Lesson 5: Culture and Social Behavior I Flashcards
Attribution
attribution: the inferences people make about the causes of events or behaviors of others/ourselves
causal attribution
when an event happens, we tend to explain “why” it happened
locus of causality (central issue of causality)
the central issue in causality is whether to attribute an outcome as “internal” or “external”
Neumonic: locusts outside or inside
Internal (dispositional) attributions
attributions that specify the cause of behavior as within a person-
known as dispositional attributions because they are about people’s dispositons
- ex: irresponsibillity, laziness, not likeing you anymore, etc
External (situational) attributions
causes outside a person
ex: heavy traffic, death of a family member, etc
Discounting principle
the role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible causes are also present
elaboration of attribution theory: locus on Causality and Stability (Weiner, 1979)
Weiner adds Stability as a dimention to add to the locus of causality:
Some internal or external causes are either stable or unstable
stable: the cause is a relatively permanent feature
* ex: rules, laws, occupational roles, etc
unstable: the cause is rather unpredictable
* ex: weather, mood, luck, etc
according to Weiner (1979), attributions can be one of 4 types
- internal and stable: ability
- internal and unstable: mood
- external and stable: task difficulty
- external and unstable: Luck
question: are these examples, or types?
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
the tendency to overly attribute an outcome to “internal”/ “dispositional” reasons (Ross 1977)
ex: brusque, unhelpful clerk => we think he’s a cold/unfriendly person.
* we don’t think about if there are external reasons he may be that way
overattribution to dispostions (and underestimation of situations is known as FAE (or correspondence bias) and is believed to be a universal “truth” in psych
Jones and Harris (1967)
study on attribution theory
- participants read essay “written by another student” either for or against an important social issue (weed legalization)
- particpants were told the writer was required to take that stance
- when asked to estimate essayist’s real oppinion, participants tended to infer the writer’s oppinion was the same as the essay, ignoring that the writer was told to write that.
Neumonic: junie B jones writing an essay for weed legalization
how does FAE or Correspondence Bias function in non-western cultures? examples
the difference btwn East Asians and Westerners resides in the sensitivity to “external” or “situational” reasons in attribution
examples:
* morris and peng (1994)
* Miller (1984)
Morris and Peng (1994)
in explaining mass murders, americans focused on internal negative dispositions of the murderer
chinese focused on situational, contextual and societal factors
Miller (1984)
in explaining someones behavior
americans did it in terms of (internal) personality traits
asians did it in torms of social roles, obligations, environment, and contextual facors
Can East Asians commit FAE? if so? when?
Choi & Nisbett (1998) + Norenzayan et al. (1998)
* suggested that East Asians can also commit FAE when situational cues are not salient (prominent)
* when there are situational cues, East asians are less likely to commit the FAE
* suggests that the difference btwn East Asians and Westerners resides in the sensitivity to “external” or “situational” reasons in attribution, rather than internal resasons
Cultural dimensions
framework that allow us to better understand the differences in social behavior across cultures
