Social Psychology: Social cognition and attribution — Attribution Theory
How people explain the causes of behavior, and the predictable biases that bend those explanations.
Try 3 questions
1. Fritz Heider described ordinary people as 'naive scientists'. What were they trying to do?
- Explain the causes of behavior
- Predict changes in the weather
- Measure their own intelligence
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Answer: Explain the causes of behavior
Heider, who founded attribution theory, argued that people constantly infer why others act as they do, sorting causes into the person or the situation.
2. A coworker misses a deadline and you conclude they are careless. What kind of attribution is that?
- A self-serving attribution
- A dispositional attribution
- A situational attribution
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Answer: A dispositional attribution
Locating the cause in the person's traits is a dispositional (internal) attribution; blaming traffic or workload would be situational (external).
3. What is the tendency to overestimate personality and underestimate circumstances when explaining others' behavior?
- The halo effect
- Confirmation bias
- The fundamental attribution error
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Answer: The fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error, also called correspondence bias, leads observers to read behavior as a direct sign of character even when the situation explains it.
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