Attribution

Question 1

What is Heider’s theory of naïve psychologists?

Answer 1

A model of social cognition that characterises people as using rational, scientific-like cause-effect analyses to understand the world
Humans tend to explain behaviour in terms of INTENTION i.e. motivated rather than random, and we are constantly looking for what that motivation could be

Question 2

What did Heider and Simmell’s 1944 experiment demonstrate?

Answer 2

Participants constantly provided anthropomorphised explanations for movements of simple shapes, using causal language to describe the shape movements as if they were motivated in some way

Question 3

What were the 3 principles for Heider’s theory?

Answer 3

1) Own behaviour has a purpose and is motivated so we assume the same for others - the search for causes of behaviour is pervasive, as can be seen by religion
2) Predicting the future - predicting what will happen next allows us to respond more appropriately, and accurate predictions involve searching for and anticipating causes; predictions are important as they confer some control and safety to our largely random surroundings (we look for stable and enduring properties of the world around us that cause behaviour)
3) Internal/external attributions - to fully evaluate a person we must consider all aspects of them, even hidden ones, and attributing reasons to behaviour allows us to evaluate such features; we distinguish between personal and environmental causative factors, internal/dispositional and external/situational respectively

Question 4

What did Heider believe about internal and external attributions?

Answer 4

Internal causes (intentions) for behaviour are hidden so can only be inferred where we cannot find any clear external causes e.g. someone acting aloof at a party could simply be not enjoying the party, but someone aloof at home is likely to be that way as a person
People are generally biased towards dispositional attributions for behaviour of others, but more towards situational attributions for own behaviour

Question 5

What is Jones’s and Davis’s theory of Correspondent Inference?

Answer 5

Focused on Heider’s concept of internal attributions i.e. inferences that behaviour caused by stable properties of someone’s underlying personality
Correspondent inferences are preferable because dispositional causes are stable –> render people’s behaviour predictable –> increasing sense of control over the world

Question 6

What 5 sources of info are drawn on to make a correspondent inference?

Answer 6

1) Was the behaviour freely chosen? More indicative of disposition than behaviour controlled externally
2) Were there non-common effects? Effects relatively exclusive to a particular behaviour, one particular outcome; outcome bias i.e. we assume outcomes are intended by the person choosing the behaviour
3) Was the behaviour socially desirable? Desirable behaviour isnt informative as likely to be controlled by norm-conformity, but socially undesirable behaviour is a better basis for correspondent inferences
4) Did the behaviour have hedonic relevance? i.e. does it have important or personal consequences for us; more confident inferences when answer is yes
5) Does the behaviour benefit or harm us? make more confident inferences about behaviour high in personalism

Question 7

What experimental evidence supports the correspondent inference theory?

Answer 7

Students make more correspondent inferences for speeches made by other students when speech topic freely chosen and socially unpopular
Inferences also more likely for “out-of-role” behaviours e.g. someone acting differently to the attributes asked for at a job interview

Question 8

What are 3 limitations to the theory of correspondent inference?

Answer 8

Assumes inferences depend largely on attributions of intentionality, but unintentional behaviour e.g. carelessness can also be strong basis for such inferences
Problem with idea of non-common effects - people don’t attend to non-occurring behaviours so won’t compute commonality of effects accurately
Although we may correct dispositional attributions in light of situational evidence, this is a deliberate process while correspondent inferences themselves are relatively automatic

Question 9

What is Kelley’s covariation model i.e. people as everyday scientists?

Answer 9

Believed that people act like scientists when trying to discover causes of behaviour i.e. they identify what factor covaries most closely with a behaviour, and assign that factor a causative role
This covariation principle is used to decide whether to attribute a behaviour to internal dispositional or external environmental factors

Question 10

What 3 classes of info associated with co-occurrence of an action with a causative factor do people use to make attributional decisions?

Answer 10

e.g. Tom laughing at a comedian
CONSISTENCY - does Tom always laugh (high) or only sometimes (low); if low consistency it suggests an external influence and we engage in discounting i.e. trying to find other causes/covarying factors that can explain the response e.g. did Tom smoke marijuana beforehand?
DISTINCTIVENESS - does Tom laugh at everything (low) or only the comedian (high); low distinctiveness is likely due to dispositional factors
CONSENSUS INFO - does everyone laugh at the comedian (high) or only Tom (low) - if only Tom, it is likely that the behaviour is internal to him

Question 11

What are 5 criticisms of Kelley’s covariation model?

