 |
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|
Attribution of causality Attribution theory is an attempt by social psychologists to explain how we try to explain either our own behaviour or the behaviour of others, i.e. how we try to attribute a cause to it (hence the title of the topic!). Apart from being a useful exercise in itself, if we can provide a cause for someone’s behaviour we are more likely to be able to predict their future actions, there are other implications for the theory. For example in Britain the difference between murder (mandatory life sentence) and manslaughter, is the degree of intention. Also the reasons for a behaviour or outcome are likely to influence how we feel towards and react towards a person in that situation, so may effect the amount of sympathy or help we are willing to provide. Broadly these explanations may try to attribute an internal cause to the behaviour, such as personality or mood and these are referred to as dispositional attribution or we may consider the person’s situation (environment or social factors) at the time of the behaviour and this is referred to as situational attribution. Historically there are six main approaches or threads to attribution theory but you don’t need to know all of them. Here we shall consider four, although two of these are by the same person; Harold Kelley. Before embarking on the four it will be useful to mention the father of attribution theory Fritz Heider. In 1958 he published "The Naive Explanations of Human Actions: Explaining by Attributing Intentions" in which he laid out the basic groundwork for all the theories that followed. Heider saw the person as a ‘naïve scientist’ trying to make sense of their own and others’ actions by linking observable behaviours with unobservable causes. It was Heider who suggested the crucial distinction between dispositional and situational factors. One point to emphasise at the outset. Attribution theory is not attempting to explain why people behave the way they do, merely seeking to explain how we as an observer try to make sense out of other people’s, or our own, behaviour. One other point before we get started. The first three models, Jones and Davis and the two Kelleys are not different models as such in that they all agree with one another. The difference between them is that they use different amounts of information.
The Specification states: Theories (e.g. Kelley, Jones and Davis, Weiner) and research studies relating to the attribution of causality. Explanations and research studies relating to errors and biases in the attribution process (e.g. self-serving bias, fundamental attribution error). Examination questions to date: Summer 2004 Outline and evaluate two theories relating to the attribution of causality. (24 marks) January 2003 Critically consider two or more errors and/or biases in the attribution process (e.g. self-serving bias, fundamental attribution error). (24 marks) January 2002 (a) Outline two theories that explain attribution of causality. (12 marks) (b) Assess each of these theories of attribution of causality in terms of relevant research evidence. (12 marks)
It’s difficult to imagine any questions significantly different from the ones above for this topic!
1. Correspondent Inference theory: Jones & Davis (1965) Only seeks to explain dispositional attribution Suppose to you see someone in the street help a little old crinkly grey across the road. You are likely to assume from their behaviour that they are kind, caring and unselfish. This would be attributing their behaviour to dispositional (internal characteristics). These personality characteristics are stable qualities within that person and are not likely to change over time. The making of this attribution occurs in two stages: 1. The observer needs to be sure that the behaviour was intentional. This is done in two ways:
Clearly in the case of helping the old lady across a street these would be obvious. 2. The observer then attributes disposition as the cause. This is made easier by analysing: a. Non-common effects b. Social desirability of the behaviour Let me explain! The second one is easier to understand. Jones and Davis believed that the more socially desirable a behaviour the less likely we are to attribute it to dispositional factors since such behaviours almost occur automatically. Non-common effects is more difficult to explain but put simply the more similar the possible courses of actions are the more easy it is to draw conclusions when one is chosen rather than the other since there are fewer variables to disentangle. Make sense? Probably not at this stage so let’s try an example. Tyler has been offered two jobs. Both are similar levels of pay and hours and both in Fleckney. One involves working at an old folk’s home and the other working in a factory making plastic toys for corn flakes boxes! He opts for the old folk’s home and we assume from this that he has a caring side to his personality, a dispositional attribution. We are able to make this assumption since most of the variables (pay, hours, location) are common. The only non-common factor is nature of the job and he has opted for the caring one.
However, imagine if Tyler’s choice was between the same two jobs but this time the corn flakes job is in Desborough and involves travelling and the old folk’s home pays more. This time there are more non-common effects (variables) so it is difficult to work out which one has tipped the balance in favour of the caring profession. Was it due to his caring disposition, or was it due to less inconvenience or more money?
Jones and Davis conclude that attribution is easier the fewer non-common effects there are. Other factors that may influence a dispositional attribution: Social desirability We tend to see actions that are socially desirable as expected so read less into them than socially undesirable actions. Imagine yourself standing patiently in the ‘ten items or [less]*’ counter in Sainsburys. There are 18 people stood in front of you (well there usually is in the Kettering branch) and you’re paying little attention to any of them and making few if any dispositional attributions. Suddenly a grey appears, as if from nowhere, and jumps half way down the queue. The radar instantly homes in on this SOCIALLY UNDESIRABLE behaviour and you’re left thinking what a selfish cow!!! I.e you have made a dispositional attribution, but only on the person behaving in a socially unacceptable way. *It should be ten items or fewer… but of course you already knew that!
