Social Psychology

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Lesson 4: Attribution and Social Knowledge

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Key Terms in Social Cognition
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Cognitive consistency, naïve psychologist/scientist Attribution, cognitive miser, motivated tactician Asch's configural model, central traits, peripheral traits Primacy, recency, personal constructs, Implicit personality theories, stereotype, Cognitive algebra, summation, averaging, weighted averaging Schema, script, roles, self-schema, content-free schema Prototype, fuzzy sets, stereotypes, exemplars Social identity theory, self-categorisation theory, salience Accentuation principle, bookkeeping, conversion, subtyping

Attribution & Social Knowledge
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You have just arrived in a foreign country and find yourself becoming irritated at the seemingly aloof and offhand manner in which people respond to your requests for directions to the hotel. Is their unfriendliness deliberate? Might it be a cultural practice? Are you an intolerant person to have taken offence so readily?

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Attribution & Social Knowledge
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Or does their behaviour simply confirm your expectations about people from that country? Do you really care? What factors would you take into account to explain their behaviour and your reactions? What might be the consequences of the explanation you arrive at?

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Attribution Theory
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Attribution: process of assigning cause to our own or others behaviour We are preoccupied with seeking, constructing and testing explanations of our experiences To render it orderly, meaningful and predictable for adaptive action

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Attribution Theory
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Attribution theory: 7 main theoretical emphases: Heider's (1958) 'naïve psychology' Jones and Davis's (1965) correspondent inference Kelley's (1967) covariation model Schachter's (1964) emotional lability Bem's (1967, 1972) self perception Weiner's (1979, 1985) attributional theory Deschamps' (1983), Hewstone's (1989) & Jaspars' (Hewstone & Jaspars 1982, 1984) intergroup perspective

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Heider's 'Naïve Psychology'
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Fritz Heider (1958) drew attention of social psychologists to the importance of studying people's common-sense psychological theories as they influence our behaviour whether true or not. Based on three principles: 1. Because we feel our own behaviour is motivated not random, we look for cause and reasons for others behaviour to discover their motives.

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Heider's 'Naïve Psychology'
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2. The search for cause pervades human thought (eg an experiment where people should describe the movement of abstract geometric figures used language of human intentionality, Heider & Simmel 1944) 3. Construct causal theories to predict and control environment. Feeling in, not out of, control Internal (dispositional), external (situational) attribution. People tend to prefer internal to external attributions, even in face of evidence Why?

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Jones & Davis's Theory of Correspondent Inference
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Explains how people infer that a person's behaviour corresponds to an underlying disposition or personality trait eg. how do we infer that a friendly action is due to an underlying disposition to be friendly? Dispositional (internal) cause preferred as it is stable and renders people's behaviour more predictable and increases sense of control

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Jones & Davis's Theory of Correspondent Inference
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To make correspondent inferences (assume behaviour is related to a person's underlying disposition/personality) We draw on 5 sources 1. Freely chosen behaviour more suggestive of disposition than behaviour under external threats, constraints, rewards 2. Behaviour with effects relatively exclusive to that behaviour 3. Socially desirable behaviour tells us little about person's disposition (likely to be controlled by societal norms)

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Jones & Davis's Theory of Correspondent Inference
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4. Hedonic impact. Make more confident correspondent inferences about behaviour which has important consequences for ourselves 5. Personalism. More confident when relating to behaviour which seems directly intended to benefit or harm us

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Jones & Davis's Theory of Correspondent Inference
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Experiments provide some support. Jones & Harris (1967) found US students making attributions for speeches made by other students made more correspondent inferences for freely chosen socially unpopular positions Jones et al (1961) found participants made more correspondent inferences for out-of-role behaviour Limitations (eg. intentional/unintentional behaviour) Declined in importance as attribution theory

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Jones & Davis's Theory of Correspondent Inference

Figure 3.1 How we make a correspondent inference

Kelley's Covariation Model
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People act as scientists and assign causes of behaviour to the factor that covaries most closely with the behaviour Often called the ANOVA model (ANOVA is a statistical technique to analyse variance). 3 classes of info required: 1. Consistency: to what extent X always co-occurs with Y 2. Distinctiveness: whether a reaction occurs only with one stimulus or is a common reaction to many stimuli 3. Consensus: extent to which other people act in the same way to stimulus

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Kelley's Covariation Model
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Where consistency is low people discount the potential cause and search for an alternative McArthur (1972) tested this with participants make internal or external attributions for behaviours with 1 of 8 possible configurations of consistency, distinctiveness, consensus The theory was generally supported but there was a tendency for people to underuse consensus information

