Psychology 1000 Study Guide - Fundamental Attribution Error, Cognitive Dissonance, Intentionality

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Laura Fazakas- De Hoog

Document Summary

Social psychology is the study of how we think about and perceive our social world, how other people influence our behaviour, and how we behave towards other people. In everyday life we often make attributions, judgements about he causes of our own and other people"s behaviour and outcomes. Personal (internal) attributions infer that people"s behaviour is caused by their characteristics. Situational (external) attributions infer that aspects of the situation caused a behaviour. Three types of information determine the attribution we make. If there are all high we are likely to make a situational attribution but if consistency is high and the other two are low we will make a personal attribution. The fundamental attribution error is underestimating the impact of the situation and overestimating the role of personal factors when explaining other people"s behaviour. This doesn"t happen when judging our own situations because we have more information about our own situations.