Week 4 - Social attribution

Question 1

Causal attribution

Answer 1

2 causes of behavior:
1) Internal or Dispositional: Something about the person caused the behavior.

2) External or Situational: Something about the environment caused the behavior.

Question 2

Processes of causal attribution

Answer 2

Covariation principle

Imagining alternatives

• Discounting principle
• Augmentation Principle
• Counterfactual thoughts

Question 3

Covariation principle

Answer 3

In determining what caused a behavior (person or situation?), people systematically associate the behavior with “causal factors” that are present with that behavior

Question 4

Types of covariation information

Answer 4

Consensus:
Do most people do this in the situation?
Whether most people would behave the same or different in a situation
Distinctiveness:
Does the target person do this only in this particular situation?
Whether a behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in many or all situations
Consistency:
Does the target person do this all of the time in this situation, or was this a one-time occurrence?
Whether an individual behaves the same way or differently in a given situation on different occasions

Question 5

Internal attribution

Answer 5

Consensus - Low
Distinctiveness - Low
Consistency - High

Question 6

External attribution

Answer 6

Consensus - High
Distinctiveness - High
Consistency - High

Question 7

Imagining alternatives - Discounting principle

Answer 7

People assign less weight to a particular cause of behavior if there are also other plausible causes

Question 8

Imagining alternatives - Augmentation principle

Answer 8

People assign more weight to a particular dispositional cause of behavior if there are other causes present that would have produced the opposite outcome

Question 9

Imagining alternatives - Counterfactual thoughts

Answer 9

Counterfactual thoughts: Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something had gone differently

Emotional Amplification: Emotional reactions to counterfactuals are proportional to how easy it is to imagine the alternatives
- An increase in an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine that event not happening

Question 10

Errors & Biases in attribution

Answer 10

• Self-serving attributional bias

- Fundamental attribution error

Question 11

Self-serving attributional bias

Answer 11

The tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes

Question 12

Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 12

The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to personality while ignoring situational causes.

Question 13

Cognitive load

Answer 13

Reduces the ability to correct a dispositional attribution

Question 14

Causes of FAE - Perceptual Salience

Answer 14

People are usually much more attention-grabbing than the context or the situation

Question 15

Causes of FAE - Conceptual Salience

Answer 15

Information about situational cues is often unavailable, ambiguous, or not of interest

If the situation is what we’re interested in, the FAE actually reverses! We make automatic situational attributions, and then correct for the person

Question 16

Causes of FAE - Belief in a just world

Answer 16

Just world beliefs: A form of attributional belief that “people get what they deserve”

“Just world” is a way to rationalize unfairness

Question 17

Causes of FAE - Actor-Observer bias

Answer 17

1. Different information is perceptually salient.
   i. e. Actors focus on the situation, observers focus on the actors.
2. Different assumptions about what needs explaining.
   i. e. Actors want to understand the situation, observers want to understand the actors.
3. They have access to different kinds of information.
   i. e. Actors know more about themselves than anyone else!

Question 18

Cultural differences in FAE

Answer 18

Interdependent/collectivist cultures pay more attention to contextual factors, consensus information (recall covariation principle)

Collectivists don’t ignore dispositions, they just give equal weight to the person and the situation.

Question 19

Culture and Explanatory style

Answer 19

Fixed (Entity): Your personality/abilities are fixed; no matter what you do, they pretty much stay the same.

Flexible (Incremental/growth): Your personality/abilities are changeable, with training, practice, and effort.