Week 6: Social Psychology & Attribution Flashcards
Define Attribution
The ascribing of an even to a particular case.
Social Cognition
How we perceive interpret and predict social behaviour.
Conformity
We freely choose to think and behave as others EXPECT.
Compliance
We freely choose to behave (think) as other REQUEST.
-Norm of reciprocity.
Obedience
We respond to direct pressure to behave as others order.
-Change of behaviour as a result of direct command from authority.
Attribution Theory/Causal Attribution
An approach describing the ways the social perceiver uses information to generate causal explanations.
-How meaning is attached to other people’s behaviour and our own behaviour.
Dispositional Attribution
The cause of the behaviour is found in the person (internal or Dispositional causality) or personal attribution.
Define Social Psychology
The scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviour in social situations, where behaviour means feelings, thoughts and overt actions.
State the 3 factors of attribution and describe them
- Consistency: How much I behave in the same situation on different conditions.
- Distinctiveness: How much I behave in the same way in different situations.
- Consensus: How much other people, in the same situation, perform the same behaviour that I do.
Name the dimensions of Causal Attribution
- Locus (cause) of Control: internal/external dimensions.
- Internal Causes: Mood & Ability
- External Causes: Luck and teacher bias. - Stability: Stable/Unstable: The cause is unchanging.
- Controllability: Controllable/Uncontrollable: The factors that we can control to influence the result.
Attributional Bias
Systematic errors people make when people try to find reasons for their own and other’s behaviours.
Actor-Observer Bias
A tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes, while attributing other people’s behaviours to internal causes. (If he falls, he says he was bumped, not that he fell on his own.)
Self-Serving Bias
Take personal credit for success while blaming outside sources for our failures. (I fell cause I was bumped, I stood cause I’m tough!)
Modesty Bias
Attribute success to external factors and failures to internal factors. (I only did well on the test because the questions were easy, I failed my other test because I’m not ver smart…)