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Kelley's Covariation Model

Figure 3.2 Kelley’s attribution theory

Kelley's Covariation Model
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Just because people can use pre-packaged consistency, distinctiveness and consensus information to attribute causality, this does not mean it is done in the 'real-world' Evidence that people are poor at assessing covariation of different events (Alloy & Tabachnik) No guarantee that people use the covariation principle, they may attribute causality to most salient feature or whatever causal agent appears to be similar to the effect

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Kelley's Covariation Model
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If people do attribute causality on the basis of covariance or correlation they are indeed being naïve scientists. Covariation is not causation Making covariation judgements requires multiple observations, often this info is not available Kelley suggested people use causal schemata, experience-based beliefs or preconceptions about how certain types of causes interact to produce effects

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Schachter's (1964, 1971) Emotional Lability Theory
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Idea that emotions have two distinct components 1. State of physiological arousal which does not differentiate between emotions, and 2. Cognitions which label the arousal and determine which emotion is experienced Sometimes cognitions precede arousal, at other times a state of arousal occurs and prompts a search of the immediate environment for possible causes

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Schachter's (1964, 1971) Emotional Lability Theory
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Test: students given injection of either epinephrine (adrenalin) or placebo (salt water). Students were either: 1. Told correctly this would cause arousal symptoms 2. Given no info. 3. Misinformed they might experience a slight headache and some dizziness All participants waited in a room with a confederate to do paperwork. For half participants, the confederate behaved euphorically, for the other half, angrily

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Schachter's (1964, 1971) Emotional Lability Theory
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All participants waited in a room with a confederate to do paperwork. For half participants, the confederate behaved euphorically, for the other half, angrily Schachter & Singer (1962) predicted that 'drugmisinformed' participants would experience unexpected arousal and would search for a cause in immediate environment. Behaviour of confederate would offer salient cue. Emotions of the other two drug groups and control group would be unaffected by the behaviour of confederate

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Schachter's (1964, 1971) Emotional Lability Theory
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Results largely supported predictions Initial enthusiasm that this could be clinically very useful (if we can relabel our negative emotions we can cure many mental illnesses) is now no longer accepted Goes against recent research in affective neuroscience (Panksepp 1998) Emotions are not just cognitive labels to similar physiological arousal processes but are themselves biologically primary phenomena (Jaak Panksepp's Basic Emotions)

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Schachter's (1964, 1971) Emotional Lability Theory
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Emotions seem to be significantly less labile than originally thought Environmentl cues are not readily accepted as bases for inferring emotions from unexplained arousal, and as such arousal is intrinsically unpleasant, people tend to assign it a negative label Misattribution effect seems limited, largely restricted to lab, unreliable and short-lived

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Schachter's (1964, 1971) Emotional Lability Theory
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It is not clear the effect is mediated by an attribution process and it seems restricted to a limited range of emotion-inducing stimuli One important implication for the idea of cognitive labelling of emotion is that people may make more general attributions for their own behaviour Bem's Self-Perception Theory: how people construct their self-concept through making self-attributions

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Weiner's (1979, 1986) Attibutional Theory
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Looks at the causes and consequences of attributions made for people's success/failure on a task (like a social psychology quiz). 3 performance dimension: 1. Locus (caused by internal or external/situational?) 2. Stability (is the cause stable or unstable?) 3. Controllability (is future task performance under actors control?) People first access whether someone has succeeded or failed (and so feel positive or negative emotions), then make causal attribution which leads to more specific emotional attribution (pride, shame, surprise)

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Figure 3.3 Achievement attributions as a function of locus, stability and controllability

Weiner's (1979, 1986) Attibutional Theory
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Relatively well supported by experiments Some critics have suggested that controllability dimension may be less important than originally thought Others have wondered how far people outside of labs behave in this way More recently Weiner (1995) has extended this to emphasize judgements of responsibility. On the basis of causal attributions, people make judgements of responsibility, and it is these judgements, not causal attributions themselves, that influence affective experience and behavioural reactions

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What use is attribution theory to social psychology?

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Attributional Styles
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Research into attributional styles (eg Rotter, 1966) Internals: believe they are in control of their destiny Externals: more fatalistic, believe they have little control Rotter's 29-point locus-of-control scale covers range of behaviour (eg political beliefs, achievement) Does this measure a single construct or a number of relatively independent beliefs to do with control (Collins 1974)? ie. Does it have construct validity (lesson 2)?

