Theories of Causal Attribution in Social Cognition In social cognition causal attribution is one the most important models. In causal attribution we attempt to find cause-effect relationships between human behavior and possible causes which made it happen. There are seven different theories of causal attribution, and I shall talk about the Kelley’s covariation model and then talk about some biases in attribution. Kelley’s covariation model Kelley’s covariation model is a form of attribution model, possibly the best known of them all. According to his model, an observer attributes the behavior of people either to their person, the behavior is due the individual characteristics of the person performing the act, entity, the behavior is caused by the target, or circumstance, the behavior is caused by the circumstances of the event. When doing this, the observer uses three types of information, although not all of this information is always available. These are: Consistency, whether the behavior is consistent across different situations, Distinctiveness, whether the persons reaction is the same in all cases or not, and Consensus, do other people react the way to similar stimuli. For example , A pushes B: Interpretation of Information Causal Information available Consensus Distinctiveness Consistency Attribution Nobody else pushes B High Person A also pushes other people Low A has previously pushed B High Others push B Low Entity A pushes only B High A has previously pushed B High Nobody else pushes B Low Circumstance A pushes only B High A has not previously pushed B Low From our example, we can, by way of cau... ... middle of paper ... ...ior, and so we are less likely to use dispositional explanations when describing our own behavior. Nevertheless, even when we get to know other people better we are likely to use situational attributions to explain their behavior. (Although from now on, I hope I will.) In conclusion, these different theories all help us to understand human behavior a bit better, but none of these theories are a panacea to understanding all of human behavior. More research is required in order to develop more and more theories which might help us to understand it (human behavior) even better. Bibliography: Hogg, M.A.; Vaughan, G.M. (1998) Social Psychology, 2nd edition. Prentice Hall. Christensen, I.P.; Wagner, H.L.; Halliday, M.S. Instant Notes Psychology (2001) BIOS Scientific publishers Limited.
Over the course of the paper, I will first explain what exactly are social structural explanations and cultural explanations, and show some of the most popular examples of both. In addition, I discuss what I think is the core of the disagreement between the two, and what I think matters in comprehending life chances.
I can say this is a topic that could bring about many different opinions on what could be the most interesting theory. All the theories that I have read can come into play, depending on what the circumstance is. To me, I feel as though the most interesting theories would be: Classical Theory, Differential Association Theory, and Labeling theory. There is no way that I could just have left it as haveing one theory as my favorite or most interesting because once I saw one of these theories; I was able to pick out two more. The reason why this happened was the simple fact of knowing someone who reacts in a certain situation and I can compare their actions to one of these theories. Once this occurs, I would be able to know the reason of why people
Attribution theory explains people motives by giving an option of disposition or situation, of which we decipher the motive to a behavior. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to link behaviors with personal characteristics, therefore if someone is murdered a suspect could be someone who really hates them because it gives them a motive. We can characterize a dispositional situation from a situational and come to a conclusion on why someone had a such behavior, and it helps to find a motive based on that. We can infer a motive from a behavior from things like external and internal attributions, so internal traits and responses to things.
Other issues under the cognitive theory are social and learning theories that are founded on the assumptions that humans make decisions based on logical evaluation of ideas. One of the strengths of the theory is in its recognition of humans as logical beings. It rejects behaviorism because the theory does not recognize the importance of logics in human reasoning.
...ation, and Attribution Style Among College Students." Individual Differences Research 11.2 (2013): 59-69. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
Some psychologists argue that the situational variables (i.e., environmental factors) are more influential in determining behavior than traits are; other psychologists argue that a combination of traits and situational variables influences behavior.