Answer 11

People underuse consensus info, making internal attributions even when consensus is high
Just because people attribute causality using these 3 features in experiments doesn’t mean they do this in normal life
People are actually poor at assessing covariation and there is no guarantee they actually use this principle - more likely to be attributing causality to most salient features etc
Covariation is essentially correlation so cannot accurately infer causes from it
If covariation does exist, multiple observations are needed to form an attribution and we often don’t have sufficient info to do this

Question 12

How did Kelley address the last criticism?

Answer 12

Proposed the concept of CAUSAL SCHEMATA i.e. beliefs/preconceptions built from experience about how certain kinds of cause interact to produce a specific effect
One such schema is the multiple necessary causes schema i.e. a particular effect requires at least 2 causes

While the notion of causal schemata does help to resolve the attributional issue of single/few observations, it is not uncriticised

Question 13

How may causal attributions play a role in explaining our emotions?

Answer 13

How we label our emotions - when we experience undifferentiated arousal e.g. raised HR, there is potential for that to be experienced as any of several different emotions depending on what kind of attributions we make for what we are experiencing

Question 14

What was Schacter and Singer’s experiment of emotional lability?

Answer 14

Participants given adrenaline (controls given placebo)
Either correctly informed about symptoms to experience, not informed at all, or misinformed i.e. incorrect symptoms
All participants in a room with a confederate who either acted angrily or euphorically
Predicted that uninformed group would use confederate behaviour as a salient cue for explaining their arousal, sharing the same emotion (predict other groups unaffected by confederate emotion)

Question 15

What is one of the most significant applications of the work into attributions and emotional lability?

Answer 15

Application in therapy - through causal attribution to undifferentiated arousal it might be possible to transform depression into something else

Question 16

What is the misattribution paradigm?

Answer 16

people feeling bad about themselves because they attribute arousal internally are encouraged to attribute arousal to external factors rather than personal deficiencies

Question 17

What are criticisms of emotional lability and the misattribution paradigm?

Answer 17

Emotions may be less labile than previously thought - environmental cues are not readily accepted as bases for inferring emotions from undifferentiated arousal, and because unexplained arousal is unpleasant there is a propensity to label it negatively

Misattribution effect seems limited and largely restricted to lab investigations; effect may not even be mediated by an attributional process, and restricted to limited range of emotion-inducing stimuli

Question 18

What is one far-reaching implication of treating emotion as cognitively-labelled arousal?

Answer 18

People make more general attributions for their own behaviour - idea elaborated in Bem’s self-perception theory i.e. idea that we gain knowledge of ourselves only by making self-attributions and inferring own attitudes from our behaviours

Question 19

What was Weiner’s task attribution theory?

Answer 19

Interested in causes and consequences of attributions made for successes and failures, and believed these attributions made on basis of 3 performance dimensions:
LOCUS - is performance caused by the person (internal) or situation (external) e.g. was the exam too difficult or was person not clever enough?
STABILITY - Is the internal/external cause stable/enduring? e.g. is someone clever at everything or only on one exam
CONTROLLABILITY - to what extent is future task performance under personal control? Exam difficulty, for example, is not under personal control

Question 20

What are the 4 internally-related explanations for task performance?

Answer 20

Stable/controllable - usual effort
Stable/uncontrollable - ability
Unstable/controllable - unusual effort
Unstable/uncontrollable - mood

Question 21

What are the 4 externally-related explanations for task performance?

Answer 21

Stable/controllable - Consistent help or hindrance from others
Stable/uncontrollable - task difficulty
Unstable/controllable - unusual help/hindrance from others e.g. someone sneezing and distracting you in an exam
Unstable/uncontrollable - luck

Question 22

What was a criticism and subsequent adaptation of Weiner’s model?

Answer 22

Lacked ecological validity i.e. would people analyse achievement like this in reality?

Extended model to emphasise judgements of responsibility - on the basis of causal attributions people make judgements of responsibility and it is these that then influence affective experience and future behaviours

Question 23

What are individual differences in attribution theory?

Answer 23

There are enduring differences in attributional styles of different individuals i.e. predisposition to make certain type of causal attribution
Some people tend towards external i.e. fatalistic approach in which they believe they have little control over what happens to them
Others tend towards internal i.e. believe significant personal control over destiny
Some will take a depressive approach - successes all external while failure internal, others will do the opposite
Preference can vary in different situations

Question 24

What is the attributional style questionnaire?

Answer 24

Measures explanations given for unpleasant events on 3 dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, global/specific
On this scale, a depressive outlook for example would be internal, stable and global, an attributional style that promotes helplessness

Question 25

Why are diachronic studies useful?