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Attributional Styles
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A number of other questionnaires on attributional style: Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) most well known Explanations for unpleasant events on 3 dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, global/specific. People who view aversive events as due to internal, stable, global factors have a 'depressive attributional style' (attributional style > helplessness > depression)

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Attributional Styles
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Attributional Complexity Scale (ACS) measures individual differences in complexity of attributions Problems: ASQ and ACS provide limited evidence of cross-situational individual differences in attribution Over 100 studies involving 15,000 participants confirm average correlation of 0.30 between attributional style and depression. Correlation not causation. Only 9% of variance

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Attributional Styles
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Diachronic studies more useful: attributional style measured at one time predicts depressive symptoms later Some evidence to support this but causality hard to establish Unethical to experimentally induce clinical depression These studies measure transitory mood Can we generalise from feelings of doing poorly or well in a lab task to full-blown clinical depression? (external validity and ecological validity)

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Interpersonal Relationships
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Attributions very important in interpersonal relationships Attributions communicated to fulfil a variety of functions Explain, justify, excuse, blame, instil guilt (Harvey 1990) Harvey suggests 3 phases for relationships: formation, maintenance, dissolution Fincham (1985) argues that information stage attributions reduce ambiguity and facilitate communication, in maintenance stage need to make attributions diminishes, in dissolution phase there is an increase in attributions

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Interpersonal Relationships
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Attributional conflict (Horai 1977): (eg. 'I withdraw because you nag', 'I nag because you withdraw'). Strongly correlated with relationship dissatisfaction (Sillars 1981) Attribution and marital satisfaction: Happily married spouses credit partners for positive behaviour (internal, stable, global, controllable) and ascribe negative behaviour to external, unstable, specific, uncontrollable causes

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Interpersonal Relationships
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These findings useful in providing therapy for couples Sex differences: women engage in attributional thought more continuously while men do so only when the relationship becomes dysfunctional Do attributions produce dysfunctional marriages or do dysfunctional marriages distort attributional dynamics? Fincham & Bradbury (1987) obtained attributions + marital satisfaction measures from 39 married couples on 2 occasions 10-12 months apart. Attributions on 1st occasion reliably predict marital satisfaction on 2nd occasion, for wives! Subsequent more extensive, better controlled longitudinal studies replicated these findings for husbands and wives (Senchak & Leonard 1993)
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Attributional Biases
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Evidence from attributional biases and errors supported the cognitive miser view of people. We use cognitive short-cuts of heuristics to make attributions, are not objectively correct all the time but quite satisfactory and usually adaptive Biases are normal, usually adaptive and part of ordinary everyday social perception (Fiske & Taylor 1991)

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Fundamental Attribution Error
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Bias in attributing other's behaviour to internal rather than situational causes Eg students who freely chose to write pro/anti-Castro speeches were attributed pro/anti-Castro attitudes. Although less strong, same was found when the writers had no choice Many studies confirmed this bias, both inside and outside labs. May be behind a number of tendencies, eg attributing poverty/unemployment to person not social conditions

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Fundamental Attribution Error
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FAE due to: 1. focus of attention ('causal unit') 2. differential forgetting, 3. cultural/developmental factors (Hindu vs Western Self). Some suggest the name FAE which implies universality should be replaced by term correspondence bias 3. Linguistic factors: English language facilitates dispositional explanations

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Figure 3.4 The fundamental attribution error: Attributing speech writers’ attitudes on the basis of their freedom of choice in writing the speech
Source: Based on data from Jones and Harris (1967).

Actor-Observer Effect
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Tendency to attribute own behaviour externally and others internally. What did you think last time someone was rude to you or you were rude to someone? Extension of the fundamental attribution error Substantial evidence for this effect from 20 years research Additions: also tend to attribute others behaviour more predictable and stable then our own Effect can be overturned or reversed if actor knows that his behaviour is dispositionally caused, or if actor is encouraged to take the role of observer and vice versa

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Actor-Observer Effect
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Explanations: 1. perceptual focus: for observer actor is figure against situational background, but actor cannot see himself. Perceptual salience does seem important. Observers make more dispositional attributions when actor strongly illuminated 2. Informational differences: actors have a wealth of info about themselves and their behaviour in different contexts

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False Consensus Effect
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Seeing own behaviour as more typical than it really is Students who agree to walk around campus with a sandwich board 'Eat at Joe's' for 30 mins estimated what 62% of peers would also agree, those who refused estimated 67% Over 100 studies confirming this (Marks & Miller 1987)

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False Consensus Effect
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Explanation: 1. people tend to seek company of similar others 2. our own opinions tend to be more salient 3. we subjectively justify our opinions by grounding them in an exaggerated consensus Effect is stronger for beliefs more important for us, for beliefs about which we are certain, in the presence of external threat, positive qualities, perceived similarities of others, minority group status

