Social Psychology - attribution and social knowledge

Attribution - process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour and that of others.

Fritz Heider (1958) - theory of naive psychology

• people are intuitive psychologists who construct casual theories of human behaviour
• we feel our own behaviour is motivated
• we attribute intentions, motives and emotions to animate and inanimate figures
• we elaborate causual explanations for meaning of life eg religion
• we look for stable and enduring properties of world around us
• we distinguish personal and enviromental factors
• internal (dispositional) attributions vs external (situational) attributions

Jones and Davis (1965) - theory of correspondent inference

• How people infer that a person's behaviour corresponds to an underlying disposition or personality trait
• For example how we infer that a friendly action is due to an underlying disposition to be friendly
• Dispositional causese are stable>render people's behaviour predictable (control over the world)

Jones and Harris (1967)

• American students making attributions for speeches made by other students
• Tended to attribute the act to underlying disposition for freely chosen socially unpopular positions, such as making a speech to support Fidel Castro

Kelly's (1967, 1973) - covariation model

• Assign the cause of behaviour to the factor that covaries (is related) most closely with the behaviour
• Use covariation principle to decide wether to attribute a behaviour to internal dispositions (personality) or external factors (eg social pressure)
• Consistency - behaviour Y always co-occurs with stimulas X (low vs high)
• Distinctiveness…