PSYO 1012 Lecture 14: Attributions, Attitudes and Persuasion

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 1012
• Professor: Stevens Leanne

Document Summary

Attributions (in general): these are judgments about causes of our own and other people"s behaviour and outcomes. Situational attributions (external): aspects of the situation with cause behaviour: for example, if you fail a test, an external attribution would be that the prof was bad or the test was too hard. Fundamental attribution error: the way we explain others" behaviour: Overestimate the role of personal factors: this is generally the opposite for ourselves. This is the case of making more internal attributions for your own successes, and more situational attributions for your own failures. When we look at ourselves, we tend to attribute internal or external behaviour based on what makes us look better. For success, we use internal/personal attributions (for example, we do well on a test, means we are smart) For failure, we use external/situational attributions (for example, we do badly on the test, it must have been that the test was hard)