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Attribution
Attribution: The process of explaining the causes of behavior.
Situational Attribution: Attributing behavior to external factors or the situation. Example: "He's late because of traffic."
Dispositional Attribution: Attributing behavior to internal factors like personality traits. Example: "He's late because he's irresponsible."
Actor-Observer Bias: When people judge their own behavior, they are more likely to attribute their actions to the particular situation than to their personality. (Basically Self-Serving Bias)
Fundamental Attribution Error: Our tendency to overestimate the impact of personality and underestimate the influence of the situation when explaining others' behavior.
Example: Assuming someone who cut you off in traffic is a jerk (dispositional), rather than considering they might be rushing to the hospital (situational).
Self-Serving Bias: The tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors and our failures to external factors.
Example: "I aced the test because I'm smart" (internal), but "I failed because the test was unfair" (external).
Optimism and Personal Control
People demonstrate a predictable pattern of attributions called explanatory style. Explanatory style is how people explain good and bad events in their lives and in the lives of others. Explanatory style can be optimistic or pessimistic.
Optimism: A generally positive outlook on life, but with a realistic understanding of challenges. Associated with better health, resilience, and overall well-being. Excessive optimism can lead to underestimating risks.
Pessimism: Tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.
Personal Control
Internal Locus of Control: Belief that you control your own fate.
Example: "I'm responsible for my own success or failure."
External Locus of Control: Belief that outside forces or chance determine your fate.
Example: "Things happen to me, and there's nothing I can do about it."
Mere-Exposure Effect
Definition: Repeated exposure to someone or something tends to increase our liking for them.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Key Idea: Our expectations can lead us to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
Example: A teacher believes a student is gifted, gives them more attention and challenging assignments, and the student excels, fulfilling the teacher's expectations. On the other hand, if a student believes that they will fail an exam, they will likely not study for it and then actually fail it.
Social Comparison
Social comparison is a type of person perception that occurs when people evaluate themselves based on comparisons to other members of society or social circles. Social comparison can be upward or downward.
Relative deprivation is the belief that a person will feel deprived or entitled to something based on the comparison to someone else.
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