The Socio-cultural Level of Analysis

1. The Socio-cultural Level of Analysis

2. Understanding Attribution will help us to understand the two concepts of situational and dispositional causes of behavior…

3. Attribution– how people interpret and explain causal relationships in the social world. We, as humans have a need to understand why things happen. • ATTRIBUTION THEORY- motivational theory looking at how the human beings construct the meaning of an event based on his /her motives to find a cause and his/her knowledge of the environment. Understanding attribution in order to better understand situational and dispositional factors…

4. Att. Theory basically looks at how people make sense of their world; what cause and effect inferences they make about the behaviors of others and of themselves. • Example: In the middle of the lecture someone walks in class late…we can attribute the student being late to the following reasons-he or she is always late (dispositional), or he or she was in a discussion with a teacher (situational). Understanding attribution in order to better understand situational and dispositional factors…

5. The purpose behind making attributions is to achieve COGNITIVE CONTROL over one's environment by explaining and understanding the causes behind behaviors and environmental occurrences. • Fritz Heider, who coined the phrase in 1958, states that there is a strong need in individuals to understand momentary events by attributing them to people's external factors or to stable characteristics of internal factors. Understanding attribution in order to better understand situational and dispositional factors…

6. Two basic kinds of attributions made: Internal and External • Internal factors - dispositional • External factors - situational Understanding attribution in order to better understand situational and dispositional factors…

7. Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior Objective 2.1

8. Provide a clear definition of each. • Provide a detailed account of the role that each play in explaining behavior. • Provide relevant examples of situational and dispositional behavior in society. What are you being asked to do?

9. Dispositionalfactorsofbehavior:The cause ofbehaviorarefactorsoccuringinside the individual(e.g. personality, pastexperience,cognitive/culturalschemas, biologicalfactors) • Situationalfactorsofbehavior:The cause ofbehaviorarefactorsoccuringoutside the individual (e.g. situation and context) Dispositional and SituationalFactorsofBehavior

10. Whenever people are interacting with each other or engaging in any group activity, they tend to make quick judgments (attributions) about each other. They judge the motive behind a person's actions and attribute it to dispositional or situational causes. • Dispositional attribution is the assumption that a person's behavior reflects his internal dispositions like his personality, beliefs, attitude etc. • Situational attribution is the assumption that a person's behavior is influenced by an external influence from the environment or culture. Dispositional and SituationalFactorsofBehavior

11. You have just taken a mock exam and been told by your teacher that you have not done very well. This surprises you since you had been revising for weeks before the exam. How do you explain your poor performance? Situational or dispositional? Examplesofhowsituational and dispositionalfactorsdiffer...

12. Does situational or dispositional factors better explain behavior? Questionof the day...

13. Human behavior is explained by the social situation (situational factors) more than individual personality (dispositional factors). Situations play a greater role in human behavior than most people want to believe (Zimbardo, 1971). Zimbardo also describes the social situation as the single biggest indicator of understanding human behavior. He asserts that good people can do evil things if the situation calls for it (The Prison study can be mentioned to show this phenomena)… The powerof the situation

14. For example, when a couple of guards were clearly reluctant to push the prisoners, it was a nudge from the experimenters (in their role as wardens and superintendent) that caused them to be more aggressive. • The more passive guards were also motivated by the actions of the most aggressive on their shift. • This shows that it is possible for people with negative dispositions to situationally impact others. The powerof the situation

15. Does this happen in real life?

16. Simply put, we adapt to our situations (This is supported by prinicple 1 and 3). Every situation and setting requires a different set of mannerisms. For example, people act differently in class then when they are around teachers. • Class is often a lot more strict and proper and to maintain those expectations, one must carefully consider what they say and what they do. The powerof the situation

17. Many social psychologists (Milgram, Zimbardo, Asch) strongly assert that the social situation is more important than a persons disposition. • Although dispositions play an important role in how people react to their situation. Both playing a role in behavior…

