lecture 5 - social inference Flashcards
attributional biases
- Fundamental attribution error
- Actor-observer effect
- Self-serving attribution bias
Ultimate attribution error
what is attribution?
making judgements about the causes of other peoples behaviour
what are attribution theories?
describe how people develop causal understanding of human behaviour - hewstone 1989 - no of variants of attribution theory that emphasise different aspects
example =
magine that you are in a packed train
* Suddenly a man begins to cry
* Confusion: unexpected behaviour
* Why is this person crying?
* Is there a problem? Should I help? Is there something that I can do?
* Is there something wrong with this person? Is this a joke? Is he crazy?
* Probably uncomfortable
In order to make sense of social world, we need a basic understanding of others.
(social) psychological knowledge is essential to navigate through the social world. In particular, causal knowledge
Attribution: Making judgements about the causes of other people’s behaviour
Attribution theories: what are the principles that determine how causal attributions are made?
attribution theories - heider 1958
find explanations of behaviours of others
Two motives - need to form coherent understanding of the world, need to control environment, need to be able to predict people - why? its involuntary, a search for reason
In particular, when something unexpected happens. Because this enhances our need for predictability. (like the example)
In those instances we pay special attention to causal reasons. We search for causal explanations, to give us a sense of predictability and control.
causal attribution
causal knowledge - if we know what causes people to behave certain ways then we are able to predict and influence what people will do.
distinction between attributions
when deciding causes of behaviour need to know whether behaviour is a reflection of persons disposition to behave in that way or a reflection of situational constants that made them behave that way - assess relative importance of situational and dispositional factors - header 1958
* Is the behaviour the result of someone’s personality?
○ Dispositional attributions
* Is the behaviour the result of the situation?
Situational attributions
task of socialisation - learn what behaviours are expected in certain situations. Once we learn this we develop schemata for how we expect people to act in those situations.
Behaviour is dictated by social custom- by characteristics of the situation
As we get to know people who learn their dispositions - the behaviour they tend to engage across all sorts of situations. Sometimes we make inferences from a single observation.- krull and ericulson 1995
if Someone’s behaviour is very different from the way most people would act in particular situation. We are tribute to the behaviour to internal or dispositional causes
personality vs situation
Dispositional / internal attribution: individual personality characteristics
- Situational / external attribution: stimuli in the environment
Through spending time with others we learn what to expect from individuals.
Through socialisation we learn what behaviours to expect in a particular situation.
We use this knowledge to make situational / dispositional attributions
correspondent inference
The process of characterizing someone as having a personality that corresponds to his/her observed behaviour.
Kelley’s covariation theory 1967
- Covariation principle
- Judgement of how strongly things are related
Behaviour is attributed to possible causes that go together with the behaviour - we observe behaviour and what goes together with it
- Judgement of how strongly things are related
to do this identified 3 dimensions of thought
1 - * Consensus
* Do most people behave this way in this situation?
2 * Consistency
* Does the person always behave this way in this situation? - every time you see a person in some situation if behave the same = stronger attribution. if consistent = internal causes. if inconsistent behaviour = external causes
3 * Distinctiveness
Is the behaviour only performed in a particular situation and not in other situations? if behaviour distinctively associated with particular situation its attributed to situational factors, if occur in a variety of situations are attributed to dispositional factors.
One theory that describes how and when people make situational or dispositional attributions is Kelley’s Covariation Theory
Covariation: Judgement of how strongly two things are related.
- Do a particular cause and effect go together across different situations? (TP&S, p. 48)
Behaviour is attributed to possible causes that go together with a particular behaviour (Gilovich et al. pp. 146)
Kelley - can be on scale
dispositional / internal
situational/ external
can be on a scale
when consistency high more likely to attribute it to internal factors
if out of character behaviour more likely related to situation or environment in - behaviour attributed to external factor = distinctiveness
consensus - lots of people have same behaviour - high level more likely to attribute with situational/ external factor
need to account for biases on the way
implications and extensions of attribution theory
According to self perception theory (bem 1972) if people can internally attribute their behaviour then they have gained knowledge about themselves. schacter 1964 suggested it’s the emotions we experience that have two distinct components - an differentiated state of generalised physiological arousal and a cognitive label attached on the basis of an attributional analysis of what caused the arousal.
