WHS AP Psychology
Unit 12: Social Pyschology
Essential Task 12-1:Apply attribution theory to
explain the behavior of others with specific
attention to the fundamental attribution error,
self-serving bias, just-world hypothesis and
differences between collectivistic and
individualistic cultures
Fundamental
Attribution
Error
Self-Serving
Bias
Attribution
Individualistic
vs.
Collectivistic
Culture
Cognitive
Dissonance
Attitudes
and
Persuasion
Routes to
Persuasion
We are
here
Just-World
Hypothesis
Unit 12:
Social
Psychology
Impact
of Others
on You
Conformity
Schema
Attraction
InGroup/OutGroup
Group
Behavior
Compliance
Group
Polarization
Group
Think
Social Psychology
• The scientific study of the ways in
which the thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors of one individual are
influenced by the real, imagined, or
inferred behavior or characteristics of
other people
• Today’s class:
– How you think about people
– How you explain their behavior
– Why you like them
Social Cognition: How you think
about people?
• Impression Formation – how do you
construct your social cognition?
– Primacy effect
• Early information about someone weighs more than later
information in forming impressions
• We are “cognitive misers”
– Self-fulfilling prophecy
• A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from
the other person that confirms the expectations
• “Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile
• Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains
– Schemata
– Stereotypes
Impression Formation
• Schemata
– Ready-made categories
– Allow us to make inferences about others
(good for cognitive misers)
– Also plays a major role in how we
interpret and remember information
– We will remember characteristics of our
schema that weren’t there
Impression Formation
• Stereotypes
– A set of characteristics believed to be shared
by all members of a social category
– It is usually unfair
– Most often applied to sex, race, occupation,
physical appearance, place of residence,
membership in a group or organization
– Can become the basis for self-fulfilling
prophecies
Self-fulfilling prophecy
• (Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977)
• Attractiveness Stereotype – sociability and socially savy
• Men received “background” information about a woman
they were about to talk with on a phone, info included a
photo. Women received same info, but no photo.
• IV: Photo of woman either attractive or unattractive
• DVs: 1) Men’s expectations about the woman 2)
Observers’ ratings of the woman’s behavior
• Results: When men expected that the woman was
attractive, she was judged as friendly, warm, and more
animated than when men believed they were talking with
an unattractive woman. (self-fulfilling prophecy)
Attribution: Why did he do that?
• Attribution Theory: tries to explain
how people make judgments about the
causes of other people’s behavior
• Three criteria used to judge behavior
– Distinctiveness: Is this how the person
treats everyone or are you different?
– Consistency: Has the person always
treated you this way or is this different?
– Consensus: Do other people do this
same thing or is this really different?
Attribution: Why did he do that?
• Bob walks past you without saying hi.
– Distinctiveness: Your explanation as to why Bob
did this will be different if he does this to
everyone in the hall or just you
– Consistency: Your explanation as to why Bob
did this will be different if he always says hi to
you or if you don’t really know each other.
– Consensus: Whether you’re in New York vs. a
college of 600 will change how you explain
Bob’s behavior.
Biases in Attribution: The errors to which
your guesses will succumb
• Actor-Observer Effect: attribute actions of others to
internal factors and the actions of yourself to external
factors
– Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overemphasize
personal causes for others’ behavior and underemphasize
personal causes for our own behavior
• Defensive attribution
– Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute our successes to our own
efforts and our failures to external factors
– Just-world hypothesis: Assumption bad things happen to bad
people and good things happen to good people
• Attribution across cultures varies dramatically
Effects of Attribution
How we explain someone’s behavior affects
how we react to it.
Collectivistic vs. Individualistic