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Summary Theme 6 Social Psychology Notes
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These are the notes for Theme 6 of the Social Psychology course.
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THEME 6ATTRIBUTIONS AND DISPOSITIONS
• Dispositions = stable characteristics of the people around us (personality traits, attitudes,
abilities)
The process that leads us to this is ATTRIBUTION THEORIES.
• Attribution = process of assigning a cause to our and other's behavior.
Attribution Theories:
1. Heider's Theory of Naive Psychology (1958) stated that people everyday use rational/scientific-
like cause-effect analysis to understand the world >> Naive Psychologists
o Heider grouped attributions into personal attributions and situational.
Personal/internal/dispositional attributes refer to internal characteristics such as
ability, personality, mood, effort.
Situational/external attributes refer to external factors such as the task, other
people, luck.
2. Jones's Correspondent Inference Theory (1965) states that people try to infer traits of others
from their behavior.
o Influenced by 3 factors:
1. degree of choice
2. expectedness of behavior (actions tell us more about people when they depart
from the norm)
3. intended effects of the behavior (hard to tell when the behavior has many positive
outcomes since it doesn't reveal much about the person)
3. Kelley's Covariation Theory (1967)
o The Covariation Principle = for something to cause the behavior, it has to be present
when the behavior happens and absent when it doesn't happen.
o 3 Types of covariation information:
1. consensus information (how different people react to the same stimulus)
2. distinctiveness information (how the same person reacts to multiple stimuli)
, 3. consistency information (if the stimulus and person are the same, but the timing is
different, does the behavior stay the same?)
o Issues to consider:
this is not the usual process for attribution used by people;
people are bad at covariation;
there is no guarantee that people use the Covariation Principle;
covariation is not causation;
Attribution Biases
Kahneman: System 1 which is fast and acts as a reflex and System 2 which is slow and requires thinking.
People make judgement and attributions using cognitive heuristics.
• Cognitive Heuristics = information processing 'rules of thumb' that are quick and easy, but
usually lead to errors.
o Availability Heuristics = the tendency to evaluate odds of a situation based on how fast
and easy it is to conjure instances in our heads
**example: plane crashed make us afraid of flying;
o Availability heuristics lead us astray in 2 ways:
1. gives rise to false-consensus effect (the tendency to overestimate the extent to
which others have the same views, opinions, preferences etc. as us)
**example: we believe that others regard the environment as important because we do
2. social perceptions are influenced more by a vivid life story than by hard
statistical facts
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