Chapter 2 - attribution theory

The idea of the naive scientist

Heider, 1958

• The need to form a coherent view of the world
• The need to gain control over the environment

We act as naive scientists, rationally and logically testing our hypotheses about the behavior of others

The basic need to attribute causality

• Asked participants to simply describe the movement of abstract geometric shapes
• Results:
• Participants (all but one) described the movements as actions of animated beings - indicative of human intentions and motives

• Ascribes meaning to our world
• Makes the world clear, definable and predictable, thereby reducing uncertainty

Responsibility

Internal or external causes

• 1. Stable vs unstable causes (stability)
• 2. Controllable vs uncontrollable causes (controllability)

Jones and Davis, 1965

Dispositional because they are more valuable with regard to making predictions about behavior

Process three key types of information: social desirability, choice, and non-common effects

Internal attribution is more likely when socially undesirable behaviors are observed

Internal attribution is more likely when the actor has freely chosen the given behavior

Internal attribution is more likely when the outcome of a behavior has a unique effect

It is limited to single instances of behavior and focuses on internal attributions

• It accounts for multiple observational points and details the processes that result in external as well as internal attributions
• It expands on the correspondent inference theory

For something to be the cause of a particular behavior it must be present when the behavior is present and absent when the behavior is absent

Kelley, 1967

We ascribe causality to the cause that covaries with the behavior to the greatest extent

• Consensus
• Consistency
• Distinctiveness

Cause is internal disposition

Cause is external situation

No, it's idealized and individuals don't put the same amount of weight on each element (people pay more attention to target person information than the context)

Attributional biases

Tendency in particular contexts to make one type of attribution over another

• Fundamental attribution error
• Actor-observer bias
• Self serving attributions

Jones and Harris in 1967

Tendency to make internal rather than external attributions for people's behavior

• Had participants read essays written by fellow students for or against Fidel Castro
• Students either picked their position on Castro or were assigned their position
• Participants were then asked to guess what attitude the person had toward Castro
• Results:
• In choice condition participants reasonably assumed the writer had written based on their own opinion
• Participants also thought that the essay reflected the writer's opinion in the non-choice condition as well

Perceptual salience - person being observed is the most perceptually salient aspect of the situation, so an internal attribution becomes much more accessible

False: less fundamental in non-Western

The actor-observer bias

Storms, 1973

• Two participants as observers and two as conversational actors
• Two actors had a conversation with each other while being observed by the other two
• The observers were then asked to attribute causality and judge whether the opinions reflected by the actors reflected their stable personality or not
• Results:
• Observers focused attention on the actor they were facing
• Observers emphasized dispositional factors when explaining the actor's behaviors, but the actors emphasized situational factors when explaining their own behavior
• This is caused by perceptual salience: actor's attention is away from them (external) and observer's attention is on the actor (internal)
• Note that the actor-observer bias was reversed when the actors were shown videotapes of their opposite perspective before making attributions leading them to make internal attributions instead of the before stated external ones

The pervasive tendency to attribute successes to internal, personal attributions and failure to external factors outside of our control is how we protect and maintain our self esteem

We tend to attribute our group's successes to internal factors and other group's successes to external factors

Can serve to propagate prejudice and discrimination in society

State of mind can sometimes determine if we make an internal or external attribution

Neumann, 2000

• Participants were primed by pairing 20 symbols depicting everyday activities with 20 phrases describing the activities
• They then had to come up with either self or other referent sentences, depending on which condition they had been assigned
• After this, participants were instructed to go to a second lab down the hall and when they entered the lab an experimenter shouted at them to get out
• Results:
• Participants with self-referent mindset were more likely to react with guilt (internal attribution)
• Participants with other-referent mindset were more likely to react with anger (external attribution)
• Suggests that whether we feel guilty or angry after something bad happens may depend on factors entirely unrelated to the situation

Weiner's 1986 idea that anger emerges from external attributions for negative events while guilt from the internal attribution for negative events

Through self perception

When we attribute credibility to people, we believe in them

We are fooled into love because we are making mis-attributions

Moscovici, 1961

Social representation refer to shared beliefs and understandings between broad groups of people and these can include culturally held and transmitted knowledge about causal relations

• Through informal discussion to form a common-place, consensually held belief - a social representation
• This is in line with Heider's assertions that we are all naive scientists, attempting to make sense of the world around us