Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour

1. Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour By Nicole Marrari

2. Dispositional Attributions • Dispositional Attributions: Sometimes we believe that the way a person has behaved is caused by factors which are specific to them as a person, their personality or other internal and generally unchanging characteristics. • Another definition: The cause of behavior are factors occuring inside the individual (e.g. personality, childhood experience,cognitiveschemas, biological factors)

3. Situational Attributions: • Situational Attributions: Sometimes we assume that someone’s behaviour is dependent upon their current circumstances or situation; the cause of their behaviour is seen to be external to the individual, e.g. circumstances or luck. • Another definition: The cause of behavior are factors occuring outside the individual (e.g. situation and context)

4. We can see attributional processes at work in the following conversation, where three friends are trying to explain one of their professor’s facial expressions. In this discussion, each is describing the cause he or she attributes to the same action: • Sheryl: Hey, did you see how Professor Smythe looked at me when I asked him that question? • Theo: Yeah, he looked like he was really confused! • Sheryl: Really? I thought he looked like he thought I was the dumbest student ever. • Theo: No way. I’m sure he was just trying to figure out the answer. • Kyle: I thought he was coming down with the flu. • This example illustrates that any communication event or behavior can be viewed as an effect that has some cause, and the cause we attribute (e.g., confusion, opinion, flu) is likely to influence the meaning of the action and how we might respond to it.

5. (Heider, 1958) • The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations is the notion of how people see the causes of behavior, and the explanations they make for it—what Heider called "attributions." Attribution theory (as one part of his larger and more complex account of social perception) describes how people come to explain (make attributions about) the behavior of others and themselves. The theory divides the way people attribute causes of events into two types:

6. (Heider, 1958) • Heider’s (1958) initial ideas have been expanded in a number of ways to account for the complex process of attribution. For example, researchers have argued that attributions vary from one another not only based on causal locus but also on other dimensions. These include “stability,” or whether or not we see the cause of something as stable (“He’s late because he doesn’t care about other people”) or unstable (“He’s late because he wasn’t feeling well and it took him a while to get ready”); and “control,” or whether or not we think a person was able to alter the cause (“He’s late because he forgot to set his alarm again”) or unable to alter the cause (“He’s late because there was a traffic accident that delayed traffic”).

7. (Heider, 1958) • (Heider, 1958) Heider suggested that behavior may be attributed to a disposition (such as personality traits, motives, attitudes), or behavior can be attributed to situations (for example, external pressures, social norms, peer pressure, accidents of the environment, "acts of God," random chance, and so forth). Heider first made the argument that people tend to overweight internal, dispositional causes over external causes—this later became known as the "fundamental attribution error" (Ross 1977) or "correspondence bias" (Fiske & Taylor 1991; Jones 1979, 1990).

8. Video!!! • http://www.screenr.com/n2Js

9. Bibliography • Manusov, Valerie and Spitzberg, Brian. Attribution Theory: Finding Good Cause in the Search for Theory. • Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York:Wiley. • MacGeorge, E. L. (2001). Support providers’ interaction goals: The influence of attributions • and emotions. Communication Monographs