PSYC 2310 Chapter 16: Chapter 16 Dynamics of Behaviour Notes
17 Dec 2011
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Psych chapter 16- behaviour in a social context. In everyday life, we make attributions, judgments about the causes of our own and other people"s behaviour and outcomes. Fritz heider (1985) a pioneer of attribution theory maintained that our attempts to understand why people behave as they do typically involve either personal attributions or situational attributions. Personal (internal) attributions infer that people"s behaviour is caused by their characteristics (eg. rude etc) Situational (external) attributions infer that aspects of the situation cause a behaviour. When consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are all high, we are likely to make a situational attribution. When consistency is high and the other 2 factors are low, we make a personal attribution. Tend to make a fundamental attribution error: we underestimate the impact of the situation & overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people"s behaviour. Applied to how we perceive other people"s behaviour, rather than our own.
