Social Cognition and Attributions

Naive Scientist

Heider argues that people are motivated by 2 primary needs: the need to form a coherent view of the world and the need to gain control over the environment

Desire for consistency and stability, the ability to predict and control makes us behave like naïve scientists- rationally and logically testing our hypotheses about the behaviour of others.- this need to attribute causes to effects (e.g. observed behaviours and events) and to create a meaningful, stable world where things make sense was the basis for a theoretical approach called attribution theory

attribution theory

Attribute re causality because this ascribes meaning to our world, making it clear, definable and predictable, thereby reducing uncertainty.

This need is a major driving force in human social inference.

Humans attach human intentions and motives to movement of abstract geometric shapes.

The readiness to ascribe human intentionality to things we know have little or no capacity for such intention is a common characteristic of how we think.

2 types of attribution

internal

external

internal attributions

any explanation that locates the cause as being internal to the person e.g. personality, mood, abilities, attitudes and effort aka dispositional attribution

external attribution

locates the cause as being external to the person, e.g. the actions of others, the nature of the situation, social pressures or luck aka situational attribution.

If you don’t know someone well, and don’t have access to their thoughts and feelings- can only infer the cause of their behaviour. More likely to say situational cause rather than dispositional cause (her personality suddenly changed)

Correspondent Inference Theory

When making social inferences people try to infer that the action of an individual corresponds to, or is indicative of, a stable personality characteristic.

People prefer internal, dispositional attributions over external, situational attributions because the former type of knowledge is more valuable with regard to making predictions about behvaiour.

A dispositional attribution e.g. rude, is a judgement that the person in question has a particular set of personality attributes, which enables one to predict that the person may be rude in other situations.- a situational attribution, is less predictive about the future behaviour of that person (situation more likely to change than personality).

dispositional causes for behaviour, helps us fulfill our basic drive towards coherence and clarity, stability and a predictable world.

We assess whether there is a correspondence between behaviour and personality (correspondent inference aka dispositional attribution). By processing 3 bits of info: 1. Social desirability 2. Choice 3. Non-common effects

This theory declined in popularity due to limitations: model limited to single instances of behaviour and focuses on internal attributions. People clearly and consistently make external and internal attributions

3 stages of Correspondent Inference Theory

Social desirability information is whether the behaviour observed is consistent with, or counter to, social norms. An internal , dispositional attribution is more likely when socially undesirable behaviours are observed. People adhere to the majority viewpoint to avoid exclusion and ridicule for standing out. So behaviour that is socially desirable doesn’t tell us much about people’s personalities as they may simply be following a social norm, which may or may not coincide with their own personal point of view. But someone who exhibits socially undesirable behaviour, more likely to be displaying behaviour that corresponds to an underlying personality trait, as the behaviour cannot be attributed to the person simply conforming to the majority.

Is behaviour freely chosen or not? An internal, dispositional attribution more likely when the person has freely chosen their behaviour as that means it’s much more likely to be due to an underlying personality characteristic or attitude., not coercion, threat or inducements.

No-common effects: when a behaviour has a unique consequence, rather than a range of possible other consequences. An internal, dispositional attribution more likely when the behaviour outcome has unique (non-common) effect. A punch has one possible outcome, so more likely to be attributed to an internal, dispositional cause.

Co-variation Model

most influential and address limitations of correspondent inference

Accounts for multiple behaviours

Causality is attributed to the co-variation principle: for something to be the cause of a particular behaviour, it must be present when the behaviour is present and absent when the behvaiour is absent (it must co-vary). From multiple potential causes we can ascribe causality to the one that co-varies with the behaviour to the greatest extent- acting as naïve scientists.

This model is not universally applicable: while people do use all 3 types of information, they are not equally attended to.

People pay more attention to the target person information (consistency and distinctiveness information) than to information relating to other people in the context (consensus information).

More importantly: although people follow these rules and deduce causality logically in some circumstances, these appear to only be in circumstances where all the information is laid out clearly and when people have time to work out a likely cause.

