UNIT 4.1 Attribution theory and person perception

The Fundamental Attribution Error

4.1-1 What is person perception, and how do we tend to explain others behavior?

Person perception: how we form impressions of ourselves and others, including attributions of behavior

• thin-slicing: observing a small selection of an interaction, usually less than 5 min, and being able to accurately draw conclusions about the emotions and attitudes of the people interacting

Attributions: how we explain the causes of events

Explanatory style: a predictable pattern of attributions that people can present, interpreting good and bad events in ways that are pessimistic (It’s all my fault!) or optimistic (it’s okay I’ll do better next time)

Attribution theory: proposed by Fritz Heider, the theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation (situational attribution) or the person’s stable and enduring traits (dispositional attribution)

• for example if someone talks a lot we assume them as outgoing and if someone doesn’t talk a lot we assume them as shy

• Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for observers to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.

  • maybe those people are shy only in a specific place vice versa

  • Actor-observer bias: the tendency for those acting in a situation to attribute their behavior to external causes, but for observers to attribute other’s behaviors to internal causes

    • after behaving badly, we recognize how the situation affected our actions

    • ppl with high self esteem credit their good deeds to their traits but credit their failures to the situation

Social comparison

social comparison: when we evaluate others and ourselves

• by comparing our selves to others we judge whether we’re succeeding or failing

Prejudice

prejudice: “prejudgement” an unjustifiable negative attitude toward a racial/ethnic group.

• negative emotions towards them

• stereotyped beliefs about them

  • stereotype: generalized beliefs about a group of people

• a predisposition to discriminatory action

  • discrimination: unjustifiable negative behavior toward members of a group

• explicit prejudice: conscious and aware of prejudice

• implicit prejudice: unconscious and non-intentional prejudice

Roots of prejudice

just-world phenomenon: the tendency for people to believe the world is just and people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

• rich ppl believe that their wealth is deserved because they are more hard-working and view poor people’s misfortune as lazy

social identity: the “we” aspect of our self-concept, the part of our answer to “who am i?” that comes from our group membership

ingroup: “us”— people we share a common identity with

• ingroup bias: the tendency to favor our own group

outgroup bias: ‘them” — people who are perceived as different or apart from our ingroup

scapegoat theory: when things go wrong, finding someone to blame provides a target for our negative emotions

ethnocentrism: the tendency to view our own ethnic and racial groups as superior

outgroup homogeneity: perceiving uniformity of attitudes, personality and appearances of the outgroup

other-race effect: emerging in infancy, the ability to recall faces of our races more than other races

heuristics: mental shortcuts that enable snap judgements

• availability heuristic: the tendency to estimate the frequency of an event by how readily it comes to mind.

  • vivid cases come to mind easily so no wonder they feed our stereotypes

Victim blaming

victim blaming: ppl tend to justify their prejudices by blaming victims