Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour.
What is the cause of the observed behaviour?
It is caused by something within the person (personality) -> These are internal factors.
Dispositional attribution - intelligence, personality, attitude. |
It is caused by something outside the person (situation) -> These are external factors.
Situational attribution - group pressure, social norms, weather, luck. |
Attribution Theory
A theory by Heider (1958) is based on the assumption that people are naive scientists who try to explain observable behaviour. An important feature of the original attribution theory is a fundamental distinction about internal and external causes of behaviour.
What causes attribution errors:
- People tend to look for causes and reasons for other people's behaviour, and those are often assumptions. People do this because they feel that there are motives behind most of the their own behaviour.
- People are "intuitive psychologists". We construct our own causal theories of human behaviour.
- People construct their causal theories because they want to be able to understand, control, and predict the environment around them.
Why do we do this?
- Because people seem to have a pervasive need for causal explanation because this makes the world more predictable.
- Most cultures have constructed causal explanations for the origin and meaning of life (for example, myths and religion).
- There is a tendency in human to see motives and dispositions behind human actions, this may be so automatic that people sometimes find it difficult to override it even when motives dispositions don't really apply (for example, when people attribute motives to objects in computer games or believe in fate).
What causes attribution errors:
- People tend to look for causes and reasons for other people's behaviour, and those are often assumptions. People do this because they feel that there are motives behind most of the their own behaviour.
- People are "intuitive psychologists". We construct our own causal theories of human behaviour.
- People construct their causal theories because they want to be able to understand, control, and predict the environment around them.
Why do we do this?
- Because people seem to have a pervasive need for causal explanation because this makes the world more predictable.
- Most cultures have constructed causal explanations for the origin and meaning of life (for example, myths and religion).
- There is a tendency in human to see motives and dispositions behind human actions, this may be so automatic that people sometimes find it difficult to override it even when motives dispositions don't really apply (for example, when people attribute motives to objects in computer games or believe in fate).
Two empirical researches
Simmel (1944)
Simmel performed an experiment where he showed moving geometric figures to participants and asked them to describe the movements of the figure.
The participants all described them as if the geometric figures had intentions to act in the way they did. This shows that people think that there are reasons (motives) behind everything that happens. |
Evans-Pritchard (1976)
Evans-Pritchard described how the Azande people of central Africa believed that it was witchcraft that killed people when a granary doorway collapsed. The door had been eaten through by termites but the Azande believed that it was fate that made those people sit in the doorway just when it collapsed. This shows the tendency in human to see motives and dispositions behind human actions, this may be so automatic that people sometimes find it difficult to override it even when motives dispositions don't really apply
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Class notes:
attribution_theory_.pages | |
File Size: | 113 kb |
File Type: | pages |