However, when some information is missing e.g no distinctiveness information available, people can still make attributions, implies there is an alternative way.

Idealized account of how people make judgement, people can but often do not look and combine the 3 types of info.

3 types of information needed to make attributions in the co-variance model

1. Consensus, 2. Consistency 3. Distinctiveness

Consensus information is the extent to which other people in the scene react the same way as the target person.

The presence of consensus information implies a situational cause, the absence implies a dispositional cause

Consistency information is the extent to which the target person reacts in the same way on different occasions

Presence of consistency information implies a dispositional cause, the absence implies a situational cause

Distinctiveness information is the extent to which the target person reacts in the same way in other social contexts

Presence of distinctiveness information implies a situational cause, the absence implies a dispositional cause

fundamental attribution error- attribution bias

·All other things being equal, people have a general tendency to make internal rather than external attributions, even when clear situational causes

participants thought essay reflected the writers true opinion- even when didn’t chose the topic

occurs due to perceptual salience: the person being observed is the most perceptually salient aspect of the situation (e.g. moving, talking etc.) and so an internal (personal) attribution becomes much more accessible.

Something much simpler e.g. what captures the attention the most determines the social judgement, not complex naïve-scientist thought process.

more Western countries, tendency to make internal attributions not as fundamentalist in non-Western cultures

differences in self-focus between individualist and collectivist cultures. If individualist cultures tend to focus on the individual rather than the collective, seems consistent that explanations for people’s behaviours tend to also focus on the individual. If collectivist cultures focus on broader collective (the social world), tendency to attribute behaviour to internal causes should be lower, external attributions much more likely.

·Many attribute racial inequality to external attributes: discrimination and lack of opportunity, but others attribute it to internal forces to black people e.g. poor motivation, inferior abilities and a proclivity for violence.

Opposition to Black Lives Matter movement-black people blamed for own deprivation.- if inequality outcome of failures in effort or ability, ‘state’ shouldn’t redress the imbalance.

actor-observer attribution bias

The tendency to attribute other people’s behaviour to internal causes and our own behaviour to external causes

caused by perceptual salience: your attention directed away from yourself, looking at the situation- so situational attribution more salient or accessible. Observant’s attention focused on the target person, making an explanation focused on them, a dispositional attribution, more salient/accessible.

Shown that the actor-observer bias reversed when actors shown videotapes of their opposite perspective before making attributions- when actors saw their own faces during the task (conversation), attention shifted to focus on themselves, not the situation, led them to make an internal attribution

self-serving attribution bias

Cognitive-perceptual processes provide an inferential shortcut in attribution judgement, motivations can also bias attributions.

Likely to attribute success to work you put in, not luck.

Argue we are more likely to make internal attributions for our successes and external attributions for our failures because making attributions in this way protects and maintains our self-esteem.

Internally attributing success and externally attributing failure both boosts our feelings of self-worth and protects us from feeling bad when we don’t’ do well

intergroup attribution bias

Make ‘group’-serving attributions

May attribute your team winning due to skill and ability, but losses to bad luck- robbed by referee

Intergroup attributions can propagate prejudice and discrimination against minority groups in society. If minority groups positive behaviours consistently attributed to external causes, but negative due to internal, easy to see how this will lead to persistently held negative stereotypes.

attributional mindset

Whether we make internal or external attributions can depend on the state of mind we are in.

People in self-referent mindset more likely to react with guilt (internal attribution- bad thing caused by your actions) than anger (external attribution, bad thing caused by something else).

In contrast people in other-referent mindset more likely to react with anger.

Anger emerges from external attributions for negative events and the guilt from internal attribution for negative events.

Whether we feel guilty or angry after something bad happens depends on factors unrelated to the issue at hand.

