Question

How might our attribution about the cause of a behavior be different for ourselves versus someone else? Please be sure to base your answer on social psychological theory, including concepts from the Self, Social Cognition, and Social Perception chapters. (3 points)

Why is it important to take into account both situational and dispositional factors when attempting to describe, predict, or explain behavior? In other words, how does your attribution of the cause of a behavior influence how you respond to that behavior? Please also be sure to include possible negative consequences of failing to consider dispositional factors or failing to consider situational factors. (3 points)

In particular, what, if any, role do automatic versus controlled cognitive processes play in mitigating the issues discussed in #5? (2 points)

Answer 1

• One way that our attributions may be biased is that we are often too quick to attribute the behavior of other people to something personal about them rather than to something about their situation. This is a classic example of the general human tendency of underestimating how important the social situation really is in determining behavior.
• First, we are too likely to make strong personal attributions to account for the behavior that we observe others engaging in.
• When we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations, we are making a mistake that social psychologists have termed the fundamental attribution error.
• This error is very closely related to another attributional tendency, the correspondence bias, which occurs when we attribute behaviors to people’s internal characteristics, even in heavily constrained situations.
• People from Western cultures tend to be primarily oriented toward individualism. This leads to them having an independent self-concept where they view themselves, and others, as autonomous beings who are somewhat separate from their social groups and environments.
• In contrast, people in many East Asian cultures take a more interdependent view of themselves and others, one that emphasizes not so much the individual but rather the relationship between individuals and the other people and things that surround them.
• People from individualistic cultures tend to focus their attributions more on the individual person, whereas, people from collectivistic cultures tend to focus more on the situation.
• The fundamental attribution error involves a bias in how easily and frequently we make personal versus situational attributions about others. Another, similar way that we overemphasize the power of the person is that we tend to make more personal attributions for the behavior of others than we do for ourselves and to make more situational attributions for our own behavior than for the behavior of others. This is known as the actor-observer bias or difference .
• When we are asked about the behavior of other people, we tend to quickly make trait attributions (“Oh, Sarah, she’s really shy”). On the other hand, when we think of ourselves, we are more likely to take the situation into account,we tend to say, “Well, I’m shy in my team at work, but with my close friends I’m not at all shy.”
• When a friend behaves in a helpful way, we naturally believe that he or she is a friendly person; when we behave in the same way, on the other hand, we realize that there may be a lot of other reasons why we did what we did.
• This makes a difference between how we see our behaviour versus how we see behaviours of others.The tendency to overemphasize personal attributions in others versus ourselves seems to occur for several reasons.
• One is simply because other people are so salient in our social environments. When you look at someone’s behavior, you tend to focus on that person and are likely to make personal attributions about him or her. It’s just easy because you are looking right at the person.
• When you think of your own behavior, however, you do not see yourself but are instead more focused on the situation. You also tend to have more memory for your own past situations than for others’. You come to realize that it is not only you but also the different situations that you are in that determine your behavior.
• Another reason for the tendency to make so many personal attributions is that they are simply easier to make than situational attributions. In fact, personal attributions seem to be made spontaneously, without any effort on our part, and even on the basis of only very limited behavior .
• Personal attributions just pop into mind before situational attributions do. One reason for this is that is cognitively demanding to try to process all the relevant factors in someone else’s situation and to consider how all these forces may be affecting that person’s conduct. It is much more straightforward to label a behavior in terms of a personality trait.
• Personal attributions also dominate because we need to make them in order to understand a situation.
• Self-serving attributions are attributions that help us meet our desire to see ourselves positively. A particularly common example is the self-serving bias, which is the tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others and the situation.They can help to maintain and enhance self-esteem.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation