PSY BEH 104S Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Fundamental Attribution Error, Three Steps, Impression Management

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Psychology and Social Behavior
• Course: PSY BEH 104S
• Professor: Paul Piff

Document Summary

A tendency to infer that people"s behavior reflects their disposition (and does not take into account the situation) Perceptual salience influences this process as information that sticks out is perceived as most telling of what is happening in a situation. So pervasive that psychologists also call this the fundamental attribution. They were assigned seats/situation where actors talked about different topics. Would the degree in which the actor was salient would they disproportionately be the one who was most salient be the one people thought led the conversation and chose the topic. In fact that is what they found; those facing actor a rated them to lead it while those facing actor b did so. Response influenced by whose face was salient. Similar findings when police and judges watched videos of interrogations. When they just showed tape of defendant, they were likely to believe that the confession made was voluntary.