Chapter 3 Social Psychology

Attribution

Assigning cause to our behaviour and that of others

Naive Psychologist

Social cognition that characterizes people as using rational and scientific cause and effect analyses to understand the world

Internal (dispositional) Attribution

Process of assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviors to internal or dispositional factors (personality and ability).

External (situational) Attribution

Assigning cause of behavior of ourselves and others to external or environmental factors (situations, social pressure)

Correspondent Interference

Causal attribution of behavior to underlying dispositions (or personality trait)

Non-common Effects

Effects of behaviour that are relatively exclusive to that behaviour rather than other behaviours.

Outcome Bias

Belief that the outcomes of a behavior were intended by the person who chose that behavior

Hedonic Relevance

Behavior that has important direct consequences for self

Personalism

Behavior that appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm oneself rather than others

Covariation Model

Kelley’s theory of causal attribution, where people assign the cause of a behavior to the factor that covaries most closely with the behavior

Consistency Information

Information about the extent to which a behavior Y always co-occurs with a stimulus X

Distinctiveness Information

Info about whether a person’s reaction occurs only with one stimulus, or is a common reaction to many stimuli.

Consensus Information

Information about the extent to which other people react in the same way to a stimulus X

Discount

If there is no consistent relationship between a specific cause and a specific behavior, that cause is discounted in favor of some other cause

Causal Schemata

Experience-based beliefs about how certain types of causes interact to produce an effect

Self-perception Theory

Bem’s idea that we gain knowledge about ourselves only by making self-attributions (eg, we infer our own attitudes from our own behavior)

Attribution Style

An individual’s (personality) predisposition to make a certain type of causal attribution for a behavior.

Cognitive Misers

Model of social cognition that characterizes people as using the least complex/demanding cognitions that can produce adaptive behaviors

Motivated Tactician

Model of social cognition that characterizes people as having multiple cognitive strategies available to choose among based on personal goals, motives, and needs

Correspondence Bias

General attribution bias, where people tend to see behavior as corresponding to stable underlying personality attributes.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Bias in attributing another’s behavior more to internal than to situational causes

Essentialism

Persuasive tendency to consider behavior to reflect underlying and immutable, often innate, properties of people or the groups they belong to

Actor-Observer Effect

Tendency to attribute our own behaviors externally and others’ behaviors internally

False Consensus Effect

Seeing our own behavior as being more typical than it really is

Self-serving biases

Attributional distortions that protect or enhance self-esteem or the self-concept

Self-Handicapping

Publicly making advance external attributions for our anticipated failure or poor performance in a forthcoming event

Illusion of Control

Belief that we have more control over our world than we really do

Belief in a Just World

Belief that the world is a just place where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people

Intergroup Attribution

Process of assigning the cause of one’s own or others’ behavior to group membership

Ethnocentrism

Evaluative preference for all aspects of our own group relative to other groups

Ultimate Attribution Error

Tendency to attribute bad outgroup behavior and good ingroup behavior internally, and to attribute good outgroup behavior and bad ingroup behavior externally

Stereotype

Widely shared and evaluative image of a social group and its members

Level of Explanation

The types of concepts, mechanisms, and language used to explain a phenomenon

Social Identity Theory

Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorization, social comparison, and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of in-group defining properties

Social Representations

Collectively elaborated explanations of unfamiliar and complex phenomena that transform them into a familiar and simple form

Conspiracy Theory

Explanation of widespread, complex, and worrying events in terms of the premeditated actions of highly organized conspirators