*
* The Five Factor Model (McCrae & Costa 1987)
*Extraversion: Excitability, sociability, assertiveness,
talkativeness
*Agreeableness: Trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and
other prosocial behaviors.
*Conscientiousness: High levels of thoughtfulness, with
good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors. Those
high in conscientiousness tend to be organized and
mindful of details.
*Neuroticism: tend to experience emotional instability,
anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.
*Openness: imagination and insight, and those high in
this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests.
*
*
Heider argued that people are intuitive (or naïve)
psychologists who construct causal theories of human
behavior. In his experiment, people attributed human
characteristics to animated triangles and dots
* Because we believe our own behavior is motivated rather
than random, we tend to look for causes and reasons for
other peoples’ behavior.
* We construct causal theories to predict and control our
environment, we therefore tend to look for enduring
properties in the world around us
* In attributing causal factors, we distinguish between
situational (external) factors and dispositional (internal)
factors
*
Kelley argued people act much like scientists – they weigh up
different possible causes of an observed action or experience. They
want to know whether the event was caused by the something
about the actor, something about the object, or something about
the situation – or a combination of these factors. They then decide
to whether to attribute the behavior to a dispositional (personality)
or situational (social context)
Three classes of Information:
* Consistency – how often (low or high) the same stimulus and
response in the same situation are perceived
* Distinctiveness – how similarly (low or high) the person acts in
reference to different objects
* Consensus – how similarly (high or low) other people act, given the
same stimulus, thus sampling across actors.
*
Experimental Social Psychologists focus on
situational influences and downplay
dispositional.
Personality Psychologists attach more weight to
personality traits and downplay environmental
influences:
*Correspondence bias suggests the naïve psychology
practised by most people more closely resembles
personality psychologists – behaviour is seen as
corresponding to an actor’s internal disposition
even when it is caused by situational factors.
*
Why?
*Some situational forces are harder to detect. If
observer’s are unaware of the situational factors, they
can’t factor them into their causal explanations.
*Expectations of how people will behave distorts
interpretations (eg we assume that if public speaking
terrifies us, it will terrify others)
*People sometimes fail to correct initial inferences of
causes of behaviour – especially when processing
demands are high. Dispositional explanations are the
automatic response – and situational information is
then factored in.
*
Fundamental Attribution Error/Correspondence Bias
Gilbert, Pelham and Krull (1988
* Participants watched a videotape with the sound turned down of
a woman talking nervously to a stranger – who then rated how
anxious she was as a person.
* Subtitles indicated that she was talking about sexual fantasies
(offering a situational explanation for her nervousness) – others
showed the conversation was about gardening.
* Further – some participants were told to memorise the subtitles –
imposing an additional cognitive demand.
* Ppts under increased cognitive demand tended o believe the
woman was nervous depsite conversation topic – ppts under low
cognitive demand rated her as less dispositionally anxious when
they believed she was discussing sex.
* Gilbert et al suggests attribution always involved automatic
processes – but sometimes involves controlled processes.
*
Fundamental Attribution Error:
*The General tendency to overestimate the importance
of personal or dispositional factors relative to
environmental (situational) factors.
* People are more likely to explain other people’s
behavior in terms of their personalities and not so
much in terms of their situations – yet the situation
often matters more
* See Jones & Harris (1967) – The Study on the students reading
essays on Castro – and Ross (1977) – The study involving random
allocation of Contestant-Quizmaster conditions
*
Actor-Observer Effect:
*People tend to attribute their own behaviour to external
causes but that of others to internal
*Actors overestimate the importance of the situation in
explaining their own behaviors: actors look at the situation,
observers look at actors.
*This bias suggests that observers overestimate the
importance of an actor’s dispositions for causing the actor’s
behavior;
*Access to different information: actors have more
background about themselves
*Actors overestimate the importance of the situation in
explaining their own behaviors Perceptual: actors look at the
situation, observers look at actors
*
* Storms (1973)
* - 2 participants are assigned
to be actors and have a
conversation on
predetermined topic
* - 1 observer is paired with
each actor, and positioned so
they see the actor they are
paired with, but not the other
actor.
* found actors became less
situational, and observers
more situational when shown
new orientation of the
situation.
*
WHY?
* 1. People have access to a wider range of information about factors
leading to their own actions (eg – you are lively at a party. You look at
situations where you have acted less extroverted – when at an interview
perhaps – and therefore conclude you are not consistently lively.
* By contrast, other people may have seen you act in a restricted range of
situations – conclude your behaviour is more consistent than it actually
is.
* 2. Direction of attention – when observing other people’s behaviour, we
tend to focus on the person rather than their situation. Conversely, our
attention tends to focus outwards on our surroundings when we perform
behaviours ourselves.
* 3. Brown & Fish (1983) suggest that in English subjects of action verbs
are responsible for the action. By contrast, for experience verbs it is the
object (eg John liked Angela)
*
Self-serving Bias:
*We are not rational informational processors of
information.
* When our performance results in either success or
failure, we tend to take credit for our successes but deny
blame for our failures. Self-serving biases include
attributing our own (but not other people) successes to
internal-stable factors and our own (but not other people)
failures to external-unstable factors, taking more credit
than is due for desirable outcomes.
*According to Olson & Ross (1988), we make internal
attributions for our successes (e.g., I’m intelligent) and
external attributions for failures (e.g., it was a
particularly hard exam)
*
Self-serving Bias:
*Internally attributing success and externally
attributing failure protects self-esteem
*We expect to do well in most things, which makes it
logical to attribute failure to external sources
(Taylor & Riess, 1989).
*
Further suggestions
*Self Handicapping – Berglas (1987) – people who
anticipate failure intentionally make external
(situational) attributions prior to the event
*Illusion of Control – People have more control over their
own outcomes – world is a secure place where we
control our own destiny
*Belief in a Just World – victims are deemed responsible
for their own misfortune. World is predictable – good
things happen to good people & bad things happen to
bad people. Davidowicz (1975) Holocaust victims
*
* Fiske (1998) has suggested that FAE may be specific to
Western individualistic cultures
*In Collectivist (mainly non-Western) cultures, people are
more likely to attribute someone’s behaviour to
situational as opposed to personality characteristics
*English language newspapers reporting murders
emphasise dispositional causes (such as a deeply
disturbed personality, bad-temper, short fuse) while
Chinese language papers reporting the same crime
emphasise situational causes (relationships, social
isolation, availability of guns, achievement pressure)
(Moris & Peng, 1994)