Topic 2 - attribution

Naive psychology- Heider 1958

• people have two needs so we look for stable features

• Form a coherent view of the world and to gain control over the environment

Heider and Simmel 1944

• some interpretated moving shapes as social interaction

• 1 just as moving shapes

Correspondence inference theory - Jones and Davis 1965)

• what a behaviour tells you about a person

• Attribute to underlying dispositions of a person

Covariation model - Kelley 1967

• when consistency of an event is high, but distinctiveness (other situations) and consensus ( other people) is low we make internal attributions

Configuration (Kelley 1972)

• conception about certain kinds of causes to produce specific effect when info is missing

Fundamental attribution error

• attribute to internal causes rather then situational causes

• Jones and Harris 1967 - internal attributes when thought p’s had no choice

Actor observer effect - Jones and Nisbett 1972

• more likely to attribute others behaviour to internal causes and own behaviour to external causes

Self serving bias - Olson and Ross 1988

• attribute own success to internal behaviours (self enhancing)

• Attribute to own failure to external factors ( self protective)

• External attributions for anticipated failure (self handicapping)

Malle 2006

• actor observer effect was small and weakly observed

• Shows effect is not as strong and depends on nature of event

Ratcliffe 2006

• conceptual inference condition (remembering victims face) said confession was voluntary

• Perceptual interference (rehearse numbers) showed no effect of camera perspective

Choi, nisbett and norenzayan 1999

• no difference in susceptibility to fundamental attribution error between American and Korean students