Social inference

Question 1

What is attibution?

Answer 1

Atibution is making assumptions about the cauaes of someones behaviour.

Question 2

What do attibution theories do?

Answer 2

Attribution theories describe how people devleop causal understanding to human behaviour.

Question 3

What does it mean if we attribute our own behaviour?

Answer 3

If we can interanlly atribute our own behaviour then we have gained knowldge of ourselves.

Question 4

What is Hieders 1958 theory

Answer 4

Heider’s theory of attribution says that humans have 2 motives:

• a need to form choerent undertanding of the world
• a need to control our environment

Question 5

What do the two motives in heiders theory mean?

Answer 5

So we have a need to be able to predeict people and why they behave this way. In unknown siutations we search fro reasons for behaviour in order to restore our understanin gof the world and predict behaviour to feel in control.

Question 6

What are the two types of factor that we can attrubute behaviour to?

Answer 6

• The person’s disposotion

- situaltional

Question 7

What is Kelley’s covariation theory used to do?

Answer 7

We can use this theory to decide whether dispositional factors or situational ones are the most relevant.

Question 8

What is the covariation principle?

Answer 8

The covariation principe is a judgment of how strongly ythings are related and that behavhour is attrubuted to possible causes that in our opinion match te behaviour.

Question 9

What are the apsects we refer to when using the covariation principle

Answer 9

• Consensus which asks whether most people behave this way in this situation. If it is then there is high consensus and so situational attribution
• Consistency asks i the peson always behaves this way. If they do then there is dispositional attribution
• Distinctivness asks whether the behaviour is only perfomred in ceetain situations, if ti si then thee is a situational attribution

Question 10

What are attributional biases

Answer 10

Atrributioanl biases are where someone does not deliverate all the available information regarding the cause of someones behaviour, overestimating or underestimating the role of something.

Question 11

What are attributional biases

Answer 11

Atrributioanl biases are where someone does not deliverate all the available information regarding the cause of someones behaviour, overestimating or underestimating the role of something.

Question 12

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 12

The fundamental attribution error is where we overestimate the role of dispositinal factors and underestimate the situational ones.

Question 13

What is the self serving bias?

Answer 13

Self serving bias is where we are motivated to protect our self esteem and self coneeot so we attribute our failures to situational factors and successes to disposition. But people do differ in there attribution style.

Question 14

people differ in their…. styles in terms of the extent they attribute their outcoms to …. and …. causes.

Answer 14

Attributional
Stable
Global

Question 15

What is a depressogenic attribution styel? is it bad, good or both?

Answer 15

Depressogenic attribution style very negative and is where people attribute their failures to these stable and global causes resulting in depresssion and hopelessness. It can be good ins tudents as they perfom better due to their high standards

Question 16

Describe some research highlighting attribution biases

Answer 16

Lau and Russell 1980
They looked at newspaper accounts of athletes attributions after defeat and victory. They found when the athletes failed they were around 50/50 when describing the external factors and internal factors affecting their performance but when they were victorious they described it as 80/20 for internal/external attribution. Showing we like to enhance our self concept where possible.

Question 17

What is false consensus?

Answer 17

False consensus is the tendency for people to belive that their own behaviour is widely shared and normal.

Question 18

How can false consensus be explained? (3)

Answer 18

False consensus ca n be explained by the fact that we surround oursekves with similar people and therefore they encounter a disproportionate amount of people who share the same behviour

• Dwell on our behaviour to the point it inhibits our ability to realise not evryone thinsk the same
• we exaggerate the degree of consensual supoort we have in ordeer to maintian a stable perception og reality.

Question 19

What is the ultimate attribution error?

Answer 19

pettigrew 1979
This related to the social identity theory, where we wish to see our ingroup in a positive light and the out-groups in a negative way.
We attribute ingroup success and outgroup failure to disposition
We attribute in group failures and out group success to the situation

Question 20

maas 1999 showed linguistic ……. bias effect where we ….

Answer 20

maas 1999 showed linguistic intergroup bias effect where we use abstract language when describing positive ingroup behaviour and negavtive outgroup behaviour but we use concrete specific outgroup assumptions when describing negativite ingroup and positive outgroup behaviours