Thought processes can greatly influence people's social interactions, and the way that they live their lives. Cognitions develop how people perceive themselves and others on a daily basis. It is important to investigate how people attribute actions and behaviors exhibited, not only by themselves, but also those around them. These attributions shape the way an observer feels and reacts to others, and how people feel about themselves due to their own actions. The correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error) and the self-serving bias are two errors made in attribution by virtually every human being (Baron & Byrne, 2000). Both of these biases can be shown not only in adults, but also children (Guern, 1999). Even sport spectators display these biases when watching their favorite teams (Wann & Schrader, 2000). When the self-serving bias is absent in people's cognitions, they will show the self-defeating attributions. It is important to study people that demonstrate self-defeating attributions, because these individuals also show symptoms of depression (Wall & Hayes, 2000). Clearly, attributions are an imperative aspect of social cognition. Attributional bias is discussed by Marie Beesley. It is also important to investigate the factors that affect people's judgment biases in decision making and reasoning skills, which is explored by Amanda Wheeler. Because these two processes are so vital to the way in which people perceive themselves and others, and to the way a person chooses to behave, it is important to understand the factors that can cause inaccurate judgments. Judgment biases affect the way people form conclusions and make attributions about others, as well as abou...
Attribution theory correlates with how people exemplify events and how it affects their behavior and thinking. People making casual explanations is known as attribution theory. It was established over time from different social psychologists, especially Fritz Heider who played a major role in producing the theory in 1958. Heider wrote about attribution theory in his book called The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. External attribution is when behavior is altered by influences outside of your control. Internal attribution is caused from an inside factor that falls within your control. Your behavior is not influenced and you feel responsible.
Individuals might also derogate victims by using the attribution of blame mechanism of moral disengagement. Attribution of blame portrays the aggressor as a faultless victim driven to harmful conduct through forced action (Bandura, 2002). For example, some rapists suggest that the victim was “asking for it” by the way she dressed or acted.
Psychology can be defined as the systematic study of mental processes, couple with behaviors, and experiences (Kalat, 2011). There are many ways in examining, mental processes and behaviors among people, and therefore psychologist uses different perspectives to understand how human beings, think, act, and behave. Some psychologist uses one perspective to analyze behaviors, and other uses a multidimensional approach. Carter & Seifert (2013) identified 7 major perspectives that are used to study people’s behavior, and mental processes. These perspectives are the biological, evolutionary, psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, and the sociocultural perspective.
In conclusion, humans use attribution to explain causal relationships in the world and to explain these relationships situational or dispositional factors are used. The two errors in attribution that are most commonly made are the fundamental attribution which involves overestimating the role of dispositional factors and underestimating the role situational factors and self- serving bias which is when people take credit for their successes by attributing them to dispositional factors, and dissociate themselves from their failures by associating them situational factors.
However, other times we may perceive oursleves based on our actions. This is known as self perception theory. Self perception theory argues that people learn about themselves by examining their own behaviour. People look at their own behaviour and infer aspects about themselves. For example if you eat a salad for lunch you may feel that you’re a healthy person. Hence, our actions determined how we perceived ourselves. However, we cant use self perception all of the time because most of the time we know what we are feeling without the need to examine our behaviour. For example if one chooses not to donate money to a charity, it doesn’t necesserily mean that they are selfish. We use self perception theory in situations when we are unsure about how we feel. For example when you meet someone you may be unsure about whether you like them or not. If you help them out with something then you can conclude that you in fact do like them. In addition, a study was conducted by Tiffany Ito et al in 2006 where they made participants hold pencils in their mouth, change their facial expressions and view photograph of white and black individuals. Results showed that those who smiled while looking at the photos of the black individuals showed less prejudice towards the black participants. On that note, it may be hard to trust our feelings based on our behaviour if the behaviour is forced. If someone forces you to give money to the homeless man outside your school, you cannot necessarily conclude that you are a generous person. The self perception theory offers a perspective that explains how our actions affect the way we think rather than the way in which we view ourselves may influence our day to day
How the Attribution Theory in an attempt to assign meaning/understanding to events on the basis of eith...
There are three types of behaviorism. The first, methodological is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology. It claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms and not with mental states or events or with constructing internal information processing accounts of behavior. ("Behaviorism," 2000) The second is psychological behaviorism. It explains human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories and reinforcements. The last type is analytical or logical behaviorism. This theory has a philosophy about the meaning of mental terms and concepts. The idea of the mental state is the idea of behavioral tendencies that shows how a person behaves in one situation compared to another.
Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations. What we want to know is whether the observed behavior is unusual. If it is, the observer is likely to give the behavior an external attribution. If this action is not unusual, it will probably be judged as internal.