PSYC 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Online Dating Service, Homicide, Group Polarization

• School: Binghamton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 111
• Professor: Maggie Parker (Ma)

Document Summary

The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another. Social psychologists study the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations. The theory that we explain someone"s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person"s disposition. We can attribute the behavior to the person"s stable, enduring traits (a dispositional attribution), or we can attribute it to the situation (a situational attribution. The tendency for observers, when analyzing others" behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition. We overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of situations. Ex: if a professor is outgoing in class, you are only perceiving them in one setting, that demands an outgoing behavior. The fundamental attribution error appears more often in some cultures than in others. Individualist westerners more often attribute behavior to people"s personal traits.