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Reading for social psych week 2 lecture attribution theory-82-101 - Coggle…
Reading for social psych week 2 lecture attribution theory-82-101
Causal explanation- what causes what/ attribution - (process of assigning cause to our and others’ behaviour)
Heider likes to think of humans as naive psychologists-( model of a social group that characterises people as using rational scientific- like cues and effect analyses to understand the world-test hypotheses of social world- his evidence- 1- we believe people act on motives- try and find causes/ intentions for behaviour- 2- we use causal theories to (control and manipulate our environment) so look for stable characteristics in environment eg stable qualities in people/ situations that cause behaviour/ we and distinguish between internal (or dispositional) and external (or situational) attributions- like to look for intentionality- predictable
Internal attribution- (process of assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviour to internal or dispositional factors/ external attribution- assigning the cause of our own or others behaviour to external or environmental factors)- helpful when distinguishing if someone’s actions are due to environment or persons behaviour - look at ppt explains more- Heider believed we have 2 primary needs- gain a coherent view of world/ gain control over environment- leads to us being ‘naive scientists’
From acts to dispositions- we do a lot of correspondent inference= (causal attribution of behaviour to underlying dispositions) as that means we know that a behaviour of someone= more stable/ predictable- - have more control of environment-to make these inferences use 5 cues /// social perceivers prefer internal (dispositional) attributions more valuable in making predictions on behaviour- personality= stable - look at diagram on ppt eg if you see some of the 5 cues go with internal- if not go with external reason- but sometimes not always case?
1- free behaviour- indicates disposition have choice over what they’re doing
2- behaviour that has non common effects- ( effects of behaviour that are relatively exclusive to that behaviour rather than other behaviours) - more telling if behaviour will lead to a few non common effects rather than a large amount or common effects- leads to our judgement that (outcomes of behaviour was intended by person who chose behaviour)
3- act not being considered socially desirable- goes against norm- more telling
4- hedonic relevance- (behaviour that has important direct consequences for self)
5- personalism- (behaviour that appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm us rather than others)
Issues with correspondent inference and why it’s declined in importance as attribution theory- depends heavily on attribution of (intentionality rather than unintentional behaviour) yet unintentional behaviour can be just as telling (eg someone is careless)/ depends on us observing non common effects and comparing their chosen acts to non chosen ones- but research shows we don’t really think about (non occurring behaviours) and so wouldn’t be able to grasp commonality of effects easily r
Other attribution theories- covariation model - Harold Kelley- we act like scientists finding which (factor covaries most closely with the behaviour then assign a causal role to that factor) similar to ANOVA stat method- to make this decision need 3 classes of info /// cause of behaviour must be present when behaviour is present and absent when behaviour is absent- over time multiple obs- from multiple obs- ascribe causality to the one that covaries w/ behaviour the most- attributions= either internal or external
1-Consistency info- (info about the extent to which behaviour Y always occurs with stim X eg does Tom always laugh at comedian- high consistency or only sometimes) if consistency is low- (discount potential cause and look at alternative)- if Tom only laughs sometimes probs not Tom or Comedian for laughter but other factor eg smoking good cush
2- distinctiveness info- (info abt if a person’s reaction occurs only with one stimulus or is a common reaction to many stimuli eg does Tom laugh at everything- low distinctiveness or only at comedian- high )
3- consensus info- (info about extent to which people react in same way to stimulus X eg does everyone laugh at comedian- high consensus- or only Tom) - if distinctiveness and consensus= high can assume comedian= reason for laughter but if both are low can assume it’s Toms personality
So low consistency= search for alternative cause/ high consistency, distinctiveness and consensus= external attribution to stimulus- whereas high, low, low= internal attribution to person
yet inconsistencies seen with Kelley’s attribution theory- just because you can theoretically asses consistency, distinctiveness and consensus info does not immediately mean people do that in real situations / evidence that people can be bad at assessing co-variation / no (guarantee) people are using covariation principle- may choose most noticeable feature or whatever feature seems most similar to effect, also if looking at co- variables really are naive scientists as covariation doesn’t = causation/ also may not have info available eg don’t know what Tom or others find funny
To help solve Kelly came up with causal schemata( experience based belief about how certain types of causes interact to give effect - one such schema= effect needs 2 causes eg drunk driving need to have drunk certain level of alcohol and driven a car- does help issues of attribution concerning one single observation is not (uncritically?) accepted - references p89
Extensions of attribution theory- causal attribution is involved in distinguishing emotions- 2 key factors in this recognition - undifferentiated arousal and cog processes to label arousal- determine emotion occurring- typically arousal and label go together eg labelling dog as chihuahua may stimulate arousal known as fear- but sometimes initial unexplained arousal that can be experienced as different emotions depending on what forms of attributions are made for what’s being experienced
Schachter’s extension was believed applicable to therapy- if emotions depend on cog label given via causal attribution to undifferentiated arousal then possibly able to convert negative feelings to positive by reatributing arousal- find different cause? (Misattribution paradigm)- references p89 eg eg those who think negatively about selves as they attribute arousal internally are encouraged to attribute arousal to external factors- eg anxious can associate arousal to external ordinary factors not personality deficiency- help be more confident
Issues w/ misattribution in therapy- may be less able to change than previously thought- (environmental cues not readily accepted as bases for inferring emotions from unexplained arousal and unexplained arousal= intrinsically unpleasant- more inclined to give negative label
aldo misattribution= unreliable, short lived and unreliable- usually effects mainly seen in labs that have limited amount of stimuli
More on extensions of attribution theory- more general idea that cognition especially ( cog appraisal) examine/ judge something to understand qualities- has important role in creation and recognition of emotion-
yet 1 negative of treating (emotion as cog labelled arousal)- seem to be more general in attribution for own behaviour- further studied by Daryl Bem in self perception theory- gain knowledge of selves only via making self attributions
Even more extensions- task performance attributions- focussed on (cause/ consequence) of attributions made for how well they and others perform on task- eg exams- in making attribution look at 3 performance dimensions: locus- is performance caused by actor (internal) or situation (external) / stability is internal or external cause stable or unstable/ controllability - to what extent is future performance under actors control- 8 different types of exp for task performance- diagram p91 I’m begging
Why - perceptual salience - person moving is salient aspect of situation eg moving/ talking - becomes cog associated with act- internal attribution becomes more accessible- for some not so fundamental eg Hindu children- don’t move as much toward internal but are more situational- Miller 1984-ALSO actor observer bias- people attribute own behaviour to external causes but others behaviour to internal factors- perceptual salience observers attention is away from themselves (external)
Self serving attribution bias- internal attribution for successes (I’m intelligent) vs external for failures (it was a hard exam) - Olson and Ross (1988) - why? Motivational- protects self esteem- so take shortcuts when processing social info- creates bias
Shortcuts referred to as heuristics- mental shortcuts- reduce complex judgements to rules of thumb- why use if biased- often don’t have time- multiple ones needed for Kelley’s model/ we are cog misers - processing resources= valuable/ limited
Common heuristics- representative heuristic- allocate set of attributes to a person if they match a prototype (stereotype) in memory
Availability heuristic- associations come easily t9 mind- considered more common/ prevalent than they really are
false consensus effect- related to availability- exaggeration of own perspectives based on availability of info