Psychology 2550A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Knockout Mouse, Fundamental Attribution Error, Situationist International

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2550A/B
• Professor: David Vollick

Document Summary

We expect people to behave similarly across situations. Studies of cross-situational consistency in behaviour examined what people claimed they were like and what they actually did in different situations. Many found consistency in actual behaviour, in different situations to be much less than expected. Mischel argued that these findings reflected limitations not just in the methods but also in the core assumptions about consistency and coherence in personality theory. He noted that the research indicated low cross-situational consistency of behaviour, but intuition leads us to assume consistency. He believed the low cross-situational consistency due to poor methodology and incorrect assumption about personality. Huge debate about person versus situation debate followed. Fundamental attribution error- you are blaming the person for the behaviour not the situation. Several influential critiques of personality research published in the late (cid:883)96(cid:882)"s. Situationists- personality was a fictitious construct that situations are more powerful determinants of behaviour than personality dispositions (can override traits even)