attribution

Heider & Simmel (1944)

method: participants watched the video twice and were asked to ‘write down what happened in the picture’

results: 33/34 described the video in terms of the intentional actions of people or animals

interpretation: shows us that people tend to think about the world in terms of causes and effects i.e. we like to try to explain why things happen

what is causal attribution?

• the process of assigning a cause to an event or behaviour

• the explanation that people use for what caused a particular event or behaviour

dimensions of causal attributions

• locus of causality - behaviours can be attributed to internal causes (dispositional attributions) or external causes (situational attributions)

• stability and controllability

- stability - behaviours/events can be attributed to stable causes or unstable causes

- controllability - behaviours/events can be attributed to controllable or uncontrollable causes

why do we engage in casual attribution

attribution theory: human beings are naive scientists motivated by a need to

1. form a coherent view of the world

2. be in control of their environment

so we come up with simple, rational explanations for behaviours and events to make sense of the world

attributions allow us to predict events or behaviours

correspondent inference theory

(jones & davis, 1965) (jones & mcgillis, 1979)

outlines a number of factors influencing whether people make dispositional attributions

1. choice - did the person freely choose to perform the behaviour

2. non-common effects - are the effects of the behaviour relatively unique to that behaviour vs common to alternative behaviours

3. social desirability - is the behaviour consistent with social norm?

4. hedonistic relevance - does the behaviour have consequences for you?

5. personalism - was the behaviour intended to affect you

jones and harris (1967)

method

participants read short essay about ‘castro’s cuba’ written by a ‘student’

essays different in the social desirability of the students position and the choice the student had over taking that position

1. student must debate in criticism of castro (socially desirable/no choice)

2. student must debate in defence of castro (not socially desirable/no choice)

3. debare in criticism or defence of castro (social desirability varied/choice)

participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire assessing their own attitude and the ‘student’s true attitude’

results

• when a socially desirable position was taken, the student was seen as equally anti-castro regardless of whether they had the choice to take that position

• when a not socially desirable position was taken, the student was seen as more pro-castro when they had the choice to take that position vs had no choice

interpretation - participants made more correspondent inferences about behaviours that were not socially desirable and were freely chosen

issues with theory

• focuses on single instances of behaviour

• focuses on the process underlying dispositional attributes

covariation model (kelley, 1967)

argues that attributions are based on what factors co-occur with the behaviour/event

attribution biases - fundamental attribution error

the tendency to over-attribute actions to the person rather than the situation i.e. we make dispositional/internal rather than situational/external attributions

e.g. the jones and harris castro study

• when a non-socially desirable position was taken, the student was seen as more pro-castro than when they took a socially desirable position - but this occurred even when they didn’t have the choice to take that position

cultural difference in the fae

morris and peng (1994)

method

• chinese and american participants watched animated videos of a group of different coloured fish, including a blue fish that engaged in different behaviours

• participants reported the extent to which they thought that the blue fish’s movements were influenced by internal and external factors

results

• american high school students made sig. higher internal attributions and lower external attributions than chinese high school students

• that difference disappears when looking at graduate students

interpretation:

the tendency to make internal attributions is affected by both culture and by age

is it an error?

some theorists argue that dispositional judgements may actually be more accurate in many cases - so being biased towards internal attributions isn’t actually an error

we now tend to call the fae - correspondence bias

explanations for the fae

gilbert & malone (1995)

1. lack of awareness of situational constraints

2. unrealistic expectations of behaviour

3. incomplete corrections of dispositional inferences

actor-observer effect/bias

tendency to attribute other’s behaviour to dispositional factors and our own behaviour to situational factors - jones and nisbett (1972)

nisbett, caputo, legant and maracek (1973)

method

• participants asked to write a paragraph describing why they/their best friend had chosen their uni course

• each reason was coded as an internal (dispositional) attribution or external (situational) attribution

results

• participants attributed their own choice to both internal and external causes - relatively equally

• attributed their best friend’s choice significantly more to internal than external causes

explanations for actor-observer effect/bias

1. perceptual focus - when we observe others behaviour, they themselves draws our attention. however when we observe our own behaviour, we cant see ourselves acting, just the situational background

2. informational differences - we have far more info about how we behave in different situations than we have info about how others behave in different circumstances

new research

Malle (2006) conducted meta analysis of 173 studies finding that the actor-observer effect held for negative behaviours but was reversed for positive behaviours

self-serving attribution bias

people are more likely to attribute positive events to themselves but dismiss negative events as attributable to other causes

this is adaptive - they help to maintain and enhance self esteem and good mental health

mezulis et al (2004) meta analysis

analysed 266 studies

found a very large self-serving attribution bias. overall, people made more internal attributions for positive events than they did for negative events

however, bias is attenuated in

1. adolescents and adults (vs kids and oaps)

2. some non-western cultures (e.g. japanese)

3. samples with mental health disorders (e.g. depression)

individual differences in attribution