Social Attr

What are attributions?

• psychology of people watching, process of assigning a cause to our behaviour

Attribution theories: naïve psychologist (Heider, 1958)

• people act like common sense scientists, forming intuitive reasoning for behaviour, feel our behaviour is reasoned
• causal theories mean we look for stable and enduring properties in environment, traits in people or stable situations
• we discriminate between internal and external causes

Attributional theories: correspondence inference (Jones & Davies, 1965)

• we rely on five cues for correspondence inference
• (1) behaviour freely chosen (2) behavuur produces non common effect (3) behaviour is socially desirable (4) behaviour has important outcome (5) behaviour directed to us 
• 1-4 behaviour is…