Psychology 1000 Midterm: Chapter 13 Behavior in a Social Context

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Dr.Mike

Document Summary

Attributions - judgements about the causes of our own and other people"s behavior and outcomes. Personal (internal) - behavior is caused by their characteristics. Situational (external) - aspects of the situation cause a behavior. Suppose kim says calc 1000 is a bad class. When consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are all high, we are likely to make a situational attribution. But when consistency is high, distinctiveness and consensus are low, we are likely to make a personal attribution. Fundamental attribution error: we underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people"s behavior. We expect actors to have the same personality as their characters. We expect a student to agree with the paper they wrote, even if we know their position in the paper was assigned by the teacher. Ut we don"t make this error about ourselves. Figure-ground relations - when we watch people, they are the focus and the situation is the background.