| Chapter 12: Social Psychology Attributions: how we determine what causes other people's behaviors Internal attributions: caused by something in the person External attributions: caused by something in the environment/situation We rely on three kinds of information to determine attributions: Consensus: do other people generally behave that way? Consistency: does the person generally behave that way in this situation? Distinctiveness: does the person behave that way in other situations? We make internal attribution if consistency is high and both consensus and distinctiveness are low. We make external attribution if consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness are high. Fundamental attribution error: tendency to explain other people's behaviors with internal causes; only correct later for possible environmental causes. Self-serving bias: four ourselves, we attribute successes to internal causes and failures to external causes. May explain fundamental attribution error. |
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