*

* The Five Factor Model (McCrae & Costa 1987) * Extraversion: Excitability, sociability, assertiveness, talkativeness * Agreeableness: Trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other prosocial behaviors.

* Conscientiousness: High levels of thoughtfulness, with good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors. Those high in conscientiousness tend to be organized and mindful of details.

* Neuroticism: tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.

* Openness: imagination and insight, and those high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests.

*

*

Heider

argued that people are intuitive (or naïve) psychologists who construct causal theories of human behavior. In his experiment, people attributed human characteristics to animated triangles and dots * Because we believe our own behavior is motivated rather than random, we tend to look for causes and reasons for other peoples’ behavior.

* We construct causal theories to predict and control our environment, we therefore tend to look for enduring properties in the world around us * In attributing causal factors, we distinguish between

situational

(external) factors and

dispositional

(internal) factors

* Kelley argued people act much like scientists – they weigh up different possible causes of an observed action or experience. They want to know whether the event was caused by the something about the actor, something about the object, or something about the situation – or a combination of these factors. They then decide to whether to attribute the behavior to a dispositional (personality) or situational (social context) Three classes of Information: * Consistency – how often (low or high) the same stimulus and response in the same situation are perceived * Distinctiveness – how similarly (low or high) the person acts in reference to different objects * Consensus – how similarly (high or low) other people act, given the same stimulus, thus sampling across actors.

*

Experimental Social Psychologists focus on situational influences and downplay dispositional.

Personality Psychologists attach more weight to personality traits and downplay environmental influences:

* Correspondence bias suggests the naïve psychology practised by most people more closely resembles personality psychologists – behaviour is seen as corresponding to an actor’s internal disposition even when it is caused by situational factors.

*

Why?

* Some situational forces are harder to detect. If observer’s are unaware of the situational factors, they can’t factor them into their causal explanations.

* Expectations of how people will behave distorts interpretations (eg we assume that if public speaking terrifies us, it will terrify others) * People sometimes fail to correct initial inferences of causes of behaviour – especially when processing demands are high. Dispositional explanations are the automatic response – and situational information is then factored in.

*

Fundamental Attribution Error/Correspondence Bias

Gilbert, Pelham and Krull (1988

* Participants watched a videotape with the sound turned down of a woman talking nervously to a stranger – who then rated how anxious she was as a person.

* Subtitles indicated that she was talking about sexual fantasies (offering a situational explanation for her nervousness) – others showed the conversation was about gardening.

* Further – some participants were told to memorise the subtitles – imposing an additional cognitive demand.

*

Ppts under increased cognitive demand tended o believe the woman was nervous depsite conversation topic – ppts under low cognitive demand rated her as less dispositionally anxious when they believed she was discussing sex.

*

Gilbert et al suggests attribution always involved automatic processes – but sometimes involves controlled processes

.

*

Fundamental Attribution Error:

* The General tendency to overestimate the importance of personal or

dispositional

factors relative to environmental (

situational

) factors.

*

People are more likely to explain other people’s behavior in terms of their often matters more personalities and not so much in terms of their situations – yet the situation

*

See Jones & Harris (1967) – The Study on the students reading essays on Castro – and Ross (1977) – The study involving random allocation of Contestant-Quizmaster conditions

*

Actor-Observer Effect:

* People tend to attribute their own behaviour to external causes but that of others to internal * Actors overestimate the importance of the situation in explaining their own behaviors: actors look at the situation, observers look at actors.

* This bias suggests that observers overestimate the importance of an actor’s dispositions for causing the actor’s behavior; * Access to different information: actors have more background about themselves * Actors overestimate the importance of the situation in explaining their own behaviors Perceptual: actors look at the situation, observers look at actors

* * Storms (1973) * - 2 participants are assigned to be actors and have a conversation on predetermined topic * - 1 observer is paired with each actor, and positioned so they see the actor they are paired with, but not the other actor. * found actors became

less situational,

situation. and observers

more situational

when shown new orientation of the

*

WHY?

*

1. People have access to a wider range of information about factors leading to their own actions (eg – you are lively at a party. You look at situations where you have acted less extroverted – when at an interview perhaps – and therefore conclude you are not consistently lively.

*

By contrast, other people may have seen you act in a restricted range of situations – conclude your behaviour is more consistent than it actually is.

* 2. Direction of attention – when observing other people’s behaviour, we

tend to focus on the person rather than their situation. Conversely, our attention tends to focus outwards on our surroundings when we perform

behaviours ourselves.

* 3. Brown & Fish (1983) suggest that in English subjects of action verbs

are responsible for the action. By contrast, for experience verbs it is the object (eg John liked Angela)

*

Self-serving Bias:

* We are not rational informational processors of information.

* When our performance results in either success or failure, we tend to take credit for our successes but deny blame for our failures. Self-serving biases include attributing our own (but not other people) successes to internal-stable factors and our own (but not other people) failures to external-unstable factors, taking more credit than is due for desirable outcomes.

* According to Olson & Ross (1988), we make internal attributions for our successes (e.g., I’m intelligent) and external attributions for failures (e.g., it was a particularly hard exam)

*

Self-serving Bias:

* Internally attributing success and externally attributing failure protects self-esteem * We expect to do well in most things, which makes it logical to attribute failure to external sources (Taylor & Riess, 1989).

* Further suggestions * Self Handicapping – Berglas (1987) – people who anticipate failure intentionally make external (situational) attributions prior to the event * Illusion of Control – People have more control over their own outcomes – world is a secure place where we control our own destiny * Belief in a Just World – victims are deemed responsible for their own misfortune. World is predictable – good things happen to good people & bad things happen to bad people. Davidowicz (1975) Holocaust victims

* * Fiske (1998) has suggested that FAE may be specific to Western individualistic cultures * In Collectivist (mainly non-Western) cultures, people are more likely to attribute someone’s behaviour to situational as opposed to personality characteristics * English language newspapers reporting murders emphasise dispositional causes (such as a deeply disturbed personality, bad-temper, short fuse) while Chinese language papers reporting the same crime emphasise situational causes (relationships, social isolation, availability of guns, achievement pressure) (Moris & Peng, 1994)