UCLA social psychology L14 attribution 歸因

Inferring （invisible） mental states

- Automatically infer mental states of triangles & lamps

- Just think what we do for other humans

- Natrual to describe movements in terms of intentions, desires and affective states

- Can you really see these? Not really

Invisible States & Traits

- reasonable infer: Traits -> States -> Intention -> Behavior (broad to narrow)

- But we actually did it a reverse way. (incorrectly)

- Why do we infer ? Its useful for Empathy and Predicting future behavior

- How do we do attributions?

Q: What causes a golf ball to roll?

- Dispositonal factors(also called traits): The ball is round

- Situation factors: Someone hit the ball

Two usually go together but people always come up with one but ignore the other

another Q: why joe kick a dog？

- Dispostional: Joe always in bad temper; Situation: dog just bit Joe

- We want to see whether joe is bad temper in general and what happen in different situation. To decide which factor matters in this event

Covariation Model:

1. Distinctiveness

- Is Joe mean to lots of folks? if yes, suggest Joe always bad temper

2. Consensus

- Is everyone mean to Fido? if yes, maybe Fidos problem

3. Consistency

- Does joe always kick Fido? If no, maybe something temporary

Limitation of this model:

- Its a model what we should do, not actually do

- We hardly see a lot behaviors of every people

Correspondent Inference Theory

- Attrubutions based on single behavior

- BEHAVIOR = Disposition + Situation Factors

- Can reverse the formula to solve for dispostion: D = B - S

* Situation Constraints

- We all share knowledge of social norms(big insight)

- No attrubution to D when S create B.

* Counternormative Behavior (B > S)

- suggests correspondence between B and D

- The larger B - S is, The more attribution to D. eg. making noise in library.

The Castro Study

- subjects read pro-Castro or anti-Castro essays written by others

- believe that essay writter was either freely chosen or required by and autority

- subjects task is to reate how pro-Castro the essay writer really is: measuring the writters D attitude

- if required to write, should prevent D attribution

however, exp res still show D attribution though told writter was required, and less D attribution than freely choosen

means: people always ignore Situation Factors. (Situation are invisiable, HYPOTHESIS 1) correspondent Inference Theory

The Correspondence Bias or Fundamental Attribution Error

One major reason why "we dont know why people do what they do" HYPOTHESIS 3?

Why FAE?

- Overlooking Situational Constraints:

-- Situations are often invisible: 1.Roles that we take on 2. we can be Situation for others

-- Sitiations are often in the mind of the actor: Their subjective construal that you cant see

- Inaccurate Theories of Situational Influence

- Salience (獨特性)

--We dont commit the FAE for ourselves

-- we are aware of how situations are influencing us more than we are aware of our own behavior

-- Salience = how attention getting something is

-- Actor-Observer Difference

-Incomplete Corrections of Automatic Dispositional Inference

-- Sequential Operations Model: attribution are 2 steps: Initial Disp. Attribution(Automatic) -> Situational correction(Controlled)

-- 1. Automatically make D inference from behavior of others 2. if motivated and not cognitively load. then correct the initial inference using sitiational info. Correction takes effort.

-- Even correct, still making a strong D attribution, because they ancor on the behavior as a starting point.

- Culture Bias??

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