Attribution Theories
Heider's 1958 attribution theory says we explain behavior as internal/dispositional or as this other type of cause, which points to the situation.
What is external/situational?
Kelley's three types of information are consensus, distinctiveness, and this one.
What is consistency?
After a win, a coach says, "We were the better team." After a loss, he says, "The umpire was biased!" This is the bias he shows.
What is the self-serving bias?
These are mental structures that organize our knowledge of the social world and influence what we notice, think about, and remember.
What are schemas?
This method gathers data from existing records that were created or maintained for non-research purposes.
What is archival research?
This 1965 theory from Jones & Davis proposes that people try to work out whether behavior corresponds to enduring traits or intentions.
What is Correspondent Inferences Theory (Jones & Davis)?
This is the extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor.
What is consensus?
I hate Taylor Swift, and I'm sure most people my age hate her too" is an example of this bias.
What is the false consensus effect?
In Kelley's (1950) study, students told a guest lecturer was "a very warm person" did this more often than students told he was "rather cold" (56% vs. 32%).
What is participating or interacting with the instructor?
Anderson (1987) linked FBI Uniform Crime Reports with Department of Commerce weather data to test the heat hypothesis. This type of archival record is what he used.
What are statistical records?
According to Jones & Davis, an observer is more likely to infer a personal disposition when a behavior was freely chosen rather than being this.
What is forced (or coerced)?
Juan is serious only in social psych class and is relaxed in his other classes and settings. This is the level of distinctiveness that describes Juan's behavior.
What is high distinctiveness?
"I was late because the road was blocked, but my coworker was late because he has horrible time management." This is the name of this bias, from Jones & Nisbett.
What is the actor-observer effect (or bias)?
In Higgins, Rholes, & Jones's (1977) "Donald" study, participants exposed to words like "reckless" or "adventurous" judged Donald's ambiguous behavior differently. This process makes concepts temporarily more accessible.
What is priming?
When multiple coders categorize the same behavior, they must demonstrate this, a measure of agreement between independent observers.
What is inter-rater reliability?
A counselor takes a lower-paying job at a community clinic serving underserved populations instead of a higher-paying private practice. Serving those populations is an example of this term, which refers to an outcome unique to the chosen option.
What is a non-common effect?
No one else complains at the restaurant (low consensus), this person always complains there (high consistency), and she also complains everywhere else (low distinctiveness). Kelley's model points to this type of attribution.
What is an internal attribution (she is difficult to please)?
In Ross & Sicoly's (1979) study, husbands' and wives' estimates of their share of household chores, when added together, exceeded 100%. This bias explains it.
What is the egocentric bias?
In Swann's research, participants overwhelmingly chose interaction partners who confirmed their existing self-views, even when those self-views were negative. This is the name of that tendency.
What is self-verification?
A researcher joins criminal court judges in their daily routine for several months, takes field notes, and occasionally asks them about their decisions. This is the method.
What is participant observation?
Unlike Kelley's model, which uses multiple observations, Jones & Davis's theory is limited to this kind of behavior.
What is a single intentional behavior?
Low consensus, low distinctiveness, and low consistency together suggest this kind of explanation, such as stress or fatigue.
What is a temporary personal circumstance?
In Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz's (1977) quiz-game study, observers rated questioners as more knowledgeable than contestants, even though everyone knew roles were randomly assigned. This is the bias, and it is also known as the correspondence bias.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
In Dutton & Lake (1973), White students who considered themselves unprejudiced were told their physiological responses suggested prejudice, and they then gave more money to a Black panhandler. This is the type of self-schema state they were in, and it is why they gave more.
What is a threatened self-schema? They gave more to reaffirm their egalitarian self-concept.
sample of only 1,200 people can generalize to a large population if it has this key quality. Even then, a correlational survey cannot establish this, which social psychologists primarily care about.
What is representativeness (a representative sample), and what is causation?