if schacter is right - interesting therapeutic implications for example of someone who is anxious can be persuaded to re attribute to their razz or to something amusing anxiety could be transformed into happiness - valine and nisbett 1972
schacter and singer 1962
Experiment shows different emotions could be produced by different labels. Participants injected with a drug that produces arousal and all the causes or arousal the drug or not told anything. all participants then waited in a room with a euphoric or angry confederate.n participants were not informed of cause of arousal attributed their arousal of behaviour of the confederate and actual reported feeling euphoric or angry. Subsequent research has shown the nature physiological arousal associated with different emotions especially strong emotions is often different so the emotions are intrinsically different emotions may be based less on cognitive labelling than scahcter first suggested- reinsenzein 1983, fosterling 1988.
attributional bias
day to day attributions are adequate for our everyday social interactional needs, attributional accuracy is compromised by the nature of human information processing and social cognition - its marked by an array of biases
attributional biases - fundamental attribution error (correspondence error)
- We overestimate the role of dispositional factors
- We underestimate the significance of situational factors
We over-attribute other people’s actions to internal dispositions - easier to blame person than situation as situation often more complex
All this presumes that we as humans are very careful when we judge other peoples behaviour, and deliberate when we make causal inferences. But as we saw in the lecture on social cognition, we are not always that careful. In many cases we rely on schemas to draw inferences about other people.
Making causal attributions is very complex.
There are many known biases and errors in attribution.
fundamental attribution error experiment
- Jones and Harris (1967)
- Students read essays of other students
- Essay pro-Castro or anti-Castro position
- Writers “free to choose” (choose viewpoint) or “instructed” (told to write on one)
- Dependent variable
Ratings of writer’s attitude to Castro - ptps judged this
Fidel Castro was the controversial ruler of Cuba, who was controversial in the U.S., especially at the time this study was conducted in the 1960s.
(He was an anti-imperialist / communist that led a revolution in Cuba and overthrew the military regime of Batista in Cuba that was in power before him. He turned Cuba into a communist state (during the cold war) and ruled Cuba from 1959 to 2008. He died in 2016 after stepping down from power in 2006-2008.
graph is on notes - those who wrote anti-castor were very negative
expected - the graph bars should be even on those instructed if we don’t know their true thoughts so can’t derive conclusion on persons attitude as instructed to write particular way.
Results: Even when it was clear that writers were told to support a particular opinion, participants were more likely to see a writer’s opinion as matching than mismatching their essay.
Participants should not have been more likely to see a writer’s opinion as matching than mismatching their essay. The odds should have been equal. Thus, they did not adequately consider the situational constraint.
Subsequent experiments revealed that this effect is robust against a variety of particular problems with this experiment (e.g., persuasion by essay content, low constraint salience).
conclusion of fundamental attribution error
- We overestimate the role of dispositional factors
- We underestimate the significance of situational factors
We over-attribute other people’s actions to internal dispositions
It is the fundamental attribution error that makes some of the central and important research results in social psychology so remarkable. Think back to the first lecture were we watched a videoclip of Milgram’s experiment. Most people think that the majority of people would NOT go as far as to deliver a 450 V shock to a stranger. Most people would think that you would only do this if something was wrong with you (in fact, this was Milgram’s initial hypothesis). However, it turns out that most people DO give a 450 V shock to a stranger. This not only teaches us something about the power of obedience, but also about how we underestimate the power of the SITUATION.
At the heart of Social Psychology is the question: what is the power of the situation on people’s behaviour
Mackie & Smith: Pervasiveness of social influence
fundamental attribution error - empirical evidence
- Van Boven, Kamada, Gilovich (1999)
- Participants randomly assigned to questioner or responder roles in a lab
- Questioners to read out a series of questions to responder who then answers with scripted responses
- Questioners indicate to responders which answers to read eg say ‘read out second answer’
- Qu. later rated resp. on a set of personality traits questionnaire : trustworthiness, greediness and kindheartedness.
E.g., “Do you consider yourself to be sensitive to other people’s feelings?”
Answer 1: “I try to be sensitive to others’ feelings all the time. I know it is important to have people one can turn to for sympathy and understanding.”
Answer 2: “I think there are too many sensitive touchy-feely people in the world already. I see no point in trying to be understanding of another if there is nothing in it for me.” - Van Boven, Kamada, Gilovich (1999)
- Questioners drew inference about responders
- Resp. led to recite mainly altruistic responses were rated more favourably than those led to recite mainly selfish responses.