Answer 25

Allow us to see someones attributional style at one point in time and how that predicts depressive symptoms at a later date (still only correlative however, ethical issues with CAUSING depression!)

Question 26

How do attributions play a role in interpersonal relationships?

Answer 26

FORMATION - thoughtful and frequent attributions, explaining behaviours away and reducing any ambiguity, facilitating communication and understanding MAINTENANCE - thoughtful attributions decrease and rely instead on personal schema developed; attributions made where trying to excuse their behaviour to make relationship last DISSOLUTION - attributions become important again - either attribute blame and internal attributions for negative behaviours, or excuse them by making external attributions

Question 27

What is a notable feature of many interpersonal relationships?

Answer 27

Attributional conflict - divergent causative explanations for behaviour and disagreement over what attributions to adopt Often can't even agree on cause-effect sequence

Question 28

What are attributional characteristics of satisfied spouses?

Answer 28

Positive behaviour credited by citing internal, stable, global and controllable factors while negative explained using external, unstable, specific and uncontrollable factors (dissatisfied spouses do this the other way around)

Question 29

How can the attribution process be biased?

Answer 29

By personability, interpersonal dynamics or biased to meet communication needs (e.g. are we motivated to try to maintain a relationship or not?) Attributions are never approached in an objective and dispassionate manner, and out cognitive mechanisms may be subject to imperfections and limitations (cognitive miser)

Question 30

What is correspondence bias?

Answer 30

General tendency to overly attribute behaviour to stable underlying personality dispositions, underestimating the value of the situation despite overwhelming evidence of external causes (fundamental attribution error)

Question 31

What 2 other biases are correspondent bias and FAE closely related to?

Answer 31

Outcome bias - when someone's behaviour has an outcome for others it is believed that they intended those outcomes Essentialism - behaviour reflects underlying and immutable properties of people and the groups the belong to; problematic when it comes to stereotyping i.e. attributing stereotypically negative attributes of outgroups to essential personality traits of the members

Question 32

What are 4 different explanations for the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 32

Focus of attention - behaviour more salient in memory so person and behaviour form causal unit; if focus redirected onto situation, FAE muted/reversed Differential forgetting - situational causes might be forgotten more quickly, producing a dispositional shift with time Cultural/developmental factors - western children start making situational attributions but move to dispositional as get older, while Indian children move even further towards situational Linguistic factors - English language facilitates dispositional attributional explanations e.g. easy to describe both a person and their action with the same term, but not the situation

Question 33

Draw a clear distinction between FAE and correspondent bias

Answer 33

FAE - Tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors CB - Tendency to draw correspondent dispositional inferences from behaviour that is actually constrained by the situation

Question 34

What is meant by the Actor-observer effect?

Answer 34

People have a tendency to attribute own behaviour externally while making dispositional attributions for behaviour of others (also considering behaviour of others to be more stable and predictable than our own)

Question 35

What 3 main factors can influence the actor-observer effect?

Answer 35

TYPE OF BEHAVIOUR - we tend to make more dispositional attributions for desirable behaviour; actors make more dispositional attributions for positive behaviour than observers do KNOWLEDGE - actor-observer bias can be inverted if the actor knows that their behaviour is dispositional e.g, adopting an injured dog in the knowledge that you are a sucker for injured dogs REVERSAL OF ROLES - effect abolished/reversed if actor becomes observer and vv - actor will become more dispositional and observer more situational

Question 36

What are the main explanations for the actor-observer bias?

Answer 36

Perceptual focus - actors can only see their background, while the actor is the salient feature for observers Informational differences - actors have more information about themselves and how their behaviour changes depending on situation; observers without this information are more likely to believe behaviour of others to be stable and consistent Attributions will therefore not always be correct - depend on information available to us

Question 37

What is the false consensus effect?

Answer 37

Belief that own behaviour is more typical than it actually is, expecting others to act the same way - essentially making own consensus information based on own behaviour Effect is strongest for important beliefs, ones we care about and ones we are confident about

Question 38

What are some possible reasons for the false consensus effect?

Answer 38

We usually seek out similar others, so we have the same information circulating (echo effect) Own views are more salient to us so displace other possibilities We are motivated to ground our perceptions and actions in perceived consensus to validate them and produce a more stable world

Question 39

What are self-serving biases and what are 2 examples?

Answer 39

Biases that assist our self-esteem, in keeping with the motivated tactition model Self-enhancing bias - take credit for positive behaviours and successes as reflecting who we are and our intention/effort Self-protecting bias - explain away negative behaviours and failures as being due to factors outside our control which don't reflect anything about us personally

Question 40

What is the cognitive component of these self-serving biases?

