PSYC 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Nonverbal Communication, Fundamental Attribution Error, Roommate
Document Summary
Attributions: the way people explain their own and other"s behaviour. Internal attributes: behaviour about people"s characteristics and personality. Overestimate influence of personality in explaining behaviour, underestimate the influence of situation. Told authors chose stance or assigned stance. Making internal attributions is not always wrong. Fundamental attribution error demonstrates our tendency to make internal attributions perhaps more often than we should. Focus on perceptually salient behaviour of others. Perceptual salience: information that is in the focus on people"s attention, which leads them to overestimate the causal role of this information. Six participants observe conversation from different angles. 2 participants watched both speaker a and b. All participants watched the same conversation (at the same time) Participants who watched speaker a thought speaker a contributed to 70% of the conversation and speaker b contributed to 30% of the conversation. Participants who watched speaker b thought speaker a contributed to 30% of the conversation and speaker b contributed to 70% of the conversation.