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Self-Serving Biases
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Attributional distortions that protect or enhance self-esteem or self-concept (ego-serving defence mechanism) People attribute internally and take credit for successes (self-enhancing bias) and attribute externally and deny responsibility for failures (self-protecting bias) Robust effect found in different cultures (Fletcher 1988)

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Self-Serving Biases
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Self-presentational considerations influence degree people publicly take credit for success (modesty) or deny responsibility (clear facts make efforts at self-protection embarrassingly transparent) Studies show these considerations weaken not abolish effect Self-handicapping: publicly making advance external attribution for failure, even making such failure more likely Outcome bias: people attribute greater responsibility to behaviour with large rather than small consequences attributions for anticipated failure or poor performance

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Figure 3.5 Self-handicapping: drug choice as a function of puzzle solvability
Source: Based on data from Berglas & Jones (1978).

Illusion of Control
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Illusion of control and belief in a just world makes the world seem a more controllable and safer place where our actions can determine our destiny This can lead to victims being blamed for poverty, oppression, tragedy Can also lead to self-blame as victims of trauma, rape, incest, violence can feel the world is no longer stable, meaningful, controllable and just

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Illusion of Control
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One way to reinstate the illusion of control is to take some responsibility for the event They were 'bad', asking for it, etc These findings are very important in therapy, but merely pointing out the non-adaptive nature of their beliefs is usually not very effective Psychoanalysts describe a related defence against abuse as identification with the aggressor

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Intergroup Attributions
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Core area of importance for social psychology Individuals make attributions about themselves and others as ingroup/outgroup members Ultimate attribution error: (Pettigrew, 1970): negative outgroup behaviour dispositionally attributed, positive outgroup behaviour externally attributed. Both attitudes preserve unfavourable outgroup image

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Intergroup Attributions
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Ethnocentrism: includes the above but also includes positive ingroup attributions Why did your sports team lose? More prevalent in Western than non-Western countries (Fletcher & Ward 1988) but still present Against background of intergroup conflict between Muslims and Hindus in India both groups read stories describing Hindus or Muslims acting in socially desirable or undesirable ways (offering or refusing shelter from the rain) Results were as predicted (Taylor & Jaggi, 1974)

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Intergroup Attributions
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Research in different cultures shows some variation in the ingroup enhancement and outgroup denigration effect Hewstone & Ward (1985). In Malaysia, Malays showed a clear ethnocentric bias to their own group against Chinese in Malaysia. Chinese showed no ethnocentric bias but had similar views to Malays. Intergroup relations were very tense In Singapore, Chinese are the majority, more tolerance of diversity, stereotypes and ethnocentric biases much weaker

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Intergroup Attributions
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Ethnocentric attribution is not a fixed universal but depends on intergroup dynamics and socio-historical context Consistent with Hewstones (1998) argument that proper analysis requires a careful articulation of different levels of explanation (eg individual cognitive processes, interpersonal interactions, group membership dynamics, intergroup relations)

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Intergroup Attributions
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Further evidence from studies of US interracial attitudes, Israeli-Arab and Hindu-Muslim relations, and race/sex/class based attributions for success/failure Shown outcome bias is affected by whether the actor is a member of your group or not Explanations for ethnocentric intergroup attributions?

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Intergroup Attributions
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1. Social categorisation generates category-congruent expectations (Deaux 1976), schemas (Fiske & Taylor 1991), group processes or stereotypes (Hogg & Abrams 1988). Stereotype consistent behaviour attributed to stable internal factors. Inconsistent to unstable/situational factors. Reduces cognitive effort at explanation 2. Social identity theory: people derive social identity from their groups and have a vested interest in maintaining more positive ingroup profile compared to outgroups 3. Scapegoating

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Social Representations
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Collectively elaborated explanations/understandings shared between group members, socially acquired cultural knowledge Individual or specialist group derives sophisticated explanation of phenomenon (eg mental illness) This then popularised (simplified, distorted, ritualised) Becomes social representation: accepted, unquestioned commonsense explanation which tends to oust alternatives Difficult to analyse social representations quantitatively

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Social Representations
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Some interesting mixed methodologies (methodological pluralism) studying social representations Intergroup behaviour often revolves around a clash of social representations (eg ineffectiveness of 'middle class' values promoting healthy lifestyles/behaviour associated with social status in changing behaviours/attitudes in working class people. Social representations analysis needed to discover this

