.
What did Rodin et al’s 1977 study find about learned helplessness?
- In an old people’s home pensioners were given plants.
- Half of group was asked to water these plants themselves
- How happy were the pensioners after 3 weeks?
- the ones who were told to water their own plants had a more positive mood compared to those who did not water own plants.
- What was the mortality rate after 2 years?
- The mortality rate was higher for those who did not water own plants compared to those who did water their own plants.
