attribution theories

• the naïve scientist


  a model of social cognition that assumes people use rational and scientific analyses to construct causal theories of human behaviour and understand the world; think like scientists and try to work out the outcomes for themselves and other people
• what did Heider (1958) believe

  people are motivated by two primary needs:

  - the need to form a coherent view of the world

  - the need to gain control over the environment

  
  

  the need for coherence and control leads us to behave like naive scientists and the social world becomes predictable
• attribution theories


  theories of how we attribute causal relationships in our social world
• attribution


  the process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour, and that of others; people use information to make inferences about the causes of behaviour and events

  - causality ascribes meaning to our world and reduces uncertainty
• what did Heider and Simmel (1944) show

  that people ascribe intentionality even to the movement of basic geometrical shapes (intentionality is purposeful or goal directed behaviour)
• internal attribution


  locates the cause of behavior as being internal to individual/due to dispositional factors - personality, attitudes, abilities

  - they are fixed/stable therefore predictable
• external attribution


  locates the cause of behaviour as being external to individual/due to environmental factors - actions of others, luck
• correspondent inference


  causal attribution of behaviour to underlying dispositions
• correspondent inference theory (Jones and Davis, 1965)

  social perceivers attempt to infer that a given action corresponds to some permanent personality trait by considering five cues:

  - if the action was freely chosen

  - if the act produced a non-common effect (not expected)

  - if the act was not considered socially desirable

  - if the act had a direct impact on us

  - if the act seemed intended to directly benefit or harm us

  
  

  from this they can infer the disposition of the behaviour (internal or external)

  - social perceivers prefer internal (dispositional) attributions as they are more valuable in making predictions about behaviour
• freely chosen behaviour

  more indicative of a disposition
• non-common effect


  effects on behaviour that are relatively exclusive to that behaviour rather than other behaviours

  - unexpected behaviour tell us more about dispositions
• outcome bias


  the belief that the outcomes of a behaviour were intended by the person who chose the behaviour

  - people assume others are aware of non-common effects
• socially desirable behaviour


  behaviour that tells us little about a person's disposition as it is likely controlled by societal norms

  - socially undesirable behaviour is generally counter-normative and thus a better basis for making an inference
• hedonic relevance


  refers to behaviour that has important direct consequences for self
• personalism


  behaviour that appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm oneself rather than others
• the covariation model (Kelley, 1967)


  the behaviour and the cause must co-occur

  - cause must be present same time as behaviour, and absent when the behaviour is absent

  - we ascribe causality from multiple potential causes to the one that covaries w the behaviour to the greatest extent

  - this model is idealised and requires multiple observations: perceivers do not always follow logical rules when processing social information and sometimes take shortcuts therefore attributional biases may occur
• consensus


  extent to which others react like the target
• consistency


  extent to which the target reacts in same way on different occasions
• distinctiveness


  extent to which target reacts same way in other social contexts
• when is an external attribution to the cause and behaviour made

  when consistency is high, and so is distinctiveness and consensus
• when is an internal attribution to the cause and behaviour made

  when distinctiveness and consensus are low
• discount


  if there is not consistent relationship between a specific cause and a specific behaviour, this cause is discounted in favour of an alternative cause
• causal schemata


  experience-based beliefs about how certain types of causes interact to produce an effect

  - the multiple necessary cue schema believes that a particular effect requires at least two causes

  
  

  introduced by Kelley to overcome attributional problems raised by the issue that consistency, distinctiveness and consensus information requires multiple observations
• the fundamental attribution error


  a cognitive bias which causes people to overemphasise a person's personality when explaining their behaviour, while underestimating the influence of situational factors
• correspondence bias


  the tendency to assume a person's behaviour reflects their character, or stable internal qualities
• explanations for correspondence bias

  - focus of attention

  - differential forgetting

  - linguistic facilitation
• focus of attention


  actors behaviour attracts more attention than the background; it's disproportionately salient in cognition, stands out as the fugure against the situational background and is therefore causally overrepresented (Taylor and Fiske, 1978)
• differential forgetting


  evidence shows people tend to forget situational causes more readily than dispositional ones, producing a dispositional shift over time
• linguistic facilitation


  the construction of the English Language makes it easy to describe an action and the actor in the same term, but more difficult to describe the situation in the same way
• which two biases are correspondence bias and the fundamental attribution error closely related to

  - outcome bias

  - essentialism
• essentialism


  the pervasive tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and immutable, often innate, properties of people or the groups they belong to

  - a process of mapping behaviour onto fixed biological or genetic attributes
• perceptual salience


  the person observed is a salient aspect of the situation who then becomes associated with the act, making an internal attribution more accessible
• actor-observer bias


  the tendency to attribute one's own behaviour to situational factors, but to attribute the behaviour of others to dispositional factors
• two main explanations for the actor-observer effect

  - perceptual focus

  - informational difference
• perceptual focus


  attributions differ because observers focus on the actor as the most salient element, whereas actors focus on external situational factors influencing their behaviour
• informational differences


  differences in attributions arise because actors have more knowledge of their internal states and situational constraints, while observers rely on external cues and limited context
• self-serving biases


  attributional distortions that protect or enhance self-esteem or the self-concept

  - motivational as we are internally attributing success and externally attribution failure to protect our self-esteem
• self-serving attribution bias

  the tendency to attribute personal failures to the situation, while attributing personal successes to ourselves
• cognitive component of self-serving bias

  Miller and Ross (1975) suggest that people generally expect to succeed, and therefore accept responsibility success and associate success with their own effort

  - tendency to exaggerate amount of control they have over their success

  - may encourage internal attribution of success

  - likely both cognitive and motivational (ego-serving) factors have a role
• self-enhancing vs self-protecting biases

  self-enhancing more common

  - those with low self-esteem tend to attribute their failures internally and not protect themselves by attributing them externally