18. What is a real world example of two people with contrasting dispositions behaving differently in the same situation? Both playing a role in behavior…

19. The power of the interaction between these two attributions are evident when a person is compelled do certain activities that he or she does not want to, but does so because of peer pressure. • For example, a person might not enjoy going to a party, might not like to drink, and might hate to smoke. However, the peer pressure situationally influences a person to do all these unwanted things. The powerof dispositions on situations

20. Can our tendency to over emphasize dispositional or situational factors cause wrongful judgment?

21. Discuss Two Errors in Attributions. Objective 2.2

22. Provide a clear definition of attributions. • Identify and define two specific errors associated with attributions. • Provide research supporting these errors • Provide a personal analysis of each error/research on each error. What are you being asked to do? (page 36 and 37 of your IB syllabus)

23. Attributions determine how a person constructs the meaning of an event based on his /her motives to find a cause and his/her knowledge of the environment. • In other words, Attributions look at how we make sense of the world; it gives us control of our surroundings. Attribution: revisited from 2.1

24. Heider (1958) was the first to propose a psychological theory of attribution. • Heider discussed what he called “naïve” or “commonsense” psychology. In his view, people were like amateur scientists, “erroneously trying to understand other people’s behavior by piecing together information until they arrived at a reasonable explanation or cause”. Attribution: revisited from 2.1

25. As previously noted, the purpose behind making attribution is to achieve cognitive control over one's environment by explaining and understanding the causes behind behaviors and environmental occurrences. Our attributions are, however, significantly driven by our emotional and motivational drives. How can this create errors in attribution? Formation of attribution error

26. Research has shown that we have a tendency to make automatic errors in our attributions. There are two important errors or mistakes we tend make when assigning attributions. • Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) • Self-Serving Bias (SSB) Formation of attribution error

27. When we overestimate the role of dispositional factors in an individual’s behavior-and underestimate the situational factors-it is called the fundamental attribution error. Fundamental Attribution Error

28. Briefly describe the following actor’s personality (as best of you can). Example of FAE

29. Will Ferrell

30. Sylvester Stallone

31. According to FAE, we attribute these characteristics to their personality (dispositional) and not the fact that these are paid actors who auditioned and were merely imitating these personalities in films (situational). Example of FAE

32. Why is this error so common? Some psychologists argue it is because people tend to think of themselves as adaptable, flexible and ever-changing human beings. We do not like to think of ourselves as a “type” of person. • However, when we look at others, we do not have enough information about them (in most cases) to make a balanced decision, so we attribute behavior to disposition (this will help us later understand the formation of stereotypes). Understanding FAE

33. Ross et. al. (1977) proposed and demonstrated this error in research that aimed to see if student participants would make FAE even when they knew that all of the actors were simply playing a role. • In their study, participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles: a game show host, contestants on the game show, or members of the audience. • The game show host were instructed to design their own questions. The audience then watched the game show through a series of questions. Research into FAE

34. When the game show was over, the observers were asked to rank the intelligence of the people who had taken part. They consistently ranked the game show host as the most intelligent, even though they knew that this person was randomly assigned to this position, and-more significantly-he or she had written the questions. • They failed to attribute the role of the person’s situation-that is, being allowed to ask the questions-and instead attributed the person’s performance to dispositional factors-in this case, intelligence. Research into FAE

35. Although this study was taken from a very small university student sample, it reflects what we see everyday in life. • People with social power usually initiate and control conversations (such as teachers, doctors, etc.); their knowledge concerning a particular topic can give others the impression that they are knowledgeable on a large range of other topics as well. • Medical doctors and teachers are often seen as experts on topics that are not within their area of expertise. Research into FAE

36. Another error in attribution is the self-serving bias (SSB). This is seen when people take credit for their successes, attributing them to dispositional factors, and dissociate themselves from their failures, attributing them to situational factors. Self Serving Bias

37. A fundamental attribution error is when people try to find reasons for someone's behavior, they tend to overestimate personality factors and underestimate situational factors. • A self-serving bias is when a person describes their own behavior and tend to choose attributions that are favorable to themselves. This means that people like to take credit for their good actions and let the situation account for their bad actions. What is the difference?

