Sociocultural Level of Analysis Flashcards
What is the Sociocultural level of analysis?
The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and thus behavior are influenced by actual, implied, or imagined presence of others. Basically how we think and feel in the presence of others and how the presence of others affect our behavior.
What are the four underlying principles of the Sociocultural level of analysis?
- Humans are social animals and thus have the need to “Belong”.
- Culture influences behavior.
- Humans have a social-self.
- People’s views of the world are resistant to change and developed by the community and culture.
What is attribution?
How people interpret and explain causal relationships in a social world.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
When people overestimate the role of dispositional factors in an individual’s behavior – and underestimate the situational factors.
Describe the Ross et al. (1977) fundamental attribution error study.
The aim of the study was to see if student participants would make the fundamental attribution error even when they knew that all the actors were simply playing a role.
Participants were randomly assigned to a role: a game show host, contestants, or members of the audience. After the game show they were asked to rank the intelligence of the people who had taken part. They consistently ranked the game show host as the most intelligent, even though they knew he had been randomly assigned, because he/she wrote/asked the questions.
Limitations:
Participants were university students used to professors who asked questions as authority figures. Also the student samples are not representative of the whole population, therefore questionable if results can be generalized.
The study reflects how in everyday life people with social power usually initiate and control conversations; their knowledge concerning a particular topic can give others the impression that they are knowledgable on a large range of other topics as well.
What is self-serving bias?
The tendency to attribute success to stable, dispositional factors and failures to temporary, situational factors.
Describe Lau and Russel (1980).
American football players tend to attribute wins to internal factors (e.g. ability, skill, good shape, natural talent) and losses to external factors (e.g. injuries, weather, fouls).
