Exhaustive Study Notes on Attribution Theory, Attributional Biases, and Self-Handicapping

Course Logistics and Administrative Details

• Textbook Access:

  • Four copies of the textbook are on reserve at the library circulation desk.

  • Reserve textbook copies can be checked out for $2\,\text{hours}$ at a time.

• Out-of-Class Assignments:

  • Out-of-class assignments submitted previously or at the beginning of class have been logged.

  • Recorded assignments are returned at the end of class so students have them available.

  • Students are required to bring their returned assignment to class on Wednesday to take a picture of it.

First Impressions and Social Perception

• Global Personality Dimensions in First Impressions:

  • Commonly reported traits when evaluating first impressions include being warm, quiet, funny, shy, loud, outgoing, friendly, and nice.

  • Individuals generally maintain a strong sense of where others fall on these broad personality dimensions.

• Perceived Accuracy of First Impressions:

  • Student survey data regarding the accuracy of initial impressions:

  • Not at all accurate: $9\%$

  • Somewhat accurate: $38\%$

  • Very accurate: $53\%$

  • A total of $91\%$ of respondents believe first impressions are at least somewhat accurate.

  • Common cultural idiom context: "You cannot judge a book by its cover."

  • When initial impressions were rated as "not at all accurate," responses overwhelmingly cited negative traits such as people assuming they have "Resting Bitch Face" ("RBF") or are mean.

Overview of Attribution Theory

• Definition of Attribution:

  • An attribution is an explanation or reason formulated to account for one's own behaviors or the behaviors of others.

  • Humans exhibit a universal psychological tendency to construct causes for why people perform or refrain from specific actions.

• Definition of Attribution Theory:

  • Attribution theory is the study of how people examine, infer, and evaluate the underlying causes of their own and especially other people's behaviors.

• Behavioral Consequences of Attributions:

  • The explanations formulated about a behavior directly influence subsequent behavior toward that person.

  • Hallway Encounter Example:

  • Scenario: Passing an acquaintance in a chaotic hallway, saying "hi," and receiving no response.

  • Attribution 1: They did not hear you due to noise and environmental activity.

    • Action: Saying "hey" significantly louder during the next encounter on Wednesday.

  • Attribution 2: They dislike you or are annoyed with you.

    • Action: Ignoring, avoiding, or looking away from them during future encounters.

  • Highway Driving Example:

  • Scenario: Being cut off by another driver on the highway.

  • Attribution 1: The driver is an intentional jerk.

    • Action: Retaliating by cutting in front of them to restore perceived equality and reciprocity.

  • Attribution 2: The driver did not see you or is an unskilled driver.

    • Action: Hanging back to maintain safety distance and prevent an accident.

  • Interpersonal Misattribution Example:

  • A man attributes a woman's harsh vocal tone to an oncoming illness.

  • Correction: "No Charles, I don't have a cold, what you hear in my voice is contempt."

Types of Attributions: Internal vs. External

• Internal (Dispositional) Attributions:

  • Attributing the cause of a behavior or outcome to factors internal to the person, such as core personality, stable traits, effort, intelligence, attitude, or personal ability.

  • Assumes the individual exercised direct control over the outcome.

  • Academic Success Scenario: Scoring an A on an exam where the class average is a low C.

  • Internal Attribution: "I am so smart," "I am a great studier," "I have a strong work ethic," "I am responsible," or "I never miss class."

  • Social Ignoration Scenario: Explaining someone's silence by deciding they are inherently rude or mean.

• External (Situational) Attributions:

  • Attributing the cause of a behavior or outcome to environmental circumstances, external situations, luck, chance, or the actions of others.

  • Assumes the outcome is driven by the environment rather than the person's core disposition.

  • Academic Success Scenario: Scoring an A on an exam.

  • External Attribution: Cheating off an adjacent student, receiving a free $20\text{-point}$ curve provided to the whole class by the professor, or the exam being excessively easy with obvious answers.

