week 2 lectures (Errors and biases) Flashcards
(33 cards)
What is the fundamental attribution error?
Ross 1977 - ‘A general tendency to overestimate the importance of personal or dispositional factors relative to environmental influences’
Who came up with the Actor- Observer effect?
Jones and Nisbett (1971)
What is the Actor - observer effect (Jones and nisbet 1971)
The actor (person who did it) attributes causality to situational influences
Observers attribute causality to actors dispositions
How do you reconcile Ross’s definition of the fundamental attribution error with The Actor- Observer effect
Clarify that it is the observers that have the general tendency to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors
What is a proposed reason for the actor observer effect
- attribution depends on where we focus attention
- observers see actors, actors see environments
Who compared western culture with indian culture
Miller (1984)
What did Miller argue?
Compares western culture to indian culture
- Western is more indidualistic as opposed to collectivistic
- western world = self defined by internal attributes
India = self defined by social relationships - western world = Encourages seperation of self from context
india = encourages integration of self within social context
What does Millers study imply about the fundamental attribution error?
It suggests that the fundamental attribution error may be western specific and may not be applied to other cultures
What was the method of millers study?
Cross cultural study
70 indian ppts, 60 US ppts
age 8, 11, 15, adult
Asked to describe 2 prosocial and 2 antisocial behaviours and why they occured
Measured the proportions of references to dispositions vs context
What was the results of millers study?
(adult) Participants from the US attribute greater causality to actors dispositions than they do in india
(adult) Participants from India attribute greater causality to contextual features
Similar findings among 15 year olds, but no significant cultural differences among 8 and 11 years old
What do harvey, town and yarkin argue (1981)
We cant know that the Fundamental attribution error is really an error.
Its impossible to observe the true cause of behaviour from a single instance
Theres also no objective criteria for the accuracy of atribution.
Therefore the FAE should be considered a bias rather than an error
What do Gilbert and malone argue that we should call the FAE instead?
Correspondence bias
What would be best definition of correspondence bias be?
A general tendency, aquired through socialisation into western culture, for observers to overestimate the importance of personal or dispositional factors relative to environmental influence
What do Sabini, Sepimann and Stein argue?
Challenge the notion that there are easily seperated internal and external causes of behaviour
Every external cause must have a matched external cause and vice versa
What is Gilbert, Pelham & Krulls model of correspondence bias?
Attribution involves three sequential processes:
- categorisation (What is the actor doing?)
- characterisation (What does the action imply about the actor?)
- correction (What situational constraints are in force?)
Categorisation and characterisation occur automatically
Correction requires conscious effort
What is the concept of a cognitive load?
We have a limited amount of capacity for cognitively effort processing
When we dont have sufficient mental resources to expend on the task we fall back onto automatic processing
Cognitive load is a mentally effortful task that we impose on someone so we can see how well they do on another task, where they will fall back on automatic processes
What was Gilbert, pelham and Krulls findings to do with cognitive load and correspondence bias?
Placing someone under cognitive load does make them more susceptible to correspondence bias
What was the method of Gilbert, Pelham and Krull?
Particpants were made to listen to a pro or anti abortion speech
They were told speech was requested by the teacher
The main task was to rate speech writers attitude towards abortion
For half of participants, This was combined with a second cognitive load task where they were asked to prepare their own speech on abortion
Those who recieved the cognitive load task where more likely to have correspondence bias
What does the results of Gilbert Pelhum and Krull imply?
Under cognitive load, participants were less able to correct for situational constraints
This suggests that correspondence bias occurs because people fail to correct their initial automatic attributions
What is our final corrected definition of correspondence bias/ FAE
A general tendency
aquired through socialisation into western culture
for observers
to automatically attribute causality to the actor
and due to a lack of effort or cognitive busyness, fail to correct for situational factors
What does simon argue on the topic of bounded rationality?
We cant always be rational because our capacity for being rational is limited
we are as rational as we can be
rationality is limited by availability of
- time
- information
- mental capacity/resources
therefore rationality has boundaries
What is Tversky and Khanemans work on Heuristics and Biases?
Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts we make to simplify decision making
They are generally useful but can lead to errors
What was the method of Snyder and Swann when studying confirmation bias in social interactions?
Half of students told to identify whether their partner was extroverted, half told to identify whether their partner was introverted
Half within each condition were told the info had been taken from a personality test (high certainty)
Half not told that the info was based on anything (less certainty)
They were ask to select which questions out of a list they would ask that person to find out
What were the results and implication of Synder and Swann?
Those who tested the hypothesis that the partner was extravert chose a greater number of questions relating to extraversion
Those who tested the hypothesis that the partner was introvert chose a greater number of questions relating to introversion
There was no difference in the number of questions chosen relating to hypothesis certainty
Implication: When people test the hypothesis about other people they seek out questions that will confirm their hypothesis
This may lead to a self fufilling profecy as when questions were asked about extraversion, the interview rated the student as being more extraverted and vice versa