If you happen to be self-absorbed one day (imagining yourself going on holiday) and accidentally bump into someone more likely to feel guilty because your self-focus has transferred your attributional thought processes for this negative event.

motivated tactician

People are flexible thinkers who choose between multiple cognitive strategies based on their current goals, motives and needs. People are neither exclusively cognitive misers or naïve scientists, they are motivated tacticians

People are strategic in allocating their cognitive resources, decide to be cognitive miser or naïve scientist dependent on a number of factors.

1. People more likely to be a cognitive miser when short of time. Heuristics are quick and easy, less accurate but may be best to make a judgement that at least approximates an adequate response.

2. Cognitive load: heuristics do not require much thought- ‘gut instinct’ or intuition- what we now call availability. Don’t devote a lot of time to social perception when have lots on our mind.

3. Importance: heuristics are useful for providing estimates, cannot match logical, rational and detailed analysis.- if decision is important to us more likely to be a naïve scientist

4. Information level: people make use of complex attribution rules in forming impressions, combining consensus, consistency and distinctiveness information but only when they have all the necessary info. Sometimes impossible to be a naïve scientist- need to use heuristic shortcut to approximate the correct response

cognitive miser

reluctant to expend cognitive resources and look for any opportunity to avoid engaging in the sort of effortful thought that the attribution models proposed, resulting in attributional biases

·Our mental processing resources are highly valued and inherently limited, so we find ways to save time and effort when trying to understand the social world.

representativeness heuristic

the tendency to allocate a set of attributes to someone if they match the prototype of a given category- quick and easy way of putting people into categories.

Limitation of using this mental shortcut: while assessing representativeness to a category  prototype may often be a good way of making inferences about someone, it is prone to error

Base rate fallacy: the tendency to ignore statistical information (base rates) in favour of representativeness information.

Representativeness heuristic can propagate stereotyping and discrimination.

Difficult for men and women to progress in their opposing fields- ‘stereotype threat’

anchoring heuristic

The tendency to be biased towards the starting value (or anchor) in making quantitative judgement

Our judgement on a range of issues are influenced by the point our deliberations start. – the starting point or anchor exerts an impact on judgement because it is the most available source of information relevant to the issue at hand. Important social implications: way lawyers phrase questions in the courtroom, way pollseters gauge attitudes

Uses similar psychological mechanism to availability heuristic.

Gut feeling

Gut feelings are fast but powerful feelings or judgements that come quickly into our consciousness without our knowing why. Based on rules of thumb, or heuristics, that we use when we do not have time to process all the available information- focus on what we perceive as key information and ignore the rest- listening to gut is being a cognitive miser.

If do not have sufficient information may need to go with best first feeling.- but gut instincts aren’t always effective- should rely on mixture of gut feeling and logical thought in life.

Availability heuristic

The tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event.

Related to accessibility: the extent to which a concept is readily brought to mind- the difference is that availability can refer to one’s subjective experience of accessibility- the awareness that something is accessible- whereas accessibility is typically regarded as an objective measure of how quickly something can be brought to mind,  without explicit awareness being necessary.

People attend to the difficulty of retrieving instances of certain behaviours and not just the content.

availability heuristic- processing fluency

extent to which something is easy to think about or understand.

can influence our attitudes in a whole range of domains, from marketing to aesthetic preference for artwork.

Fluency exerts a significant impact on liking.

Ease of processing is inherently pleasant: we all like to get something- this incidental positive feeling is attributed to the the advertisement/product. 

The mind experiences pleasure at effortless or locomotive thought. Messaging that enables processing fluency is perceived more positively and is also better remembered and is even more likely to be perceived as true.

From evolutionary perspective this makes sense- if something easy to process, it engenders feelings of familiarity. Familiarity causes positive mood because it suggests safety and security- something that increases the organisms chance of survival

availability heuristic- false-consensus effect

Availability heuristic responsible for the false consensus effect- the tendency to exaggerate how common one’s own opinions are in the general population

The availability heuristic provides the explanation: our own self-beliefs are easily recalled from memory, making them the most available when we are asked to judge whether others agree with us. – judgement of other peoples attitudes and opinions will be influenced by our own.