PSY 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Fundamental Attribution Error, Cognitive Dissonance, Social Influence

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1102
• Professor: Najwa Haddad

Document Summary

Study how the presence of other, whether real or imagined, influences and affects thinking, behaviours and feelings. Definition: the explanation we offer for a particular behaviour. Possibilities: dispositional factors angry and yelling because she is a mean person. They behave this way because of who they are as a human being: situational kelsey is yelling because she lost her job, interaction between the both. The fundamental attribution error: our tendency to explain the behaviours of others, we use personality traits as the explanation of the behaviour, tend to disregard situational factors, for strangers we tend to use dispositional factors rather than situational. Study: group of college students in two groups and an assistant. One group she acted nice, the other mean, and the group knew she was instructed to act this way. The groups attributed her behaviour to her characteristics rather than how she was instructed to act that way.