Social Psychology: Memories and Causal Attribution

• Memories formed and consolidated help make sense of the world.
• Memories are reconstructions influenced by schemas and subject to bias.
• The misinformation effect shows how leading questions can alter memory.
• Judgments are often based on the ease of retrieving information from memory, known as the availability heuristic.

Inferring Cause and Effect

• People seek to understand cause-and-effect relationships to better predict future outcomes.
• Heider, a pioneer in this field, argued for examining how people comprehend their social surroundings.
• Heider developed a common-sense psychology, analyzing how people think about events and others.

Common Sense Psychology

• Heider assumed that similar rules guide visual sensations and social impressions.
• Geometric objects were described in cause-effect terms.
• People tend to organize social perceptions regarding causes and effects.
• Heider investigated how people discussed their social lives.

Causal Attribution

• Causal attributions explain why a particular event or behavior occurred.
• They help people make sense of their social worlds and find meaning.
• Attributions can significantly impact various life domains, including interpersonal interactions, legal decisions, and economic perspectives.

Dimensions of Causal Attribution

• Causal attributions vary on two dimensions: locus of causality and stability.
• Locus of causality is whether the cause is internal to the actor or external in the situation.
• Poor performance could be attributed to internal factors like intelligence or effort or external factors like professor quality or exam fairness.

Stability

• Stability: whether the cause is stable or unstable
• Stable internal attribution example: Intelligence is relatively immutable.
• Unstable internal attribution example: Effort can vary.
• Stable attributions predict similar future outcomes.
• Unstable attributions suggest different future outcomes. Example: If Justin failed because of lack of effort, he might do better on the next test if he exerted himself.

External Attributions

• External attributions can also be stable or unstable.
• Example stable external attribution: A professor always gives brutal tests or is incompetent.
• Example unstable external attributions: Factors may include bad luck or a breakup.
• How a behavior is attributed affects impressions of the actor and predictions about future behavior.
• Internal attributions for negative actions reflect poorly, while external attributions excuse the actor.
• Stable attributions lead to strong expectations, while unstable attributions do not.

Application - School Performance and Causal Attribution

• Psychologists like Carol Dweck study causal attributions and self-perception.
• Boys attribute math difficulties to lack of effort or external factors, while girls attribute them to a lack of math ability.
• Attribution affects effort; Dweck reasoned that girls attribute to lack of math ability, and are more likely to give up trying to get better.
• Lack of effort is the most productive causal attribution for poor performance.
• Attribution retraining programs encourage effort-based attributions to improve performance.

Entity and Incremental Theorists

• Dweck proposed that intelligence and ability can be viewed as either stable (entity) or incrementally changeable.
• Entity theorists view attributes as fixed, while incremental theorists believe they can increase or decrease.
• Entity theorists make more negative stable attributions and avoid opportunities to change ability especially when ability is crucial to success.
• Incremental theorists view situations as opportunities to improve and develop skills.
• Managers with incremental theories are more willing to mentor employees.
• Views on human attributes can be changed to encourage perseverance and learning-oriented goals.

Automatic Processes in Causal Attribution

• Causal attributions stem from quick, intuitive processes or rational, elaborate processes.
• People make concentrated effort when encountering unexpected or important events.
• Accurate causal attributions are more important when action is required or when events significantly impact one's own life.
• Schemas are the prior expectations that guide the process.
• Harold Kelley stated: when events fit causal schemas, there's no need to engage in excessive thought about why the events occurred.
• Causal schemas derive from personal experience or general cultural knowledge.

Salient Factors

• Causal attribution is based on visually salient factors or factors accessible from memory.
• A "top of the head" phenomenon is illustrated in studies by Shelley Taylor and Susan Fiske.
• In group discussions, people attribute importance to visually salient members in the direction of the discussion..

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

• People are likely to attribute behavior to internal qualities of the person.
• When a person acts, that actor tends to be the observer's focus of attention.
• Observers have a strong tendency to make a correspondent inference, attributing an attitude, desire, or trait to the action.
• Inferences give quick information about the person.

