Social psychology

ENG-110
Attribution: Understanding
the causes of behavior
• Attributions are inferences that people draw about the
causes of events, others’ behavior, and their own
behavior.
• People make attributions mainly because they have a
strong need to understand their experiences.
Internal Versus
External Attributions
• people tend to locate the cause of behavior
either within a person, attributing it to
personal factors, or outside a person,
attributing it to environmental factors.
• Internal attributions assign the causes of behavior to
personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and Feelings.

• External attributions ascribe the causes

of behavior to situational demands and environmental
factors
Example
1. If a friend’s business fails, you might attribute it to his or
her lack of business expertise (an internal, personal factor)
or to negative trends in the nation’s economic climate (an
external, situational explanation).

2. Parents who find out that their teenage son has just
banged up the car may blame it on his carelessness (a
personal disposition) or on slippery road conditions (a
situational factor).
Bias in Attribution

• Attributions are only inferences. Your

attributions may not be the correct
explanations for events.
Actor-observer bias
• The tendency for people to interpret their
own actions as being a consequence of
their situation while interpreting others’
actions as being the product of their
character or personality is called the
Actor-Observer Bias. 
• Your view of your own behavior can be quite different
from the view of someone else observing you.
• When an actor and an observer draw inferences about
the causes of the actor’s behavior, they often make
different attributions.
• A common form of bias seen in observers
is “the fundamental attribution error”
which refers to observers’ bias in favor of
internal attributions in explaining others’
behavior.
OR
• The tendency to over attribute others’
behavior to dispositional causes and the
corresponding failure to recognize the
importance of situational causes.
Reasons Of Fundamental Attribution Bias
• Situational pressures may not be readily
apparent to an observer. Attributing others’ behavior
to their dispositions is a relatively effortless, almost
automatic process, whereas explaining people’s
behavior in terms of situational factors requires more
thought and effort.
Example
• When someone cuts us off while driving, we
immediately think the driver is a ‘self-centered jerk’,
who has no regard for anyone on the road. We do not
hesitate even for a moment to label the driver as a bad
person. On the other hand, when we cut someone off
in traffic, we come up with excuses to validate our
actions. While we tend to judge the other driver’s
behavior to his personality or dispositional traits, we
tend to blame the situational factors for our own
actions.
Example # 2
• we are more likely to jump to the conclusion that
someone who is often late to work is too lazy to take
an earlier bus (a dispositional cause) than to assume
that the lateness is due to situational factors, such as
the bus always running behind schedule.
• So, observers are often unaware of
historical and situational considerations
such as these, so they tend to make
internal attributions for another’s
behavior.
• In general, then, actors favor external
attributions for their behavior, whereas
observers are more likely to explain the
same behavior with internal attributions.
Self-Serving Bias
• The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute one’s
successes to personal factors and one’s failures to
situational factors.
• The self-serving bias in attribution comes into play
when people attempt to explain success and failure.
• This bias may either strengthen or weaken one’s
normal attributional tendencies, depending on whether
one is trying to explain positive or negative outcomes.
• In explaining failure, the usual actor-observer biases
are apparent. Actors tend to make external attributions,
blaming their failures on unfavorable situational
factors, while observers are more likely to attribute the
same failures to the actors’ personal shortcomings.
Example
• If you fail an exam, you may place the blame on the
poorly constructed test items, lousy teaching,
distractions in the hallway, or a bad week at work (all
external attributions).
• However, an observer is more likely to attribute your
failure to your lack of ability or lack of study (both
internal attribution).
• In explaining success, the usual actor-
observer differences are reversed to some
degree.
• Example
• If you get a high exam score, you’ll
probably make an internal attribution and
point to your ability or your hard work,
whereas observers are more likely to
assume that the test was easy.
Halo Effect
•Halo effect is a phenomenon in which an
initial understanding that a person has
positive traits is used to infer other uniformly
positive characteristics and an initial
understanding that a person has negative
traits is used to infer other uniformly negative
characteristics.
Example
• Harry is intelligent, kind, and loving. Is he also conscientious?
If you were to guess, your most likely response probably
would be yes. The opposite would also hold true. Learning that
Harry was unsociable and argumentative would probably lead
you to assume that he was lazy as well.

• However, few people have either uniformly positive or

uniformly negative traits, so the halo effect leads to
misperceptions of others
Attraction
• Interpersonal attraction refers to positive
feelings toward another.
Key Factors in Attraction

• Similarity effects
• Reciprocity Effects
• Proximity
Similarity Effects
• We tend to like those who are similar to us.
Discovering that others have similar attitudes, values,
or traits promotes our liking for them.
• Furthermore, the more similar others are, the more we
like them.
• Similarity increases the likelihood of
interpersonal attraction is that we assume
people with similar attitudes will evaluate
us positively.
• Similarity is also seen among friends. For instance,
adult friends tend to be relatively similar in terms of
income, education, occupational status, ethnicity, and
religion
Reciprocity effects
• Reciprocity involves liking those who show that they
like you.
• Reciprocating attraction generally entails providing
friends and intimate partners with positive feedback
that results in a self-enhancement effect—in other
words, you help them feel good about themselves.
Proximity
• Proximity involves liking those who lives closest to
you.
• If you live in an apartment, consider the friends you
made when you first moved in. Chances are that you
became friendliest with those who lived
geographically closest to you.
Attitude
• Attitudes are evaluation people make about object,
ideas, events or other people.
• it may be Positive or negative.
Components Of Attitude
• Cognitive component
(beliefs of an individual about the object) “jane believes that smoking
is unhealthy”. or the belief that all old people are senile.
Affective component
(emotions or feelings aroused by the object) “ jane feel disgusted when
people soke arond her” or always feeling sorry or sympathy for older
person”.
Behavioral component
(predispositions to act in a certain way) “ jane avoids being in a
situation where people smoke” or talking to an older person as if
talking to a child”
Theories of Attitude
Formation and Change
• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Observational Learning
Classical Conditioning
• The affective, or emotional, component in an attitude can be created
through a special subtype of classical conditioning, called evaluative
conditioning.

