week 3 - attribution and social perception Flashcards
what is attribution?
- ordinary people are also continually engaged in the process of explaining human behaviour, this is attribution
- attributing causes and reasons to observed behaviour and events
What is Heider’s (1958) Naiive Psychology?
Heider argued that people have 2 primary needs:
* to form a coherent view of the world
* to gain control over the environment
we, therefore, look for stable and enduring features
* personal, internal, dispositional factors, vs
* environmental, external, and situational factors
What is Correspondent Inference Theory (Jones & Davis, 1965)
Correspondent inference:
- what does a behaviour tell me about a person?
- we prefer to attribute to underlying dispositions of a person
Correspondent Inference renders the world stable, understandable and predictable.
There are 5 relevant factors in drawing a correspondent inference:
- was the behaviour freely chosen?
- did it produce unique consequences? (also called non-common effects)
- was the behaviour socially desirable?
- what are its consequences for me? (hedonic relevance)
- was it intended to benefit or harm me? (personalism)
What are some problems with correspondent inference theory?
Intention - disposition
- is intention necessary to infer disposition? (e.g. clumsiness, carelessness)
- overly focused on personal factors?
group level information can also be used in attributions
- e.g. stereotypes used to explain behaviour
only limited empirical support
- e.g. people don’t routinely take into account non-occuring behaviours, and so it is difficult to see how they could assess non-common effects
What is the Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
Co-variation (or co-occurence) of behaviour with other factors - a systematic approach.
There are 3 types of information:
- consistency: does this person always do this in a situation
- distinctiveness: does this person do this in other situations
- consensus: do other people do this in the same situation
when consistency is high, and distinctiveness and consensus low, we tend to make internal attributions
if consistency is low, and distinctiveness and consensus aren’t applicable, what is the attribution?
External attribution
If consistency, distinctiveness and consensus are high, what is the attribution?
External attribution
If consistency is high, and distinctiveness and consensus are low, what is the attribution?
Internal Attribution
What are some issues with Kelley’s (1967) covariation model?
- evidence shows people can use specifically prepared consistency, distinctiveness & consensus information, but does this mean they do so in ‘real life’?
- how good are people at assessing covariation? are they always so systematic?
- covariation ≠ causality (so is not a foolproof system, even if people do use it)
- covariation theory assumes we have access to information on multiple occurences (i.e. has it happened this way before?)
- what about one-off events? e.g. someone falls over in the street. we do not know whether this person always falls over here (consistency), whether this person falls over everywhere else (distinctiveness) or whether everyone else falls over here (consensus)
What is Configuration (Kelley, 1972)?
a causal schema
- ‘a general conception that a person has about how certain kinds of causes interact to produce a specific kind of effect’
causal schemata kick in when info is missing or not worth collecting. so when we see someone fall over in the street, what may be relevant?
- wet pavement
- untied laces
- crooked pavement
in the absence of these, perhaps we will conclude that the person is clumsy (i.e. internal attribution)
How does kelley’s covariation and configuration differ from Jones & Davis’ Correspondent Inference Theory?
Focus of Theory:
- J&D: narrow, focuses on the conditions which will make dispositional attributions by an observer more likely
- Kelley: wide, equally concerned with dispositional and situational attributions. situational causes can be divided into those relating to the target person and the situation
Amount of info available to the observer
- J&D: Small. Observer only had info from an observation of a single behaviour
- Kelley: Large. The observer has access to information from multiple observations of actor’s behaviour
Level of cognitive processing (following the amount of info used)
- J&D: moderate
- Kelley: High
What are attribution biases?
- attribution theories often assume ideal inferences/conclusions are drawn
- but there is plenty of research showing that attribution is biased in several ways
Hewstone (1989) identified 3 biases:
- fundamental attribution error
- actor-observer effect
- self-serving bias
What is Fundamental Attribution Error?
The tendency to attribute to internal, dispositional causes rather than situational causes
- e.g. Jones & Harris (1967): pro & anti-castro speeches
- even when participants were aware that speakers had no choice over whether they made a pro or anti speech, internal attributions were made
cognitive or cultural?
- e.g. Miller (1984)
- americans: internal attributions increase with age
- indians: external attributions increase with age
What is Jones & Harris’ (1967) study on fundamental attribution error?
- Castro was the communist leader of Cuba (1959-2008)
- in the study, one group of US students wrote essays expressing pro or anti-castro views (writers)
- another group (readers) were either informed that writers:
- freely chose the arguments they put forward, OR
- were explicitly asked for pro or anti-castro arguments
- they then rated the writers positive attitudes towards Castro’s regime for both types of essays
- results found that persons who wrote a favorable or unfavorable essay about Castro were judged as holding attitudes that corresponded to the essay’s position, even when they had been compelled to endorse the position.
What is Jones & Harris’ follow-up study on correspondence bias/fundamental attribution error?
The fundimantal attribution error only went away when participants were told that the writer had copied out the essay verbatim from a pre-written essay