Answer 40

People expect to succeed when they have put effort in, and so accept the responsibility for succeeding and exaggerate the control they have over such successfyl performances Failure is generally unintentional, rarely associated with any personal motive, so that helps with distancing self from responsibility for the outcome

Question 41

What is self-handicapping?

Answer 41

An anticipatory self-serving bias, when someone publicly embraces any possible factor which reduces personal responsibility for possible mediocrity i.e. making external attributions in advance for anticipated failure/poor performance e.g. students who work on a solvable puzzle and do well could attribute their performance internally, anticipating an equally good performance on a second task and choosing a performance-enhancing drug Those who worked on an unsolvable puzzle, however, could only attribute their performance to luck and a performance-hindering drug to be able to explain away more easily anticipated failure during a second task

Question 42

What is attribution of responsibility?

Answer 42

Another self-serving instance which is influenced by outcome bias - greater responsibility attributed to someone involved in an accident with large consequences than one with small consequences.

Question 43

What can we link to the attribution of responsibility?

Answer 43

A tendency for people to cling to an illusion of control by believing in a just world i.e. believing that bad things happen to bad people who had control over their outcomes This pattern of attributions makes the world seem a controllable and secure place in which we can determine our own destiny

Question 44

What can belief in a just world result in?

Answer 44

General pattern of attribution in which victims deemed responsible for their own misfortunes, and self-blame for victims of traumatic events like rape - such events make the world seem less controllable and just, and assuming responsibility for the event restores some of that

Question 45

What are intergroup attributions?

Answer 45

Process of assigning cause of behaviour to a group membership - e.g. explaining behaviour in terms of stereotypical properties of group membership such as sex and race

Question 46

What functions do intergroup attributions serve?

Answer 46

First relates to in-group biases and second relates to self-esteem ETHNOCENTRISM - an in-group serving bias in which there is an evaluative preference for all aspects of own group; social desirable ingroup behaviour and socially undesirable outgroup behaviour internally attributed Group ENHANCING biases are stronger and more consistent than corresponding group PROTECTING biases e.g. in sports teams success is often attributed to internal abilities rather than luck, effort or task difficulty

Question 47

What is the ultimate attribution error?

Answer 47

Extension of FAE in the domain of outgroup behaviour attributions - positive outgroup behaviour externally attributed or explained away in order to preserve the unfavourable image of them

Question 48

What did Hewstone and Ward study with regard to UAE?

Answer 48

In Malaysia - Malays showed ethnocentric attribution bias in favour of Malays, with ingroup enhancement stronger than the outgroup derogation towards the Chinese. Interestingly, the Chinese in Malaysia showed similar attributions e.g. dispositional for positive acts of Malays but situational for positive acts of Chinese In Singapore only significant effect was Malays making internal attributions for positive acts by Malays

Question 49

How did Hewstone and Ward explain their results?

Answer 49

In terms of the nature of intergroup relations in the two places - in Malaysia malays are the clear majority group with Chinese as a minority; furthermore relations between the groups were tense and conflictual at the time with both Malays and Chinese sharing an unfavourable stereotype of Chinese Singapore, in contrast, was more ethnically tolerant, less of a divide between the groups and ethnic stereotypes less pronounced

Question 50

What is an important implication of Hewstone and Ward's work?

Answer 50

Shows that ethnocentric attributions are not a universal tendency reflective of asocial cognition - it depends on intergroup relations and dynamics in a given socio-historic context Attributions made by group members are influenced by precise nature of relations between the groups

Question 51

What was Mackie and Ahn's perspective on outcome biases?

Answer 51

Affected by whether someone is a member of your group or norm and whether outcome desirable or not There is an outcome bias for an ingroup member where the outcome is desirable i.e. a suggestion that the outcome of their behaviour was intended, thus projecting favourably on the group

Question 52

What 2 processes may be responsible for ethnocentric intergroup attributions?

Answer 52

COGNITIVE PROCESS - social categorisation generates category-consistent expectations (schema, stereotypes), so behaviour consistent with these is attributed to stable internal factors with little effort to consider additional factors SELF-ESTEEM PROCESS - need for secure self-esteem nurtured by making advantageous comparisons that make ingroup look better than outgroups; fundamental aspect of social identity theory, that we derive identity from group membership so have a vested interest in maintaining a positive ingroup profile - ethnocentric attributional biases satisfy this need, internally attributing good things about the group etc