Psychology 2070A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: First Nations, Friends House, Sad Movie

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: James M Olson

Document Summary

Understand why they acted as they did in present and past. Understand how various external/situational forces influence peoples behaviours: these judgments about personal qualities and external forces fall into the domain of attribution theories. Attribution theories: explaining social behaviour: attributions: judgments about why an event occurred or why someone behaved in a certain way. The causal judgement we make about another persons behaviour influences how we behave towards him/her (ie pay it forward example whether we accept gift) If someone you"re attracted to is being friendly at the pub, you have to make the judgment and decide if he likes you or is just very drunk. Judgements about the causes of peoples actions/outcomes are made constantly and implicate our own behaviour. Interest in the attribution process in the 1970s was one of the first steps towards a cognitive perspective in social psychology: attribution theories are models that attempt to delineate the processes underlying judgements of cause.