PSYC 2230 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Learned Helplessness, Fundamental Attribution Error

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2230
• Professor: Frank Marchese

Document Summary

Cognitive motivation: attribution theory: attribution theory involves the study of decisions we make about the causes of events. Humans are motivated to attribute or assign causes to outcomes. Motivation to do so stems from the need to make sense of events, personal, interpersonal, impersonal: social attribution: people assign (attribute) particular causes to other people"s behaviour. We assign personal causation to other"s (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iour or (cid:449)e assig(cid:374) situational causation to other"s (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iour. I(cid:374) so(cid:373)e se(cid:374)se, assig(cid:374)i(cid:374)g (cid:272)auses to other"s (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iour is accounting for the motivations underlying their behaviour. For example, so and so succeeded (or failed) at a task because of: dispositional forces person"s ability, effort, or because of: Situational forces task difficulty, good or bad luck. According to heider (1950s): we are biased toward dispositional attributions. That is, the tendency to attri(cid:271)ute others" (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iour to stable, internal characteristics. This tendency is called the fundamental attribution error.