Ch. 5 Social Attribution: Explaining Behavior

Front 1

Attribution Theory

Back 1

A set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of people's causal assessments.

Front 2

Causal Attribution

Back 2

Linking an event to a cause, such as wondering that a personality trait is responsible for a behavior.

Front 3

Explanatory Style

Back 3

A person's habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific.

Front 4

Covariation Principle

Back 4

The idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior.

Front 5

Consensus

Back 5

A type of covariation information: what most people would do in a given situation; that is, whether most people would behave the same way, or few or no other people would behave that way.

Front 6

Distinctiveness

Back 6

A type of covariation information: what an individual does in different situations; that is, whether the behavior is unique to a particular situation, or occurs in all situations.

Front 7

Consistency

Back 7

A type of covariation information: what an individual does in a given situation on different occasions; that is, whether next time, under the same circumstances, the person would behave the same or differently.

Front 8

Situational Attribution

Back 8

High consensus, high distinctiveness, and high consistency.

Front 9

Dispositional Attribution

Back 9

Low consensus, low distinctiveness, and high consistency.

Front 10

Discounting Principle

Back 10

The idea that people should assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced it.

Front 11

Augmentation Principle

Back 11

The idea that people should assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if other causes are present that normally would produce a different outcome.

Front 12

Counterfactual Thoughts

Back 12

Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had occurred differently.

Front 13

Emotional Amplification

Back 13

An increase in an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening.

Front 14

Self-Serving Attributional Bias

Back 14

The tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances, and to attribute success and other good events to oneself.

Front 15

Fundamental Attribution Error

Back 15

The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior.

Front 16

Just World Hypothesis

Back 16

The belief that people get what they deserve in life and deserve what they get.

Front 17

Actor-Observer Difference

Back 17

A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor (who is relatively inclined to make situational attributions) or the observer (who is relatively inclined to make dispositional attributions).

Front 18

Social Class

Back 18

The amount of wealth, education, and occupational prestige individuals and their families have.