Correspondent Inferences

• Correspondent inferences are most likely when someone has a choice in taking an action.
• Correspondent inferences are most likely when choices are between similar courses of action with one key difference.
• Correspondent inferences are most likely when someone acts inconsistently with their social role.
• The tendency to jump to correspondent inferences (FAE) is so strong that external factors are insufficiently considered. People often act without choice.

The tendency to attribute behavior to internal or dispositional qualities is known as fundamental attribution error, or FAE

• Participants were asked to read an essay on Castro.
• Logic would suggest a lack of choice would make the position advocated by the essay a poor basis for guessing the author's true attitude.
• Even without choice , participants also rated his attitudes as corresponding to the position he took in the essay.

Actor-Observer Effect

• People tend to make dispositional attributions instead of reasons for attributing behaviors.
• It has been demonstrated that people make judgement based on roles even when they are randomly assigned to those roles
• Everyday examples of FAE include thinking actors are like their characters.
• Errors make sense because we know these people only as their fictional character - because we know that most of the time actors say lines written for them.
• People can judge others by making internal attributions to drug addicts, and homeless people. They are then more supportive of people harshly rather than considering social factors.

How Fundamental is the FAE

• When making attributions for ourselves, it is not common
• This is labeled the actor observer effect as observers are likely to make internal attributions, but we are likely to make external attributions.
• Attending actions is external factors are more salient
• People make more internal attributions for roommates choices, but when explaining their own choices, they emphasized attributes,

Attributions

• Success is due to internal attributions.
• Failures are attributed to external attributions.
• Actor-observer difference is more stronger for negative behaviors.
• Perceptions may occur even when people have strong inclinations for their behavior
• If people have a strong intention for their behaviors, they may be just as likely to make an internal attribution for someone else.

FAE Across Cultures

• It has been proposed that FAE is a product of individualistic POV which highlight traits
• Original evidence was in the U.S as well as similar cultures. People tend to be more attentive in collectivistic regions.
• Those same cultures tend to be view more influences that are external.
• People generally give more relative when explaining behavior in China because they can relate.

Variation in Attributional Biases

• Individuals that are raised in collectivists don't form biased opinions based on behavior
• When people were asked judge attitudes, they still do from cultures such as China
• People from individualists are more likely to be influenced
• When the goal is to judge, people base it on behavior
• But when judging actions, there cultural variation

Dispositional Attribution - A Three-Stage Model

• Although the FAE is sometimes systematic, sometimes automatic, it is one of he situational factors
• participants who were less confident thought they had a no choice and could consider opinions
• There is not a good way to consider these situational factors before jumping to any attribution.

Model

1. A behavior is seen as pro-Castro statement.
2. Correspondent with a dis position
3. Accuracy motivation, then modify to take accounts

-This model predict people will ignore the the FAE and like to know others more that has limited attention,

• Participants were tested through a fidgety women
• The anxiety told a lot about the person
• The person had topics

Three Stages

• Gilbert tested a model of three stages.
• Participants had to also do other things with while being tested,

On Second Thought

• People were less cognitively strained
• If there in information to give they weren't able to do it

###Elaborate Attributional Processes

• Quick automatic people derive causal salience
• We use put fourth efforts for gathering and thinking to take action

Causual Hypothesis

• Conscientious effort-Putting is like reading

###Hypothesis

• Interpretation
• Paw print example

Final Example

• Frank - party then fight starts
• Covariation is linking it

Covariation principle

• How long do we take to asses plausabitiy. - if we take a long time we miss other opportunities

###Types of information

• Three type infornation - Consitenet Distintvenrss Consensur
• What did reasons love move

Three kinds of information

• Consisteny across time
• Conesnsus
• Distincivenss.

Movie

• In year 9 you can’t have much of cash
• You want to know if is good or something else
• If is good the will have high
• When has been seen twice with it
• But will she even love ot or had it changed

Social psychology at the Movies

-Illustrate people for 1942 - Cazablanca by Michael Cortiz -Illustrate speficic cazal

• Nazi in cazanlab -Meet ex American owner of cazanola
• Anti- Nazi freeman and his wife in Carzana
• Vistor the guy and then Ilsa had plans