Expected behaviours This is similar in a way, in that certain behaviours are almost automatic so little can be read into them such as Blair smiling or politicians kissing babies during election campaigns. However, there are exceptions to this rule. A skin-head in Doccos and drain-pipes ignoring the old lady trying to cross the road would not be ignored as this is in line with our typical stereotype of the skinhead. This behaviour would be seen as reinforcing our attitude.
Prior knowledge If we knew the grey jumping the queue and knew that this was not typical of her behaviour we would read less into it and assume that her behaviour was motivated by situational factors such as a bladder condition or she hadn’t noticed that the queue extended beyond the second aisle.
Evaluation Jones & Davis (1967) Participants were given essays written about the Castro led government of Cuba. (In case you’re not aware of the situation, Castro was, and still is, seen as akin to the Devil by most American citizens).
It was found that even with the essays where the authors had been told what to write, participants still made assumptions about the author’s attitudes. On the basis of this it was concluded that we do make dispositional assumptions on the basis of observable behaviours. Jones & Davis carried out other variations of this including where participants gave speeches that were pro or anti Castro. However, intentions are often ignored when making dispositional attributions. A person who bumps into you with their shopping trolley is branded ‘a clumsy person’ even though we assume that it wasn’t a deliberate act. Eiser (1983) believes that unintentional acts cannot be explained using this model. There is little evidence to suggest that we are so analytical when trying to explain a person’s behaviour. Do you find yourself logically analysing or are you more likely to jump to conclusions about the reasons for a person’s actions?
Kelley's Attribution Theories Although the Jones and Davis theory is popular it fails to take into account possible external causes of behaviour, concentrating solely on dispositional factors. Kelley’s theories try to rectify this. Covariation model Kelley identified three parts of the attribution process;
The covariation model requires that we have a certain amount of knowledge about the actor, so cannot be used for example to explain the old lady in the queue. Let’s start with an example:
According to Kelley’s covariation model Chardonnay is seeking three kinds of information about the situation. Consensus Consensus is the extent to which other people in the same situation would behave in the same way. In this case the way other supervisors behave. Consistency Consistency is the degree to which the same person behaves the same way at different times. In this case, is Tequila always unpleasant? Distinctiveness Distinctiveness is the extent to which the same person behaves in the same way in other situations. Is this is a one off or does the person behave like this towards others? In this case is Tequila unpleasant towards the other workers?
Evidence for the model: Most quoted is McArthur (1972). McArthur gave people various situations and asked participants to decide the cause of the events taking place. For example, “John laughed at the comedian,” or “ Sue is afraid of the dog.” Taking John as an example there are three basic causes (attributions) for his behaviour.
McArthur noticed that participants considered three variables:
The researchers manipulated the answers to these questions to see how it would effect participants conclusions. So, hardly rocket science; if its only John that laughs (low consensus) and he always does so (high consistency) and laughs at other comedians as well (low distinctiveness), then people tend to assume that John is simply a happy chappy, that is they make a personal attribution. Think of the other possible variations and come to likely conclusions that people will make:
Evaluation This clearly has advantages over the previous model in that it covers three possible . attributions: person, stimulus and circumstance. However, do we really carry out the extensive and time consuming analysis that Kelley seems to suggest? Very often we seem to come to snap decisions, for example we assume that positive outcomes do arise from personal characteristics, so achieving high grades is due to the person’s hard work or intelligence. It seems therefore that we are miserly in our attribution process and often do not consider all the variables provided. McArthur believes that the three types of information are not all used equally and that in fact we use consistency most, then distinctiveness and finally consensus least. Slugoski & Hilton (2000) offer a simplified version of the theory. They use the same three types of information but as follows:
This simplified version helps to explain the fact that we are able to make faster decisions and do not use all the information provided. We pick out one aspect only and make a decision based upon this. Having said that there are occasions when we do carry out more in-depth analyses, particularly when things go drastically wrong or when events take us by surprise. In these situations it may be useful to expend the extra effort to avoid similar situations arising in the future. Research into the area is very artificial. Sitting people down and asking them under lab conditions to come up with reasons for a particular behaviour doesn’t mean that we use the same process in every day life. Finally, when people are asked to come to a decision about a situation and are allowed any information they need they tend to ask for personality characteristics. They do not ask for information on consistency, consensus and distinctiveness (Alloy & Tabachnik).
