attribution social psych

causal attributions

explanations for an individual’s behaviour, used to form impressions of others and social situations

Simmel and Heider Experiment

Showed participants a video of different shapes moving, asked them to describe what happened, triangles + circle. Participants described the shapes as having intent and actions. (causal attributions)

internal attributions

explanation comes from within the person. Personality traits, mood, innate ability, effort. Also called dispositional attributions.

external attributions

explanation comes from outside the person, situation, luck, social pressures, also called situational attributions (environment)

stable attribution

the attribute causing the event isn’t going to change. We could count on them to behave this way (e.g personality).

unstable: the attribute causing the event could change over time

e.g effort, luck. They could vary over time.

Dweck and School Performance

Found that bous tend to attribute struggles in school to external or unstable internal factors (bad teachers, lack of effort) and that girls tended to attribute the same struggle to stable internal factors (e.g not being smart enough)

Dweck, Chiu and Hong: Mindsets

Proposed that people hold beliefs about the malleability of their personality traits. Fixed or entity mindset: traits are stable and can’t be changed. Growth or incremental mindset: traits can be improved over time.

Robin and Pals: feelings about mindsets

Entity theorists tended to feel distressed and ashamed about poor academic performance. Incremental theorists tended to feel determined and enthusiastic about poor performance.

Correspondent Inference Theory

People tend to make more internal attributions, and infer that a behaviour corresponds to a stable personality trait. Internal attributions are more useful for making predictions about a person’s future behaviour.

Attribution → corresponds to behaviour → use it to predict future behaviours.

Used as a survival advantage from an evolutionary perspective.

factors of corespondent inference theory

Social desirability: There is more pressure to follow social norms than to break them, so internal attributions are more likely for socially UNDESIRABLE behaviour.

Choice: does the person get to choose to behave this way or not? Internal attributions are more likely when the behaviour is freely chosen.

Noncommon/unusual Effects: internal attributions are more likely when the behaviour has an unusual or distinctive outcome, as it is seen as less likely to have a situational or external explanation. (ie. friend buying a gold rolls royce says something about their character, while someone getting a honda civic won’t have that assumption.)

drawbacks of correspondent inference theory

It focuses on internal attributions and does not explain when external attributions are likely to happen. It is also limited to single instances of behaviour, when in real life, we usually watch a person’s behaviour over time.

Kelly’s Co-Variation Model

Was designed to address the drawbacks of correspondence inference theory. Takes multiple observations into account, and explains internal AND external attributions. It is considered the most influential attribution theory. It is more likely in modern research to discuss the covariation model.

covary

when two variables vary together, synonymous with correlate. shown by r value.

principles of the covariation model

We make attributions according to: the cause of a behaviour should be present when the behaviour is present, and absent when the behaviour is absent.

ie) if studying improves grades, people who study more should have higher grades than people who study less (studying and grades should COVARY or be CORRELATED). We attribute causality to events which occur together the most often.

covariation model-consensus

Consensus: most people are behaving this way. Leads to EXTERNAL attributions: if most people say The Odyssey is a good movie, Ryan liking the movie is more likely to be attributed to the situation (the hype around the film).

Low consensus: most people are not behaving this way.

• leads to internal attributions

• if most people say “the room” is a bad movie, michelle loving the movie is more likely to be attributed to her as a person, and something about her.

covariation model- distinctiveness

How does the individual usually behave?

High distinctiveness: different from their usual behaviour. Leads to external attributions. Ryan usually hates Christopher Nolan movies, so him enjoying the Odyssey is unusual for him.

Low distinctiveness: in line with their usual behaviour. Leads to internal attributions.

• michelle loves “bad indie movies”, so her enjoying The Room is normal for her.

covariation model: consistency

How stable is this person’s behaviour across time?

• leads to stable internal or external attributions.

• eg every time her local theatre does a screening of The Room, Michelle is in the audience, so we are likely to do a stable internal attribution.

Low consistency: the behaviour changes over time, which leads to unstable, external attributions. For example, Ryan was convinced to watch the Odyssey a second time, before he found he didn’t like it much.

drawbacks of the covariation model

It is an idealized model. It assumes peolpe are naive scientist and are collecting information and weighing evidence before drawing conclusions. We tend to actually weigh the 3 types of information unequally. People pay more attention to the target person (distinctiveness and consistency) than the surrounding environment (consensus.)

attributional biases

we are not perfectly impartial in our attributions, and can make them based off of gut feeling or instincts. we are not always naive scientists

fundamental attribution error

people tend to make internal attributions rather than external attributions.

Jones and Harris: Castro study

IV 1: pro or anti castro (type of essay)

IV 2: author choice (choice or no choice)

DV: how pro-castro is this author.

Found that people tended to believe that the author agreed with their own opinion, even if they knew they were not given a choice.

Stastical Digression: Interactions

when the effect of an IV changes as a result of another variable. Studies with multiple independent variables are usually trying to test for the presence of an interaction.

perceptual salience

how much something stands out from the surrounding environment. Since people are more perceptually salient, we are more likely to make internal attributions.

Actor-Observer Bias

people tend to make external attributions for their own behaviour, but internal attributions for other people's behaviour. For example, Nisbett et al did a study where male students were asked to write about why they chose their major, and then were asked to write from the perspective of a friend, explaining why they chose their major. When writing about themselves, participants gave both dispositional and entity reasons, but when writing about their friend, they gave mostly dispositional reasons.

Self-Serving Attributions

People tend to make internal attributions for their successes and make external attributions for their failures.

• passing your driving exam: I’m a great driver!

• failing your driving exam: route was bad and the examiner gave bad directions!

Help protect or maintain positive self-esteem.

Intergroup Attributions

Self serving attributions about the groups we belong to.

Example:

your team wins → our team is the best!

your team loses → the referees made a bad call!

Group serving attributions contribute to prejudice and intergroup conflict.