  • Social Ignoration Scenario: Explaining someone's silence by concluding the hallway was too loud for them to hear.

Attributions of Success and Failure

• Directional Asymmetry in Personal Attributions:

  • Success Situations: Individuals overwhelmingly favor internal attributions for personal accomplishments to elevate self-esteem (e.g., "I succeeded because I am smart, clever, and creative").

  • Failure Situations: Individuals overwhelmingly favor external attributions for personal mistakes or failures to preserve self-esteem (e.g., blaming external conditions, flukes, or equipment failures).

• Illustrative Examples of Externalizing Failure:

  • Vehicle Collision Example: A driver explains a past accident by stating, "I had that kind of car once, it was always running into things," attributing collision history to the automobile rather than personal driving skill.

  • Dead Battery Example: A driver who accidentally drains her car battery exclaims, "No, I left my lights on, my battery is dead. Stupid car!" externalizing personal forgetfulness onto the machine.

• Connection to Self-Serving Biases:

  • Externalizing failure is a self-serving cognitive bias designed to maintain self-worth and manage self-perception across varying situations.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

• Definition:

  • The Fundamental Attribution Error is the pervasive tendency for observers to analyze another person's behavior by overestimating dispositional (internal) factors while underestimating or ignoring situational (external) influences.

  • It represents a widespread cognitive mistake or bias in social cognition.

• Rationale for the Term "Fundamental":

  • It is observed globally across human populations.

  • Internal attributions are cognitively faster, easier, and require less situational analysis than systematically investigating environmental variables.

Media Examples and Real-World Demonstrations of FAE

• Entertainment Media and Typecasting:

  • Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal):

  • Played a television character who was mean, ditzy, flighty, and made poor relationship choices.

  • Viewers committed FAE by assuming Flockhart personally possessed these flighty and ditzy traits in real life.

  • Flockhart chose not to renew her contract specifically to escape persistent character typecasting.

  • Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek):

  • Portrayed Doctor Spock, a character defined by cold logic, zero emotion, and robot-like demeanor.

  • The public assumed Nimoy himself was inherently cold and heartless.

  • Nimoy titled his first official autobiography I Am Not Spock to explicitly challenge the public's fundamental attribution error.

Cultural Differences in Attributional Biases

• Individualistic vs. Collectivist Cultures:

  • Individualistic Societies (e.g., United States):

  • Prioritize individual uniqueness, independence, personal control, and standing out.

  • Display a higher likelihood of committing the Fundamental Attribution Error.

  • Collectivist Societies (e.g., China):

  • Prioritize group cohesion, fitting in, situational context, and mutual interdependence.

  • Display a lower likelihood of committing the Fundamental Attribution Error because members are culturally conditioned to attend to environmental factors.

Qualitative Cross-Cultural Analysis of Mass Shooting Media Coverage

• Research Methodology:

  • Social psychologists conducted a qualitative analysis comparing American (individualistic) and Chinese (collectivist) newspaper coverage of identical mass shooting events.

• Case Event 1: Gang Lu:

  • Incident: A $30\text{-year-old}$ doctoral graduate in physics lost a competitive PhD award, returned to campus, killed $5$ individuals (including $2$ professors), wounded $1$ person, and committed suicide.

  • American Media Framing (Internal): Described Lu as a "darkly disturbed person," highlighting his personal temper, psychological problems, and individual flaws.

  • Chinese Media Framing (External): Focused on environmental factors, including the availability of guns in the United States, Lu's social isolation from the local Chinese community, high stress levels, and his lack of a supportive social network.

• Case Event 2: Thomas McElvane:

  • Incident: A postal service employee had his official appeal denied, returned to the post office, killed $4$ people, wounded $5$, and committed suicide (one of the original incidents behind the phrase "going postal").

  • American Media Framing (Internal): Described McElvane as "mentally unstable," having a "short fuse," and being inherently drawn to violence.

  • Chinese Media Framing (External): Highlighted his supervisor's cold administrative handling of the appeal, workplace pressure, and the copycat effect driven by previous spree shootings in America.

