PSYC2242 Lecture Notes - Lecture 32: Gilbert Ryle, Stuart Hampshire, Fundamental Attribution Error
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What exactly do we mean when we say tom is friendly . Social psychologists who have advocated the fundamental attribution error thought that"s wrong and we shouldn"t assume that. The cognitive approach sees traits as in the eye of the beholder. He said that traits are simply a summary of actions. So, to say that john is greedy presupposes a set of greedy behaviors. We can take all the acts that somebody might commit and classify them into greedy and not greedy. As a summary, john has done more of those greedy ones than other people. So, greedy is a class of behavior: greedy acts. Extraversion presupposes a class of extraverted actions. Sally is extraverted is a summary of her actions. A degree of extraversion = frequency of extraverted acts. Hampshire says that the past is the best predictor of the future. If he has done it before, he will probably do it again.
