Individual Interaction

Chapter 18

Why do we, as humans, have a need to find a cause for everything?

How reliable are our judgments?

• Attribution : How individuals explain causes of events, other’s behavior, and their own behavior

• Attribution error: When individuals make faulty assumptions of the causes of events, other’s behavior, and their own behavior

Fundamental Attribution Error

• To make internal, dispositional attributions for others’ behavior rather than situational ones, even when there may be equally convincing evidence for both types of cause. (ex: thinking that Jim Carrey is as crazy as the characters he is playing.)

• May be due to the tendency of western culture to hold individuals accountable for their behavior or because we have too little information about the person’s situation

Illusory correlation

• When people tend to overestimate a link between two variables or see a relationship where no relationship exists. (ex: handwriting and personality, the end of the world and the year 2012, palm lines and personality, astrology sign and personality, stereotypes)

Illusory correlation

• Illusory correlation is thought to occur because we are more likely to form connections between factors that easily come to our mind and are easily imaginable (like rare events).

• Illusory correlation can also be explained by confirmation bias. Individuals tend to favor information that confirms their hypotheses and disregard information that doesn’t. (Something bad happened to you on Friday the 13th so it is unlucky.)

• Prejudice is an attitude.

• Attitudes have 3 components: affective, cognitive, and behavioral

• Affective=Prejudice: A hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group of people, based solely on their membership in that group.

• Could be prejudiced in a positive way (ex: toward people from Mandeville), but usually refers to a NEGATIVE attitude.)

• Cognitive=Stereotype: A generalization about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members.

• Behavioral=Discrimination: an unjustifiable negative or harmful action toward a member of a group, simply because of his or her membership in that group.

Actor-Observer Bias

• tendency to see other people’s behavior as dispositionally caused, while focusing on the role of the situational factors in explaining one’s own behavior

Let’s imagine this…..

• You are behind someone in a car who is driving very slowly, who looks like s/he’s going to pull over but then does not. “OMG!” you say, “This person can’t drive! These ‘old people/women/foreigners” should not be allowed on the road.”

• A few days later, you are driving around a suburb a few miles away from your neighborhood, looking for the house of a friend of a friend, who is holding a party. You can’t read the house numbers because there are lots of plants and bushes in the way. You drive slowly so you won’t miss the house. You almost pull over a couple of times, thinking you’ve found the house. You think “why is that jerk behind me giving me the finger?”

• Taken together, these scenarios demonstrate the Actor-Observer Effect

Self-Serving Bias

• tendency to take credit for our success (internal attributions) but to blame the situation (external attribution) for our failures

• If a student does well on the test, he or she is more likely to believe that his or her own ability and/or effort (things under the student’s control) were the reasons for success. However, if he or she receives a poor grade on the test, the blame will fall on external factors such as luck, difficulty of the task, or uncooperative people.

The Primacy Effect

• The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.

• Once we think we have formed an accurate impression of someone, we pay less attention to subsequent information.

• People differ in their need for closure• Change of Meaning Hypothesis

– Once we have formed an impression, we start to interpret inconsistent information in light of that impression.

– The meaning of a trait can be malleable.

Why You Need Friends• During infancy we depend on others

to satisfy our basic needs. • In this relationship we learn to

associate close personal contact with the satisfaction of basic needs.

• Later in life we seek personal contact for the same reason, even though we can now care for ourselves.

• Being around other human beings– interacting with others–has become a habit that would be difficult to break.

• Moreover, we have developed needs for praise, respect, love and affection, the sense of achievement, and other rewarding experiences.

• These needs, acquired through social learning, can only be satisfied by other human beings.

• Most people feel they have a great deal of latitude in the friends they choose.

• However, even with all of the avenues of modern life, we rarely venture beyond the most convenient methods in making contact with others.

• One of the most important factors in determining whether two people will become friends is physical proximity– the distance from one another that people live or work.

• A friend has stimulation value if he or she is interesting or imaginative or can introduce you to new ideas or experiences.

• A friend who is cooperative and helpful– who seems willing to give his or her time and resources to help you achieve your goals–has utility value.

• A third type of value in friendship is ego-support value: sympathy and encouragement when things go badly, appreciation and approval when things go well.

• People tend to choose friends whose backgrounds, attitudes, and interests are similar to their own.

• Despite the power of similarity, an attraction between opposite types of people– complementarity–is not unusual.

• Psychologists have found that both men and women pay much less attention to physical appearance when choosing a marriage partner or a close friend than when inviting someone to go to a movie or a party.

• People usually seek out others whom they consider their equals on the scale of attractiveness