Quiz Game Study: Demonstrating FAE in Social Roles

• Cultural Example Context:

  • Television game show hosts (e.g., Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!, later succeeded by Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik) are widely assumed by viewers to be exceptionally intelligent, overlooking the situational reality that the host possesses the answer key.

• Experimental Procedure (Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz):

  • Unacquainted pairs of students from the same university taking psychology classes were randomly paired and assigned social roles.

  • One student was designated the Quiz Master and given $10\,\text{minutes}$ to construct $10$ challenging general knowledge questions to which they personally knew the answers.

  • The Quiz Master posed the $10$ questions to the Contestant. Contestants answered an average of only $2$ out of $10$ questions correctly ($20\%$ accuracy).

  • Post-experiment ratings required Contestants to evaluate their own baseline intelligence relative to the Quiz Master.

• Experimental Results:

  • Contestants consistently rated the Quiz Master as significantly smarter than themselves.

  • Explanation via FAE: Contestants failed to account for the clear situational advantage given to the Quiz Master (selecting questions from their own unique knowledge base). Reversed roles would yield identical low scores, as both participants were peers from the same institution.

Assessment: Self-Handicapping Scale

• 10-Item Self-Assessment Statements:

  1. I tend to over prepare whenever I have an exam or any kind of performance.

  2. I suppose I feel under the weather more often than most.

  3. I am rarely distracted by noises or my own creative thoughts whenever I try to read.

  4. When I do something wrong, my first impulse is to blame the circumstances.

  5. I always do my best no matter what.

  6. I sometimes enjoy being mildly ill for a day or two because it takes off some of the pressure.

  7. I tend to put things off until the last moment.

  8. I would do much better if I didn't let my emotions get in my way.

  9. I often think I have had more than my fair share of bad luck in sports, in card games, and life in general.

  10. Sometimes I get so depressed even easy tasks become difficult.

• Scoring Criteria (1 point per matching item):

  • Item 1: Disagree

  • Item 2: Agree

  • Item 3: Disagree

  • Item 4: Agree

  • Item 5: Disagree

  • Item 6: Agree

  • Item 7: Agree

  • Item 8: Agree

  • Item 9: Agree

  • Item 10: Agree

• Score Range Classifications:

  • $0 \text{ to } 3$ Points: Low self-handicapping tendency.

  • $4 \text{ to } 6$ Points: Average self-handicapping tendency (typical for college students).

  • $7 \text{ to } 10$ Points: High self-handicapping tendency.

Psychological Principles and Dynamics of Self-Handicapping

• Definition of Self-Handicapping:

  • The process of engaging in actions, creating obstacles, or choosing behaviors that actively harm or hinder one's performance, evaluation, or goals prior to an event.

• Temporal Requirement:

  • Self-handicapping explicitly occurs before the performance or evaluative situation takes place.

• Psychological Motives and Self-Esteem Protection:

  • Protection Against Failure (Discounting):

  • Creates a built-in, external excuse prior to testing or performance.

  • Example: Choosing to go to a downtown party the night before a major exam instead of studying.

  • Failure Outcome: If the individual fails the exam, they attribute the failure to staying out late and lacking study time (an external behavioral decision) rather than lacking intelligence (an internal trait defect).

  • Enhancement Following Success (Augmenting):

  • Enhances self-worth if the individual succeeds despite the obstacle.

  • Success Outcome: If the individual parties, skips studying, and still scores an A on the exam, they conclude they are a "genius" who naturally outperforms peers who studied.

Questions & Discussion

• Question Regarding Self-Handicapping Item 10:

  • Student Prompt: Is statement 10 ("Sometimes I get so depressed even easy tasks become difficult") a clinical depression screening test?

  • Instructor Response: No, it is not a depression screening test. While item 10 addresses depressive symptoms affecting task difficulty, within this scale it measures the degree to which individuals utilize personal emotional states as externalized obstacles or explanations for performance outcomes.