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Rumour
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Constructed similarly to social representations Allport & Postman (1945): participants describe photo to someone who hadn't seen it. After 5 retellings, only 30% original detail remains. 3 processes in transmission: Levelling: quickly becomes shorter, less detailed + complex Sharpening: certain features selectively exaggerated Assimilation: distorted in line with pre-existing prejudice

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Rumour
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More naturalistic studies show less distortion in transmission (Caplow 1947, Schachter & Burdeck 1955) Level of distortion and transmission depends on anxiety levels (Rosnow 1980), increased by uncertainty + ambiguity Importance of critical or uncritical orientation to rumour Rumours always have source, and sometimes are purposely elaborated for a specific reason (eg in the stock market)

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Conspiracy Theories

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Conspiracy Theories
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Explanation of widespread complex worrying events in terms of the premeditated actions of small groups of highly organised conspirators Jewish world conspiracy (Cohn 1996) Immigrants intentionally plotting to undermine economy Homosexuals intentionally spreading HIV 911 was caused intentionally by Bush/CIA/Mossad

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Conspiracy Theories
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Witches/CIA/commies/Al-Qaida behind every world disaster Conspiracy theorists can explain even the most arcane and puzzling events in terms of devious schemes and hidden machinations of secret conspirators Billig (1978) believes this is what makes them so attractive Provide causal explanation in terms of enduring dispositions that can explain a wide range of events Worrying events become controllable and easily remedied

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Societal Schemas
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Causal attributions for specific phenomena are located within and moulded by wider, socially constructed belief systems eg. explanations for poverty show that both rich and poor blame the behaviour of the poor (Feagin 1972). This Individualistic tendency weaker for more left-wing people, or those living in developing countries (Pandey et al 1982) Sorts of explanation (eg for unemployment) influenced by wider belief/value/ideological systems In Britain (Furnham 1982) and Australia (Feather 1985) people have more societal explanations for unemployment than individualistic explanations. In the US this is reversed

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Societal Schemas
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Other research has focussed on peoples explanation for riots and the specific attributions are highly influenced by the person's social-political perspective Schmidt (1972) analysed printed media explanations for the riots in US cities in 1967. Right-wing media identified illegitimate internal causes, liberal media emphasized legitimate external causes

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Societal Schemas
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Sniderman et al (1986) investigated explanations for racial inequality. Less educated Whites employed 'affect-driven' reasoning (started with mainly negative feelings about Blacks, then proceeded to advocate minimal government assistance) Better educated Whites adopted a 'cognition-driven' reasoning process where they reasoned both forwards and backwards

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Culture's Contribution
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Socio-political values, educational status, group membership, ethnicity, religion and other cultural factors are very important People from different cultures make very different attributions, make attributions or approach the entire task of social explanation in different ways Potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding is enormous Zande people of West Africa have dual theory of causality where common-sense proximal causes operate within the context of witch-craft as the distal cause (Jahoda 1979) so the internal-external distinction would make little sense

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Culture's Contribution
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Many of these theories at first seem quite bizarre, but no more bizarre than many scientific theories such as 'string theory' or the bizarre world of quantum physics. Ethnographic and other qualitative research involves familiarizing yourself and viewing as far as possible the world-view from within (not easy!) Western cultures tend to make dispositional attributions for others behaviour (FAE). Non-Western cultures make less dispositional attributions, partly a reflection of a more holistic world view promoting context-dependent, occasion-bound thinking (Shweder & Bourne 1982)

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Figure 3.7 Dispositional attributions as a function of age and cultural background
Source: Based on data from Miller (1984).

Summary of Attribution
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People are naïve psychologists trying to understand the causes of their own and others behaviour Like scientists people take account of consensus, consistency and distinctiveness when deciding between internal and external attributions Our attributions have a profound impact on our emotions, self-concept, and relationships Individual, social and cultural differences People are poor scientists in making attributions Biased in many ways. eg. FAE: attributing others behaviour dispositionally and own behaviour situationally, and the tendency to protect the self-concept by externally attributing failures and internally attributing successes
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Summary of Attribution
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Attributions of people as ingroup/outgroup members are ethnocentric and based on stereotypes. This bias is affected by real or perceived intergroup relations Stereotypes may originate in need for groups to attribute cause of large-scale distressing events to outgroups that have stereotypical properties causally linked to events People resort to causal attribution when there is no readily available social knowledge (scripts, causal schemata, social representations, cultural beliefs) to explain things automatically

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To prepare for next week
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Reading. Chapters 4 (all of) and 5 (read short chunks that look interesting) in the textbook. Choose three interesting things you learn from the reading to discuss in class (I don't expect every student to have the same) Prepare for quiz next week based on today’s lecture

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