4.1 Attribution Theory and Person Perception

Attribution theory

the theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation(situational) or the person’s disposition(dispositional)

attribution- how people explain behavior and mental processes of themselves and others

basically why does someone do something

People are subject to biases in their attributions. Those biases include actor/ observer bias, fundamental attribution error, and self-serving bias, all of which can affect behavior and mental processes

Dispositional attributions

internal, ex. a person’s intelligence, attitude, or personality

Dispositional attributions relate to internal qualities of others (such as intelligence or personality)

Situational attributions

external, environmental factors that impact an individual, such as the weather, or world events

situational attributions relate to external circumstances that are experienced

Explanatory style

the way an individual explains or rationalizes different events or situations in life

can have optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style

optimistic explanatory style- tends to explain bad events as temporary problems, putting the blame or focus on external factors that are outside of an individual’s control, so situational attributions if the event was good they’ll say something dispositional ex doing good on test is because they studied hard

pessimistic explanatory style- tends to explain bad events as something that is more permanent, putting the blame on internal factors that end up impacting the individual, so dispositional attributions if the event was good they’ll say something situational ex doing good on test means the test was easy that time

Self-serving bias

when we succeed we attribute that success to our internal factors and when we fail we attribute our failure to external factors

can protect our self esteem but prevent us from learning from our mistakes

Actor/Observor bias

when we use situational attribution to explain our own actions but use dispositional attribution to explain someone else’s actions

ex. you arrive late to work you blame traffic, someone else does and they’re lazy

highlights fundamental attribution error

Fundamental attribution error

the tendency to overemphasize internal factors when judging others’ behavior while underestimating the important of situational factors

ex. someone is shy and you say they are just a shy person, but at home they are loud

Locus of control

who or what an individual believes has power over the events in their life

External- feel like outside/situational factors are what determine the outcome of different events in their lives

can lead to people thinking their actions don’t make a difference so why try?, learned helplessness,heightened stress or anxiety,feeling like having no control, or have more relaxation realizing that everything is outside of their control

Internal- believes their actions directly affect what happens to them

can lead to people taking more initiative in life because they believe their effort will change the outcome, if outcome is negative they will take responsibility and figure out what went wrong so they can improve, higher self efficacy,

Person perception

how an individual forms impressions of other people and sometimes even themselves

People’s perception of how much they like something can be influenced by the mere exposure effect.

The mere exposure effect

occurs when people are exposed to a stimulus repeatedly over time, which causes them to like the stimulus more.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

when a person’s expectations influence their behavior in a way that causes those expectations to come true

people can behave in ways that elicit behaviors from others that confirm their beliefs or perceptions about themselves or others

ex. waitress believes teens don’t tip so they give them bad service, resulting in the teens not tipping, so their original perception is reinforced

ex. you believe you are a bad test taker, you have an exam coming up and you debate about studying. You think to yourself what’s the point, I’m terrible at taking tests I always do bad, so you decide not the study, resulting in you doing poorly on the test

Social comparison

a type of person perception that occurs when people evaluate themselves based on comparisons to other members of society or social circles

Can be upward or downward

Upward comparison- when an individual compares themselves to someone they believe is better off

can help motivate an individual to improve and strive for higher goals, but if an individual feels the gap between them and the other person is too large, it could cause the person to feel inadequate and lead them to become discouraged

Downward comparison- when an individual compares themselves to someone they believe is worse off

can cause an individual to feel better about their own situation, but also may reduce a person’s motivation to improve since the person already feels like they’re doing better

When people compare themselves to other people they may experience relative deprivation

Relative deprivation

the perception that one is worse off relative with who one compares themselves to

ex. it’s better to make 50k when others make 25k than to make 100k when others make 200k