Psychology 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Cognitive Dissonance, Fundamental Attribution Error, Social Proof

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: John Campbell

Document Summary

Attributions are judgments about the causes of our own and other people"s behaviour and outcomes. In the courtroom, jurors" attributions about a defendant"s behaviour influence their decisions about guilt versus innocence. Heider, a pioneer of attribution theory, maintained that our attempts to understand behavior involve either personal attributions or situational attributions. Personal (internal) attributions infer that people"s behaviour is caused by their characteristics. Situational (external) attributions infer that aspects of the situation cause a behaviour: According to kelley, three types of information determine the attribution we make: When consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are all high, we are likely to make a situational attribution: the course is terrible. But, when consistency is high and the other two factors are low, we make a personal attribution. When people make a fundamental attribution error: they underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people"s behaviour.