This occurred even though responders could have tried through tone of voice to distance themselves from the responses they had to give.
attributional biases - actor-observer effect
Fundamental attribution error occurs when we explain behaviour of others, but not of ourselves
* Observers overestimate effect of dispositions
Actors overestimate effect of situation
* Orvis et al. (1976)
* Couples described causes of disagreements in relationships
* Own behaviour: situational attributions
* Partner’s behaviour: dispositional attributions
* Possible explanations
Jones & Nisbett, 1971 suggest 2 reasons why we commit the fundamental attribution error of others behaviour but not our own:
* Focus of attention - when we are doing something we see the world around us more clearly than we see our own behaviour however when we see others behaviour we don’t see the situation they are placed in
Available information - means dimension of thought can shift - different types of info is available to us about our own behaviour and that of other people
* Financial problems / not enough sleep (situational) * Selfishness / low commitment (dispositional) Possible explanations actor-observer effect: - Different perspective/focus of attention: visual field of observer is dominated by actor, visual field of actor is dominated by environment - Different information available: actor has more (historic) information available (inconsistency). For observer inconsistency is not obvious.
forgetting of causes - simulation heuristic
Gilovich and Medvec (1995) Psych Rev overview article
respondents indicated their greatest life regrets
regrets from inactions were listed more often
simulation to do nothing is easier on the short term (increases regret for action), but not at the long term:
memory often leaves one without an explanation for failure to act, so it becomes more difficult to simulate the inaction scenario
… and easier to simulate the action scenario!
attributional biases - self-serving attribution bias
- We are motivated to protect or enhance our self-esteem or self-concept
* We attribute our failures to the situation
We attribute our success to dispositionsLau & Russell 1980
The present investigation extended the generality of attribution research by exploring several important issues in a highly involving real-world setting in which attributions naturally occur: athletic competition. Newspaper accounts of baseball and football games were coded for attributional content. These data supported a motivational or self-enhancement explanation for the tendency to make internal attributions for success and external attributions for failure. No support was found for Miller and Ross’s contention that this tendency is mediated by expectancies. It was also found that more attributions were-made after unexpected, as opposed to expected, outcomes. And in accordance with Weiner’s attribution model, there was a tendency for relatively more stable attributions to be given after expected outcomes. The. advantages and disadvantages of studying attributions in archival data and the possibility of attributions justifying behaviour rather than explaining behaviour are discussed
graph on notes
attributional biases - ultimate attribution error (pettigrew 1979)
- Ingroup success: internal attribution
- Ingroup failure: external attribution
- Outgroup success: external attribution
- Outgroup failure: internal attribution
- Linguistic intergroup bias effect (Maass, 1999)
- Abstract language when describing positive ingroup (and negative outgroup) behaviour
Concrete language when describing negative ingroup (and positive outgroup) behaviour
Self-serving biases in attribution also apply on group level:
ultimate attribution error
-> ingroup more positive than outgroup
to the extent that the ingroup is part of our identity: self-serving
- Abstract language when describing positive ingroup (and negative outgroup) behaviour
Social identity theory eg Tajfel and Turner 1986
- Part of our identity is derived from group memberships
- We compare our group with other groups
- Relations between groups influence our self-concept
- We strive for a positive group-image
Social identity: Part of our identity that is derived from group membership, and the value and emotional significance we attach to this.
We derive self-esteem from our group memberships. We want to make our groups as positive as possible. This explains biases, but also …
attributional biases - false consensus
Belief that own behaviour is widely shared and common
Ross et al., 1977: “Would you walk around campus with a large sandwich board that says ‘Eat at Joe’s?’”
(Some agreed, some didn’t) They were also asked to what extent other students would make the same choice. Both groups estimated that 66% of students would make the same decision. Clearly, both can’t be right!
Reasons for this effect:
* People are surrounded by similar others
* Over-reliance on self as information
Need for stable perception of reality: exaggerate degree of support
attribution - Applying attribution theory in sports performance and coaching
- Weiner’s theory of attribution
We may attribute an event to factors that are
- stable or variable- external or internal
locus of causality
self-esteem and motivation
image on notes
false consensus
tendency for people to believe that their own behaviour is widely shared and that their own views are consensual eg Sherman et al 1984 found that male students who smoked believed that a majority of their peers did so to whereas non-smokers believed that a majority did not smoke - obviously both groups aren’t correct.
one explanation for false consensus is that people tend to surround themselves with similar other so actually encounter a disproportionate no of people who behave like they do - ross 1977
summary
- Attribution theories describe how people develop causal understanding of human behaviour
- Dispositional vs. situational attributions
- Consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness
- Attributions can be biased
- Fundamental attribution error
- Actor-observer effect
- Self-serving attribution bias
- Ultimate attribution error
False consensus effect
