HPS204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Ultimate Attribution Error, Ethnocentrism, Fundamental Attribution Error
HPS204 WEEK 4
Appreciate the applications of attribution theory;
Attributional style refers to an individual (personality) predisposition to make a certain type
of causal attribution for behaviour. Rotter proposed two attributional styles: internals
(believe that we have some control over the reinforcements and punishments we receive,
and therefore over our destiny. Things happen because we make them happen), and
externals (are more fatalistic: we believe we have little control over what happens to us-
things simply occur by chance, luck, or the actions of powerful external agents).
A notable feature of many interpersonal relationships is attributional conflict (e.g. ‘I
withdraw because you nag’, compared to ‘I nag because you withdraw). In examining happy
versus distressed married couples, it has been found that happily married couples tend to
credit their partners for positive behaviours by citing internal, stable, global, and
controllable factors to explain them. Negative behaviour is explained away by ascribing
causes viewed as external unstable, specific, and uncontrollable. Distressed couples behave
in the exact opposite way. Women often think regularly in causal terms about the
relationship, men only do so when the relationship becomes dysfunctional.
Define, recognise and provide examples of the attributional biases; and
A cognitive miser is a model of social cognition that characterises people as using the
least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive
behaviours. A motivated tactician refers to a model of social cognition that characterises
people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, from which they choose on the
basis of personal goals, motives, and needs.
Correspondence bias refers to a general attribution bias in which people have an inflated
tendency to see behaviour as reflecting stable underlying personality attributes. This is
similar to fundamental attribution error (a bias in attributing another’s behaviour more to
internal than to situational causes). An example of this is writing a paper on Adolf Hitler.
Whether or not participants chose to, or were instructed to, write a paper supporting his
actions, attributions were made that the person themselves supported him. Some
explanations have been proposed to explain this: the focus of attention (behaviour is more
salient than situational background), differential forgetting (attribution requires the
representation of causal information in memory. Some people forget situational causes
more readily than dispositional causes), cultural/developmental factors (for example,
Western children do not learn to make dispositional attributions until late childhood,
whereas Hindu Indian children use largely situational explanations), and linguistic factors
(English is constructed in such a way that it is usually relatively easy to describe an action
and an actor in the same terms, and much more difficult to describe the situation in the
same way. For example, we can talk about a kind or honest person, a kind or honest action,
but not a kind or honest situation. Thus, the English language may facilitate dispositional
explanation).
The actor-observer effect: Refers to the tendency to attribute our own behaviour externally
and others’ behaviours internally. The effect is likely to occur in stances where the individual
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Attributional style refers to an individual (personality) predisposition to make a certain type of causal attribution for behaviour. Rotter proposed two attributional styles: internals (believe that we have some control over the reinforcements and punishments we receive, and therefore over our destiny. Things happen because we make them happen), and externals (are more fatalistic: we believe we have little control over what happens to us- things simply occur by chance, luck, or the actions of powerful external agents). A notable feature of many interpersonal relationships is attributional conflict (e. g. i withdraw because you nag", compared to i nag because you withdraw). In examining happy versus distressed married couples, it has been found that happily married couples tend to credit their partners for positive behaviours by citing internal, stable, global, and controllable factors to explain them. Negative behaviour is explained away by ascribing causes viewed as external unstable, specific, and uncontrollable. Distressed couples behave in the exact opposite way.
