PSYC 231 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Gestalt Psychology, Social Perception, Fundamental Attribution Error
5 Apr 2018
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The process of assigning a cause to an event or behaviour. Whenever we assign blame or credit and so determine who should be punished and who should be rewarded, we are engaging in causal attribution. If we know what causes something we are more likely to allow or prevent it happening in the future. Approach proposing that objects are viewed in a holistic sense. Relevant to attributions, people attempt to understand events or behaviours as a whole by understanding their underlying causes. People seek to explain apparently diverse behaviour in terms of simpler underlying causes. Gillivich - we jump to conclusions and disregard 3rd cofactors. Theory arguing that people attempt to infer whether a persons action is caused by internal dispositions and they do so by looking at factors related to the action. Three factors influence the extent to which people make dispositional or situational inferences or a persons behaviour:
