Attributions: From Elements to Dispositions 4.2

Melvin Lerner (1980) argues that the tendency to be critical of victims stems from our deep-seated

belief in a just world

Three kinds of covariation information in particular are useful:

consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency.

These behaviors are symptomatic of the base-rate fallacy—

the fact that people are relatively insensitive to numerical base rates, or probabilities; they are influenced more by graphic, dramatic events such as the sight of a multimillion-dollar lottery winner celebrating on TV or a photograph of bodies being pulled from the wreckage of a plane crash.

As a result of many years of research, it is now clear that language and culture can influence the way people think about

time, space, objects, and other aspects of the physical world around them.

To interact effectively with others, we need to know how they feel and when they can be trusted. But to understand people well enough to predict their future behavior, we also try

to identify their inner dispositions—stable characteristics such as personality traits, attitudes, and abilities.

Base-rate fallacy -

we ignore the probability of an event's occurring in favor of recalling a vivid incident.

Cultural differences in terms of what people focus on can be seen in natural settings outside the psychology laboratory. For example, Takahiko Masuda and others (2008) found that the art created in Western countries—

whether the artists were professionals or schoolchildren—tends to highlight individual people and objects, whereas art created in East Asia dedicates more space to backgrounds and scenery

Motivational Biases

wishful seeing, need for self esteem, belief in a just world

The base-rate fallacy can lead to various misperceptions of risk

. For that reason, people overestimate the number of those who die in shootings, fires, floods, and terrorist bombings and underestimate the death toll caused by heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and other mundane events.

Jones's Correspondent Inference Theory - Is the person who commits an act of aggression a beast? Is the person who donates money to charity an altruist? To answer these kinds of questions, people make inferences on the basis of three factors.

1: Choice 2: Expectedness 3: Intended effect/consequence

Useful types of covariation:

1: Consensus: how are other people reacting to the same stimulus? 2: Distinctiveness: is the person's behavior consistent over time? 3: Consistency: does the person react the same or differently to different stimuli?

Need for Self-Esteem

1: Hence, people tend to judge favorably others who are similar to themselves rather than different on key characteristics 2: Similarly, other research shows that people seek more information about their strengths than about weaknesses, overestimate their contributions to group efforts, exaggerate their control, and predict an optimistic and rosy future.

Types of Counterfactual Thinking

1: Imagining results are better than actual results 2: Imagining results are worse than actual results

Just as culture influences the way we perceive the physical world, it can also H

1: influence the way we view individuals and their place in the social world around them. 2: Hence, although attribution researchers used to assume that people all over the world explained human behavior in the same ways, it is now clear that cultures shape in subtle but profound ways the kinds of attributions we make about people, their behavior, and social situations

Attribution theory

A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior.

Kelley's covariation principle:

A principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not.

Cognitive Heuristics

According to Kahneman, Tversky, and others, people often make attributions and other types of social judgments using "cognitive heuristics"—information-processing rules of thumb that enable us to think in ways that are quick and easy but that often lead to error

Fundamental Attribution Error: A Western Bias?

American and Asian Indian participants of varying ages described the causes of negative actions they had observed. Among young children, there were no cultural differences. With increasing age, however, Americans made more personal attributions and Indian participants made more situational attributions. Explanations for positive behaviors followed a similar pattern. This finding suggests that the fundamental error is a Western phenomenon.

Consider the contrasting orientations between Western "individualist" cultures (whose members tend to believe that persons are autonomous, motivated by internal forces, and responsible for their own actions) and non-Western "collectivist" cultures

Among young children, there were no cultural differences. With increasing age, however, the American participants made more personal attributions, while the Indians made more situational attributions

Attribution Biases examples

Cognitive Heuristics, Counterfactual Thinking, The fundamental attribution error

Unstable

Controllable, can change

Availability heuristic

Estimating the odds of an event by how easily instances of it pop into our head.

Fundamental Attribution Error and the TV Quiz Show

Even though the simulated quiz show situation placed questioners in an obvious position of advantage over contestants, observers rated the questioners as more knowledgeable (right). Questioners did not overrate their general knowledge (left), but contestants rated themselves as inferior (middle) and observers rated them as inferior as well. These results illustrate the fundamental attribution error.

Like social psychologists, people are sensitive to situational causes when explaining the behavior of others.

False

Consistency example- Kelley's covariation principle:

Finally, you might want to seek consistency information to see what happens to the behavior at another time when the person and the stimulus both remain the same. How does this moviegoer feel about this film on other occasions?

There are two ways that social perceivers differ.

First, we vary in the extent to which we believe that human behaviors are caused by personal traits that are fixed ("Everyone is a certain kind of person; there is not much that can be done to really change that") or by characteristics that are malleable ("People can change even their most basic qualities") Second, some of us are more likely than others to process new information in ways that are colored by self-serving motives (von Hippel et al., 2005).

To make sense of our social world, we try to understand the causes of other people's behavior. But what kinds of explanations do we make, and how do we go about making them?

