4.1.

5 Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining

behavior
4.1.6 Evaluate two errors of attribution
-assumption: our behavior is inuenced by our social context
Attribution theory
means: how people interpret and explain causal relationship in the social world
-because humans have a need to understand why things happen
-actor-observer e"ect
-people tend to make an attribution about behavior depending on whether they are
performing it themselves or observing somebody else doing it
-situational factor: external factors
-dispositional factor: personal/internal factors
Attributions
-attribute because we need to understand people to control the situation
-situationalexternal factors, observing environment and see people doing
-eg. role that you are given inuences your behavior (stanford prison experiment)
eg. of roles. student, seniors, eldest/youngest, son/daughter, brother/sister,friend,
mentor, religion, gender, race, age, generation
-dispositionalpersonal (internal) factor, personality
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
-over emphasize dispositional factors over situational factors
-in general, seems to be universal
-can be demonstrated throughout cultures
Self Servant Bias (SSB) successful to dispositional factor and failure to situational
Studies to refer from
-Ross et al (1977)
-Sued feld (2003)
-Holocost survivors
-Norenzayan et al (2002)
-cultural bias in Fundamental Attribution Error
-Lau+Russel (1970)
-couches & players SSB
-Posey & Smiths (2003)
-SSB & friendship
-Kashima Traindis (1986)
-cultural bias in SSB-modesty bias
Identity
-situational role play
-to what extend is evil a result of dispositional
4.1.7 Evaluate social identity theory
Social Identity theory (SIT) Henri Tajfel and John Turner 1979
-sense of who they are based on their group membership
-states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image
-enhance our self-esteem
-associate ourselves to specic groups and distinguish ourselves from other groups
-hypothesis: group members of an in-group will seek to nd negative aspects of an out-group to
enhance their self-image
-stereotyping is based on a normal cognitive process
-means:
-the tendency to group things together which exaggerates
-di"erences between groups
-similarities of things in the same group
-social categorization is one explanation for prejudice attitudes
-leads to in-groups and out-groups
-divided into two groups:
-in group favoritism: making your in group look good
-out group denigration: making the out group look bad
The social identity theory outline and mental processes
1. Social categorization categorize people in order to understand the social environment, self-identify
2. Social identications adopt identify to the group we categorized ourselves as belonging to, relate to
self-esteem and emotions
3. Social comparison compare our groups to others, to this to maintain their self-esteem
4.1.8 Explain the formation of stereotypes and their e!ect on behavior
-thesis: Socio-cognitive theory and social identity theory are the two major theories that could
inuence our ways in viewing groups of people thus affect our actions in which we respond to them.
-discrimination-treating people di"erently according to their group membership
-usually discriminate against: race, schools, age, jobs, social rankings, gender, religion
-since we need to belong we need to chance opinions
-predict the out-group behaviors
-tend to be negative because we want to distinguish ourselves from them
Effects of Stereotypes on behavior
-stereotype threats (Steele & Aronson 1995)
-African Americans and White Americans
-Same verbal test
-Signicance of the test (IV)
-told that either:
-performance is related to verbal ability
-test to see how people solve problems
-Performance on the test (DV)
-African American scored worse in the verbal ability
-similar ndings for women and math ability, low social class and intelligence
-conclusion:the anxiety of fullling the stereotype affects cognitive performance
-evaluation: we are not sure that it is the anxiety
-trigger the stereotype in schema, so you stereotype yourself because you belong in a
group that has stereotyped
-not aware of the power of the situation, starts stereotyping themselves
Spencer et al., 1997
-stereotypes can inuence your academic performance
-test males and females (IV)
-performance on tests (DV)
-literature, math
-female worse in math but as well in literature
-women are not stereotype threatened by literature performance
Evaluation of Stereotype Research
-Mahajun et al. 2011
-monkeys look at pictures of their out groups longer
-defense, identifying their enemies
-lacks ecological validity
-stereotyping is a result of evolution
IN EXAM
need to be able to:
-describe
-understand why we do it
-behavior