• Evaluative conditioning consists of efforts to

transfer the emotion attached to a UCS to a new CS.
• Advertisers routinely try to take advantage of evaluative conditioning
by pairing their products with stimuli that elicit pleasant emotional
responses, such as extremely attractive models, highly likable
spokespersons, and cherished events, such as the Olympics.
Example

UCS
(likable UCR
celebrity) (Pleasant emotional response)
CR

CS
(Products)
Operant conditioning
• Agreement from other people generally functions as a reinforcer,
strengthening your tendency to express a specific attitude.
Disagreement often functions as a form of punishment, which may
gradually weaken your commitment to your viewpoint.
• if some whats gets a positive response from others when he/she
expresse attitude then attitude will be reinforced and will tend to get
stronger.
Observational Learning
• Another person’s attitudes may rub off on you
through observational learning. Studies show that parents and their
children tend to have similar political attitudes. Observational learning
presumably accounts for much of this similarity.
Trying to Change Attitudes:
Factors in Persuasion
• The process of persuasion includes following
elements:
• Source (who sends a communication)
• Message (the information transmitted
by the source)
• Receiver (to whom the message is sent)
Characteristics of Source factor
• Source factor/attitude communicator, have a major impact on the
effectiveness of that message. Communicators who are physically
attractive produce greater attitude change than those who are less
attractive.
• Moreover, the communicator’s expertise and trustworthiness are
related to the impact of a message.
• People try to convey their expertise by mentioning
their degrees, their training, and their experience or by
showing an impressive grasp of the issue at hand.
Characteristics Of The Message
• It is not just who delivers a message but what the message is like that
affects attitudes. Generally, two-sided messages—which include both
the communicator’s position and the one he or she is arguing against
—are more effective than one-sided messages, given the assumption
that the arguments for the other side can be effectively refuted and the
audience is knowledgeable about the topic.
• In addition, fear-producing messages (Antismoking
campaigns emphasize the threat of cancer, and
deodorant ads highlight the risk of embarrassment.”)
are generally effective when they provide the audience
with a means for reducing the fear.
Receiver/Target
• Once a communicator has delivered a message,
characteristics of the target of the message may
determine whether the message will be accepted.
For example, intelligent people are more resistant
to persuasion than those who are less intelligent.

• Gender differences in persuasibility also seem to

exist. In public settings, women are somewhat more
easily persuaded than men, particularly when they
have less knowledge about the message’s topic.
• Stronger attitudes are more resistant to change. Strong attitudes may
be tougher to alter because they tend to be embedded in networks of
beliefs and values that might also require change.
 Behavior in Groups

• Group consists of two or more individuals who interact and are

interdependent.

• You may behave quite differently when you’re in a group than when
you’re alone.
Working in a Group will lead to decrese in work productivity.
due to two reasons:
1. insufficiant coordination.... when many people work on a task , their
efforts may not be sufficently coordinated. several people may end up
doing the same portion of a task and some portion of a task may be
neglected.
2. social loafing
• Social loafing is a reduction in effort by individuals when they work in
groups as compared to when they work by themselves.
• or
• individuals performane would decreased in the presence of other people.
Bystander Effect

• People are less likely to provide needed help when

they are in groups than when they are alone.
What accounts for the bystander effect?
• A number of factors may be at work.
• auidence inhibition... a reluctant to act in front of others.
• individual interpretation that lack of actions by others means that there
is no emergency
• diffusion of responsibility
• The diffusion of responsibility that occurs in a group is also important.
If you’re by yourself when you encounter someone in need of help, the
responsibility to provide help rests squarely on your shoulders.
However, if other people are present, the responsibility is divided
among you, and you may all say to yourselves, “Someone else will
help.”
• Individuals’ productivity often does decline in larger
groups. This fact is unfortunate, as many important
tasks can only be accomplished in groups.

• Group productivity is crucial to committees, sports

teams and study groups
• Social loafing and the bystander effect appear to share a common
cause: diffusion of responsibility in groups. As group size increases,
the responsibility for getting a job done is divided among more people.
Social Influence
• Conformity (Following What Others Do)
• Compliance (Submitting to Direct Social Pressure)
• Obedience (Following Direct Orders )
Conformity
• Conformity is a change in behavior or attitudes brought about by a
desire to follow the beliefs or standards of other people.

• Subtle or even unspoken social pressure results in conformity.

Example
• If you maintain a well-groomed lawn only to avoid complaints from
your neighbors, you’re conforming to social pressure. However, if you
maintain a nice lawn because you genuinely prefer a nice lawn, that’s
not conformity.
Cultural Variations in
Conformity
• Collectivistic cultures, which emphasize respect for group norms,
cooperation, and harmony, probably encourage more conformity than
individualistic cultures and have a more positive view of conformity .
• “To conform in American culture is to be weak or deficient”.
• Studies have found higher levels of conformity in collectivistic
cultures than in individualistic cultures
Compliance
• Behavior that occurs in response to direct social pressure.

• social pressure is much more obvious with direct, explicit pressure to

endorse a particular point of view or behave in a certain way.
Obedience
• Obedience is a form of compliance that occurs when people follow
direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority.

• For example, we may show obedience to our bosses, teachers, or

parents merely because of the power they hold to reward or punish us.