Fritz Heider (1958) took the first step toward answering these questions. To Heider, we are all scientists of a sort. Motivated to understand others well enough to manage our social lives, we observe, analyze, and explain their behavior. The explanations we come up with are called attributions, and the theory that describes the process is called attribution theory

Stable

Given, can not change

Counterfactual Thinking `

Imagining alternative outcomes that might have occurred but did not

Wishful seeing example

In another study, research participants in a laboratory were quicker to identify rapidly presented food words on a computer screen when they were hungry than when they had recently eaten (Radel & Clement-Guillotin, 2012).

According to Kelley, people make attributions by using the covariation principle:

In order for something to be the cause of a behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not.

Wishful seeing

In some very basic ways, people have a tendency to see what they want to see (Dunning & Balcetis, 2013).

Why do social perceivers consistently make assumptions about persons and fail to appreciate the impact of situations?

Instead, it appears that social perception is a two-step process: First, we identify the behavior and make a quick personal attribution; then we correct or adjust that inference to account for situational influences. At least for those raised in a Western culture, the first step is simple and automatic, like a reflex; the second requires attention, thought, and effort.

Attribution theories

Jones Correspondent Inference Theory & Kelley's Covariation theory

Correspondent inference theory seeks to describe how perceivers try to discern an individual's personal characteristics from a slice of behavioral evidence. However, behavior can be attributed not only to personal factors but to situational factors as well.

Kelley's Covariation Theory

belief in a just world

The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims.

Belief in a Just World example

One person, actually a confederate, was selected randomly to take a memory test while the others looked on. Each time the confederate made a mistake, she was jolted by a painful electric shock (actually, there was no shock; what participants saw was a staged videotape). Since participants knew that only the luck of the draw had kept them off the "hot seat," you might think they would react with sympathy and compassion. Not so. In fact, they belittled the hapless confederate

Actor-Observer Effect

Our tendency to make personal attributions for the behavior of others and situational attributions for ourselves.

By the time you finish reading this textbook, you will have learned the cardinal lesson of social psychology:

People are profoundly influenced by the situational contexts of their behavior

Jones's Correspondent Inference Theory

People try to infer from an action whether the act itself corresponds to an enduring personal characteristic of the actor.

Belief in a Just World:

The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life.

distinctiveness example - Kelley's covariation principle:

Still thinking like a scientist, you might also want distinctiveness information to see how the same person reacts to different stimuli. In other words, what does this moviegoer think of other films?

What domains of life trigger the most counterfactual thinking—and the regret that may follow?

Summarizing past research, Neal Roese and Amy Summerville (2005) found that people's top three regrets center, in order, on education ("I should have stayed in school"), career ("If only I had applied for that job"), and romance

Example of availability heuristic

Survey stating that there are more letter starting with "r" then words that have its third letter as "r". Which is false.

fundamental attribution error

The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people's behavior.

counterfactual thinking

The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.

Situational attribution

Trayvon was show because of recent crimes or because of his appearance.

False-consensus effect -

We assume others think like we do.

In part, the false-consensus bias is a by-product of the availability heuristic.

We tend to associate with others who are like us in important ways, so we are more likely to notice and recall instances of similar rather than dissimilar behavior. `

Consensus example - Kelley's covariation principle:

When hearing someone likes a movie you can get consensus information to see how different people react to the same stimulus.

As social perceivers, we are limited in our ability to process all relevant information, or we lack the kinds of training needed to employ fully the principles of attribution theory.

With so much to explain and not enough time in a day, people take mental shortcuts, cross their fingers, hope for the best, and get on with life. The problem is that speed brings bias and perhaps even a loss of accuracy.

Personal attribution

Zimmerman was an overly suspicious patrolman

false-consensus effect,

a tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.

One rule of thumb that has particularly troublesome effects on attribution is the availability heuristic,

a tendency to estimate the odds that an event will occur by how easily instances of it pop to mind.

According to Kahneman and Miller (1986), people's emotional reactions to events are often colored by

counterfactual thinking, a tendency to imagine alternative outcomes that might have occurred but did not.

Regardless of whether people are asked to predict how others feel about military spending, abortion, gun control, Campbell's soup, certain types of music, favorite celebrities, or norms for appropriate behavior, they

exaggerate the percentage of others who behave similarly or share their views

Research shows that the availability heuristic can lead us astray in two ways

false-consensus effect & A second consequence of the availability heuristic is that social perceptions are influenced more by one vivid life story than by hard statistical facts

Covariation principle:

for something to cause a behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not

When people explain the behavior of others, they tend to overestimate the role of personal factors and overlook the impact of situations. Because this bias is so pervasive (and sometimes so misleading) it has been called the

fundamental attribution error

Since we cannot actually see dispositions, we infer them

indirectly from what a person says and does

According to Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965), each of us tries to understand other people by

observing and analyzing their behavior.

A second consequence of the availability heuristic is that social perceptions are influenced more by

one vivid life story than by hard statistical facts

Attribution theories describe how

people explain the causes of behavior

Jones and Davis's correspondent inference theory predicts that

people try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to an enduring personal trait of the actor.

Heider found it particularly useful to group the causal attributions people give into two categories:

personal and situational.

Dunning (2001): The need for self-esteem biases

social perceptions in subtle ways.

dispositions—

stable characteristics such as personality traits, attitudes, and abilities.