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PSYC 201 > Week 4 > Flashcards

Week 4 Flashcards

1
Q

Describe attribution theory

A
  • a set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and effects of people’s causal assessments
  • tend to make very complex inferences about motives and personality based on very little info
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2
Q

Define counterfactual thoughts

A
  • thoughts of a ‘what if’ - what could have, might have, should have happened.
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3
Q

Define emotional amplification

A
  • emotional reactions to counterfactual thinking increase depending on how easy it is to imagine the alternative.
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4
Q

What is emotional amplification proportional to?

A
  • how easy it is to imagine it not happening
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5
Q

Define causal attribution

A
  • linking an event or behavior to a cause to explain the behavior.
  • The type of attributions we make for behavior influences how we respond to the person/situation
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6
Q

Describe the shorthand way to represent the Kurt Lewis hypothesis

A
  • B= f(P,E)
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7
Q

Define the Covariation principle

A
  • behaviour should be attributed to potential causes that co occur with the behaviour.
  • people more likely to associate the behaviour with causal factors that are present with the behaviour.
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8
Q

What are the 3 parts of the covariation principle

A
  • consensus - do most people do this in th situation?
  • distinctiveness - does the target person ONLY do this in this particular situation?
  • Consistency - does the target person do this all of the time, or was this a one time occurrence?
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9
Q

Define situational attribution

A

With consensus distinctiveness and consistency is high

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10
Q

Define Dispositional attribution

A
  • when consensus, distinctiveness are low, but consistency is high.
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11
Q

What are 2 important points about the covariation model?

A
  • people tend to rely more on the consistency and distinctiveness than consensus
  • people dont always have all three types of information.
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12
Q

Why do people tend to rely more on the consistency and distinctiveness than consensus?

A
  • prone to attribute behaviour to internal causes and ignore the influence of the situation
  • related to fundamental attribution error
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13
Q

Define the discounting principle

A
  • less weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are alternative causes present.
  • tendency to discount internal attribution.
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14
Q

Define the augumentation principle

A

Greater weight is given to a particular cause of behaviour if there are other potential causes that would normally produce the opposite outcome.

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15
Q

Describe the differences between internal and external attribution

A
  • internal attribution is due to personality
  • external attribution is due to situation.
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16
Q

Describe the differences between a stable and unstable attribution

A
  • stable: due to unchanging factors
  • unstable: event was due to temporary factors
17
Q

Describe the differences between global and specific attributions

A
  • global: infer that it was due to multiple things
  • specific: only due to one thing
18
Q

What is the discounting principle?

A
  • less weight is given to a particular cause of behaviour if there are alternative causes present.
19
Q

What is the augmentation principle?

A
  • if someone is acting in an unexpected way, we will give more weight to their internal attribution - if there are other potential causes that would normally produce the opposite outcome.
20
Q

Define self serving attributional bias

A
  • the tendency to attribute failures to external causes and success to internal causes.
21
Q

Why would people use self serving attributional bias?

A
  • usually occurs because people want to maintain a positive image of themselves.
22
Q

Describe the ethos and results by Beckman’s study 1970

A
  • pps required to tutor student who is having difficulty with material.
  • after 1st round: students assessed, did poorly
  • after 2nd round: half of pps”students did poorly, other half: students improved
  • pps took credit if student improved and blame student if they still did poorly.
23
Q

What is surprising about the fundamental attribution error?

A
  • despite obviously situational constraints on someone’s behavior, we still say that the behaviour was caused by their personality.
24
Q

Describe the results and procedure of the Gilbert and Jones, Van Bowen, Kamala and Gilovich study

A

Pp is either questioner or responder, completely scripted - responder says nothing about their true personality.
- questioners still judged how altruistic the responders are - (tended to read more/less altruistic responses)

25
Q

What is perceptual Salience?

A
  • when other people are usually much more attention grabbing than the context or the situation.
  • when we pay more attention to people rather than objects
  • situations seen as background to people and their actions
  • we immediately go to the things that capture our attention when looking for obvious explanations of behaviour.
26
Q

Taylor and Fiske

A
27
Q

Dual process model

A
  • we make an intial automatic dispositional attribution
  • we characterize the person. Based on their behaviour
  • on reflection we take what we know about the situation and adjust the dispositional inference
28
Q

Gilbert et al

A
29
Q

Describe the actor-observer difference

A
  • a difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment
  • eg actor: more likely to make situational attributions
  • eg observer: more likely to make dispositional attributions.
30
Q

What do individualistic cultures focus on in terms of causal attributions?
What do collectivist cultures focus on?

A
  • strong tendency to make person attributions.
  • strong tendency to pay more attention to context.
31
Q

What did Hedden, Schwartz and Nisbett say about culture and causal attribution?

A

Social factors that are usually background noice for westerners and more salient for those from Eastern cultures.

32
Q

What is priming culture?

A
  • or people who are connected to both, attribution styles may change depending on cultural contexts
33
Q

What effect can social class have on causal attribution?

A

High SES: highly independent
Low SES: highly interdependent, more likely to cite situational causes for events, more sensitive to context

34
Q

Explanatory style

A

A person’s habitual way of explaining events

35
Q

What are the 3 types of explanatory style?

A
  • internal/external
  • stable/unstable
  • global/specific
36
Q

Describe aspects of a pessimistic explanatory style

A
  • internal, stable, global
  • tend to be anxious/depressed, weak sense of control, give up easily, usually undesired life outcomes
37
Q

What are aspects of optimistic explanatory style?

A
  • external, unstable, specific
  • can-do outlook, less prone to despair, related to positive life outcomes
38
Q

What are heuristics?

A
  • biased assessment of risk
  • if something comes to mind easily, people think its common

PSYC 201 (16 decks)

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