AP Psychology 4.1-4.2: Attribution and Attitudes

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining another person’s behavior.

Situational influence

An effect on behavior produced by features of the immediate environment, such as culture, social roles, the presence of bystanders, or other people’s behavior.

Dispositional influence

An effect on behavior produced by internal characteristics of the person, such as personality traits, temperament, habits, or other enduring attributes.

Situationism versus dispositionism

Situationism emphasizes the immediate environment as the main cause of behavior, whereas dispositionism emphasizes internal characteristics of the individual. Contemporary approaches generally examine how both interact.

How does social-personality psychology explain behavior?

It examines the interaction between internal characteristics and situational forces rather than treating behavior as caused exclusively by either personality or the environment.

A person snaps at a friend immediately after being fired. How might the fundamental attribution error distort an observer’s explanation?

The observer may conclude that the person is mean, angry, or unfriendly, overlooking the situational effect of being fired and feeling distressed.

What did the quizmaster study demonstrate about judgments of ability?

Questioners and contestants were randomly assigned different roles, but questioners created questions whose answers they already knew. Despite this situational advantage, contestants and observers tended to attribute the questioners’ better performance to greater intelligence or knowledge.

Halo effect

The tendency for an overall impression of a person to influence judgments about that person’s other qualities. For example, physical attractiveness or friendliness may lead people to assume someone also has superior moral character.

Are attribution errors equally strong in every culture?

No. They tend to be more pronounced in individualistic cultures, while collectivistic cultures are more likely to consider relationships, context, and situational influences.

Individualistic culture

A culture that emphasizes individual autonomy, personal achievement, independence, and analytic thinking. Such cultures tend to favor dispositional explanations of behavior.

Collectivistic culture

A culture that emphasizes communal relationships, group harmony, interdependence, and holistic thinking. Such cultures tend to attend more to context and situational causes.

Why might collectivistic cultures show less fundamental attribution error?

Their focus on relationships and context encourages people to consider social and environmental influences along with personal characteristics when explaining behavior.

How can cultural thinking styles influence memory for objects in a scene?

People with more holistic, context-sensitive thinking are more likely to recognize an object when it appears in its original context. More analytic thinking places greater emphasis on the object itself rather than its surrounding context.

Actor-observer bias

The tendency to explain other people’s behavior primarily in terms of internal factors while explaining one’s own behavior primarily in terms of situational factors.

Why do people often make different attributions for their own behavior than for another person’s behavior?

Actors have access to information about their intentions, history, and circumstances, whereas observers usually see only the behavior. This difference in available information encourages situational explanations for one’s own actions and dispositional explanations for others’ actions.

Attribution

A belief or explanation about the cause of a behavior or outcome.

What three dimensions can be used to classify an attribution?

The dimensions are locus of control, stability, and controllability. Locus distinguishes internal from external causes; stability distinguishes lasting from changeable causes; and controllability distinguishes causes that can or cannot be controlled.

Self-serving bias

The tendency to attribute one’s successes to internal characteristics but attribute one’s failures to external or situational factors. This pattern helps protect self-esteem.

How might a fan explain a favorite team’s victory versus its defeat?

A victory may be attributed to internal, stable, and controllable causes such as talent and effective strategies. A defeat may be attributed to external, unstable, or uncontrollable causes such as unfair refereeing, playing away, or bad weather.

How can culture affect self-serving bias?

Cultural values influence whether people emphasize personal achievement and internal causes or group relationships and situational causes when explaining outcomes.

Just-world hypothesis

The belief that people generally receive the outcomes they deserve—that good behavior leads to positive outcomes and bad behavior leads to negative outcomes.

What harmful consequence can result from believing strongly in a just world?

People may blame victims or disadvantaged individuals for their circumstances instead of recognizing situational causes such as discrimination, unemployment, poor education, economic recessions, or abuse.

Attitude

A relatively enduring evaluation of a person, object, group, issue, or event that can be positive, negative, or neutral.

What are the three components of an attitude?

The affective component consists of feelings, the behavioral component consists of actions or behavioral intentions, and the cognitive component consists of beliefs or thoughts about the attitude object.

How are attitudes formed?

Attitudes can develop through direct experience, learning, observation of others, socialization, and exposure to persuasive messages.

What is the relationship between attitudes and behavior?

Attitudes can influence behavior, but the relationship is not perfect. Situational pressures, social norms, perceived control, and the strength or specificity of an attitude can affect whether it predicts action.

Stereotype

A generalized belief about the characteristics, attributes, or behavior of members of a group.

Prejudice

A generally negative attitude or emotional evaluation directed toward members of a group, based primarily on their group membership.

How do stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination differ?

A stereotype is a belief, prejudice is an evaluative feeling or attitude, and discrimination is behavior that unfairly treats people differently because of their group membership.

Cognitive dissonance

The unpleasant tension that results from inconsistency among a person’s thoughts, attitudes, and behavior.

How do people commonly reduce cognitive dissonance?

They may change their behavior, change or rationalize an attitude, add information that supports their choice, or minimize the importance of the inconsistency.

Why can behavior sometimes change attitudes through cognitive dissonance?

When people freely perform behavior that conflicts with their existing attitudes, they may change their attitudes to make their thoughts and actions more consistent.

What is persuasion?

The process of changing or reinforcing a person’s attitudes, beliefs, or behavior through communication.

Central route to persuasion

A persuasion process involving careful consideration of the quality, logic, and evidence of a message. It is most likely when the audience is motivated and able to think about the issue.

Peripheral route to persuasion

A persuasion process based on superficial cues, such as a communicator’s attractiveness, popularity, credibility, emotional appeal, or the number of arguments, rather than on careful analysis of the message.

How do central- and peripheral-route persuasion differ in durability?

Central-route persuasion generally produces stronger, more enduring attitudes that better resist counterarguments, whereas peripheral-route persuasion tends to produce weaker and less lasting changes.

When is the central route to persuasion most likely?

It is most likely when people are interested in the issue, motivated to evaluate it, knowledgeable enough to understand the arguments, and able to pay attention.

When is the peripheral route to persuasion most likely?

It is most likely when people have low motivation or limited ability to process the message and therefore rely on cues such as emotion, attractiveness, authority, or popularity.