L4 - Social Inference

Question 1

What are attribution theories?

Answer 1

• Describing how people develop causal understanding of human behaviour
• Is behaviour due to disposition or situation?

Question 2

What is the motive for attributional theories?

Answer 2

• Form a coherent understanding of the world
• To control env
• Predict people

Question 3

What is Kelley’s Covariation Theory?

Answer 3

• Judgement of how strongly things are related
• Behaviour is attributed to possible causes that go together with the behaviour

Question 4

What are the three factors in Kelley’s Covariation Theory?

Answer 4

• Consensus: Do most people behave this way in this situation?
• Consistency: Does this person always behave this way in this situation?
• Distinctiveness: Is the behaviour only performed in a particular situation and not others?

Question 5

What is fundamental attribution bias?

Answer 5

• Also known as correspondence bias
• Overestimate role of dispositional
• Underestimate situational
• Over-attribute actions to internal disposition

Question 6

Fundamental attribution error study?

Answer 6

• Students told to read essays written by other students
• They were told that the authors were pro/anti castro and had either written freely or were instructed to be pro/anti
• DV: Ppts were asked to indicate the authors attitude towards Castro
• Results found that attributional bias was present as in the instructed category, the attitudes should be the same, but ppts thought otherwise

Question 7

Fundamental attribution error study as empirical evidence?

Answer 7

• Ppts randomly assigned to questioner/responder
• Q read out questions, R responds with scripted ans
• Q indicate to responders which ans to read
• Q later rated R on trustworthiness, greediness and kindheartedness
• Q drew inferences about R
• R led to recite altruistic responses were rated more favourably
• Occurred even though responders could have tried through tone of voice to distance themselves

Question 8

What is actor-observer affect

Answer 8

• when fundamental attribution error occurs when we explain behaviour of others
• Observers overestimate disposition
• Actors overestimate situation

Question 9

What was the study conducted and what are the explanations? For the actor-observer theory

Answer 9

• Couples described causes of disagreements
• Own behaviour situational but partner’s was dispositional
• Explanations are the focus of attention and available information

Question 10

What is Self-serving attribution bias?

Answer 10

• Motivated to protect/enhance our self esteem
• Failure = situation, Success = dispositions
• Seen by newspaper accounts of athletes attributions after victory/loss

Question 11

What is the ultimate attribution error?

Answer 11

• Ingroup success = internal attribution
• Ingroup failure = external attribution
• Outgroup success =external attribution
• Outgroup failure = internal attribution

e.g football team loses because of ref, won because players. Other team won because of umpire but lost because players

Question 12

What is the linguistic intergroup bias effect?

Answer 12

• Abstract language describing positive ingroup/neg outgroup
• Concrete language describing neg ingroup/ pos outgroup

Question 13

What is social identity theory?

Answer 13

• Part of identity is derived from group membership
• Compare our group with others, these relations will influence our self concept
• Strive for a positive group-image

Question 14

What was the dimension for Werner introduced

Answer 14

• Stable/unstable
  e.g effort = internal & unstable
  Luck = External & unstable
  Ability = Internal & stable
  Difficulty = External & stable