UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIAL WORLD Flashcards
The Naive Scientist Approach (Heider, 1958)
We create many different explanations by attributing causality to either or both external and internal factors (mostly internal).
Implies that humans act like “naive scientists” - we love to theorise about simple causal mechanisms for our behaviours.
Correspondence bias - we are more likely to infer that a person’s behaviour is caused by their personal inner factors than due to environmental factors !
Example of Correspondence bias
- If a person is rude to you, you are more likely to attribute their behaviour to something about them (e.g., they are rude), rather than to something about the situation (e.g., they had a bad day).
Causal attributions are made based on:
1) Consensus
2) Distinctiveness
3) Consistency
4) Their level of co-variation across person, stimulus, and time
Consensus
- Consensus - the co-variation of a behaviour across different people + the extent to which other people react the same way to a particular stimulus.
E.g. If many people find the old Oxegen to be a better festival, consensus is high. But if only I find the old Oxegen to be a better festival, consensus is low.
Distinctiveness
Distinctiveness - the extent to which the person reacts in a particular way to a particular stimulus or reacts the same way to other stimuli.
E.g. Do I generally dislike dance festivals (low distinctiveness) OR do I just dislike THIS (now) particular dance festival (high distinctiveness)?
Consistency
Consistency - the co-variation of person’s behaviour across time.
E.g. Do I just dislike the 2013 version of Oxegen (low consistency) or do I have a similar regard for all Oxegen festivals since (high consistency)?
Limitation of Causal Attributions Theory
- Just because some things co-vary, does not mean that there is a causal relationship !
Correspondence bias (a type of attribution bias)
Correspondence bias - when consensus info is high, we still tend to attribute behaviours to the person (e.g. their personality traits).
Jones & Harris (1967) - Even if told others were told to write a certain way believe it’s their beliefs.
- Participants were presented with essays + told they were written by other students.
- Essays were either pro-Fidel Castro or anti-Fidel Castro + either freely written or told to be written in this way.
- Participants were asked to given their opinions of the other students beliefs based on their essays.
- Results: Even if participants were told that the students had been instructed what to write, students still thought that the essays reflected the writer’s beliefs.
Actor-observer bias (a type of attribution bias)
Actor-Observer Bias - the tendency for individuals to attribute their own behaviours to the situation (i.e. external factors) but others’ behaviours in terms of personality factors (i.e. internal factors).
- Negative behaviour - we tend to refer to external causes for ourselves and internal causes for others.
- Positive behaviour - we tend to refer to internal causes for ourselves and refer to external causes for others.
Malle (2006) - Blame our mistakes on external factors but others’ mistakes on their personality + opposite for positive behaviour.
- We blame our mistakes on external factors but others’ mistakes on their personality + opposite for positive behaviour.
Trait inferencing & Cognitive load
What traits we infer to other people is affected by the cognitive load we are under.
Gilbert & Osbourne (1989) - Discounting & Cognitive Overload
- Showed participants a video of female confederate involved in a discussion while acting nervously.
Group 1 - told that she was being asked to talk about positive/neutral topics.
Group 2 - told that she was discussing nerve-wracking topics.
- Results: In experimental group - her nervous behaviour was discounted in light of the information about the situation – any normal person would be nervous talking about their painful childhood experiences on video (the normal correspondent inference was challenged).
Additional experiment -
- Experimental group - told to memorise a string of letters while watching the video.
- Other group - told to just watch the video.
- Results: Participants in the cognitive overload condition gave more dispositional (e.g., personality) attributions than those in the control condition, who provided more situational explanations for the behaviour (which takes more cognitive effort).
Fiske & Taylor (1991) - Cognitive misers
Given enough information, motivation and cognitive resources, we are capable of appropriate and accurate causal attributions.
But when this is not possible we act like “cognitive misers” - we tend to make the least cognitively demanding attributions and social judgements.
This is even more so the case when we are experiencing a high cognitive load.
Cognitive bias
Cognitive bias - a systematic error in thinking that often occurs as a result of a human tendency to try to simplify information as we are trying to make sense of it (i.e. Faulty Heuristics).
- Biases are unavoidable.
- BUT we can develop methods that over time help us recognise + reduce these biases - the scientific method remains the best tool !