38. American football coaches and players tend to credit their wins to internal factors-for example, being in good shape, the hard work they have put in, the natural talent of the team-and their failures to external factors-for example, weather, fouls, cheating, etc. Is this true? SSB

39. Greenberg et. al (1982) argued that the reason we do this is to protect our self esteem. How does SSB help to maintain self-esteem? Why do we tend to employ SSB?

40. If we can attribute our success to dispositional factors, it boosts our self-esteem, and if we can attribute our failures to factors beyond our control, we can protect our self-esteem. • In other words, the SSB serves as a mean of self protection. Can this serve an evolutionary purpose? How so? Why do we tend to employ SSB?

41. One pair of studies that is a classic example of a study examining the self-serving bias researchy by Wolosin, Sherman, and Till (1973). • The aim of the study was to see if participant attributed success internally more than failure, which tends to be attributed to external factors SSB in research

42. Participants participated in a decision-making task in which they had to choose among a pairs of geographic locations where the participant thought they were more likely to meet a friend. • In one experiment, the participant performed the task in cooperation with another individual, and in the other experiment, the participant was in competition with the other individual. • How do you think the participant would attribute the positive feedback? The negative feedback? SSB in research

43. After the task was completed, feedback was given to the participant. In the cooperative case, the participants assumed more responsibility when they received positive feedback compared to participants who received neutral or negative feedback. The partner was assigned more responsibility in failure outcomes. • In the competitive condition, again the participant exhibited more self-attribution in the success condition, and in the failure conditions, situational factors were given the most responsibility by the participants (Wolosin et al., 1973). SSB in research

44. Questions have been raised as to whether the self-serving bias is a legitimate universal concept or not. Most notably in the literature, the questioning by Miller & Ross (1975), examined the self-serving bias as “fact or fiction.” • Not all the studies in the past that were hypothesized to show a self-serving bias demonstrated the effect. Critics of SSB

45. Also, Miller and Ross claimed they found that there was a fault in some of the older studies’ methodology. They claimed that there was little support for the concept in the most general form. They argued that the literature provided more support for the idea that people take credit for success and not as much support for people blaming external factors for failure. • Also, they claimed that the self enhancing effect could be caused by other factors other than the self-serving bias, such as, the tendency for people to expect success, the tendency for people to notice a correlation between successful events and behavior more than with unsuccessful events, and that people misinterpret contingency (Miller & Ross, 1975). Critics of SSB

46. Although many researcher criticize the attribution error, many studies have supported and demonstrated the concept. • It has explained the self-seeking nature of humans to protect general idea about ourselves and others. Critics of SSB

47. Write down some of the groups that you identify or associate yourself with. • If the aforementioned groups call for a specific set of characteristics, explain them. • Name at least 4 people in this class who feel you most identify with. Explain this connection. Introductory discussion

48. Do you feel connected or a sense of belongingness to the groups you identify with the most? • Are you offended when someone talks negatively about the group(s) you belong to? • Would a piece of YOUR identity be taken away if the group(s) you identify with the most were taken away? The argument of “self” as part of a group.

49. Write down some of the groups that you identify or associate yourself with. • If the aforementioned groups call for a specific set of characteristics, explain them. • Name at least 4 people in this class who feel you most identify with. Explain this connection. Introductory discussion

50. Do you feel connected or a sense of belongingness to the groups you identify with the most? • Are you offended when someone talks negatively about the group(s) you belong to? • Would a piece of YOUR identity be taken away if the group(s) you identify with the most were taken away? The argument of “self” as part of a group.