Social Psychology L4 Flashcards
What is the central proposition of attribution making?
People’s perception of the causes of an event affects what they do and how they feel.
What are the two overarching types of attributions
Internal - internal factors within the person
External - external factors affecting the person
What are the two personality based attributions
Pessimistic attribution style - tends to blame themselves
Optimistic attribution style - tends to blame the circumstance
What are the consequences of a pessimistic attribution style?
Tend to die much earlier, and have much poorer health between the ages of 45 and 60.
How are attributions linked to self-esteem?
- If we succeed and attribute our success to internal qualities, we can achieve and maintain self esteem
- If we fail and attribute our failure to internal qualities, we suffer a decrease in self esteem.
How is our sense of control influenced by attributions?
When we attribute things to internal characteristics, we feel that we have the ability to change our lives. When we attribute things to external characters, we feel like our life is out of our control as it is the environment not ourselves that have caused this thing to happen.
It’s important to know that control attribution can also be used…
In a negative way. For instance, victim blaming. We don’t want to just think that bad things happen randomly to good people as then we would be scared all the time of something bad happening to us (feel out of control). We therefore blame some characteristic of the individual to explain the event.
How are attributions made on an intrapersonal (level 1) level?
Focus on the criteria by which individuals analyse information and come to make an attribution. Individuals undergo a scientific process to explain there own behavior.
What are the major theories surrounding intrapersonal (level 1) attributions?
. Correspondence Inference
. Covariation and Configuration
How are attributions made on an interpersonal (level 2) level?
On a face to face level, no longer as rational as it becomes about judging someone else at the face value of their actions.
What are the two major effects that come into play with interpersonal (level 2) attributions?
. Actor Observer Effect
. Self-Serving Bias
Describe the Actor Observer Effect.
People tend to attribute the actions of others to internal factors, while attributing the actions of themselves to external factors - give yourself the benefit of the doubt.
Describe the Self-Serving Bias.
Tend to take credit, make internal attributions, for successes, while rejecting responsibility, or making external attributions, for failures.
What are the attribution trends that are present at the inter-group (level 3) level?
When the outcome is undesirable, the in-group makes external attributions (it’s not our fault), well the out-group makes internal attributions (it’s their fault).
What are the attribution trends that are present at the inter-society (level 4) level?
Miller (1984) shows that people from western cultures tend to make internal attributions, while people from eastern cultures tend to make external attributions.