Kelley’s Causal schemata or configuration model The previous theory requires that we know the person involved. Obviously there are many occasions when we may want to understand the motivation behind the behaviour of a complete stranger. Here, according to Kelley we make use of everyone’s favourite constructs; schemas or if you prefer, that dreadful word, schemata! Causal schemata are a set of ideas or internal mental representations that allow us to explain the possible causes of a particular outcome. As with all schemata these are developed over time and are altered in the light of new experiences. Kelley suggested two different causal schemata:
Multiple sufficient causes schemata Any particular behaviour or outcome may have any of a whole host of possible causes, any one of which would be sufficient in its own right to explain the outcome. Back to an old favourite by way of an example; George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Was this because he thought they had WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and posed a 45 minute threat to the Western World, because he erroneously thought they had links with Al Quaeda, because out of his love for the Iraqi people he wanted to free them from a murderous dictator, because he wanted a strategic base in the middle east or because most of his friends and financial backers are involved in the oil industry and Iraq just happens to have the second biggest oil reserve in the World? Difficult one I know, but any one of those reasons would in its own right be sufficient reason.
Multiple necessary causes Applies in situations where a whole host of factors may be necessary to explain a particular outcome. In order for Kelly Holmes to have won two golds in Athens we assume that she must be very fit, put in the necessary training, eaten the right foods, avoided injury in the build up, worn the right shoes etc. Any one of these missing would have almost certainly meant failure. So in this case some behaviours or outcomes are dependent upon a whole host of causes.
 
The augmentation principle comes into play when there are causes that seem to make an outcome less likely but the outcome still occurs. For example if Kelly Holmes had won her golds despite overcoming a life threatening illness a year earlier we would place even greater emphasis on her personal qualities.
Weiner’s three dimensional model Weiner’s model was designed to explain the attributions people make about the causes of their own behaviour, particularly their successes and failures, however, it can be used to explain the causes of other people’s behaviour too. As we shall see, the model has a cognitive element to it, and has similarities to Abramson’s model of the distorted thinking experienced by depressed patients. Unlike the other models it also ties in nicely with theories of motivation and has been used in forms of therapy such as marriage guidance. As the name suggests Weiner believed there are three dimensions of attribution:
Locus (Internal/External) Refers to the extent that the cause of an outcome is due to internal factors such as effort and personality and the extent to which the causes are external such as luck. The easiest example would be to consider failing your psychology module 4. Would you blame yourself because you didn’t put in the necessary work or you assume you’re not bright enough (internal) or me because I hadn’t covered all the topics (external)?
Stable/Unstable Refers to how consistent these causes are going to be. If you assume that this situation will continue and you will always fail, perhaps because you are not bright enough, then this will be seen as a stable cause. On the other hand, having a bad attack of hay-fever on the morning of the paper will be seen as a one off (unstable) cause.
Controllable/Uncontrollable As the names suggest, refers to how much control you have over these causes. Not being bright enough is a cause out of your control, whereas not putting the necessary work could easily be rectified next time.
Motivation and blame A teacher example this time. Examination success is due to our teaching, examination failure is due to lack of preparation and effort by you! For you, it will obviously be the other way round. We all try to interpret situations to make ourselves look as good and as blame-free as possible. The attribution a person makes is also going to have consequences for future behaviour. This time consider success in an examination. If the person emerges believing this to be due to internal, stable, controllable factors, i.e. they worked hard (internal and under their control) and typical of the effort they usually put in (stable), then this is going to be highly motivating for future examination preparation. On the other hand if they view their success as due to external, unstable, uncontrollable factors, i.e. it was a fluke, beyond their control and not likely to happen again then this will not motivate since they will assume there is nothing that can be done to improve future performance.
Evaluation There is ample research support for the theory, but as with previous models, most of this is lab based so lacking in ecological validity. There have been practical applications of the model, for example exploring the ways in which married couples see the flaws in their partners. This can then be rectified for example through the use of cognitive therapies during marriage counselling. Dweck (1975) used the model to teach people to exert greater self control (internal dimension) in overcoming feelings of failure. He retrained 12 children who were having problems with the experience of failure. One group were only given positive feedback whereas the other were told to try harder and work faster. The second group showed much greater persistence and crucially attributed their failings to lack of effort, whereas the first group where more likely to give in when they experienced failure blaming their inability to succeed on lack of ability. As we shall see in later topics (depression in module 5) this model also has applications in our understanding and treatment of depression. People suffering from depression are far more likely to attribute failure to internal characteristics and success to external (such as circumstances or luck). There does appear to be broad cross-cultural support for the theory, although one exception is on the Indian sub-continent where a more fatalistic approach is adopted with participants here being more likely to adopt external, unstable and uncontrollable attributions. Schuster et al (1989) gave participants from various Asian and European countries descriptions of a person that had failed to get a job. Participants had to explain the possible reasons for this in terms of Weiner’s three dimensions (locus, controllability, stability) and also in terms of its universality (does this failing influence other areas too). Possible explanations could therefore include, ability, mood, luck, interest, effort etc. In fact the researchers found overall cross-cultural support for Weiner’s model. The only exception, as stated above, being the Indians. One final criticism is that, as with all attribution theories, there are variations between individuals in how the three dimensions are applied and many doubt that we go to all this trouble attributing behaviour in such a logical and clinical manner by a close analysis of these three dimensions. Weiner’s three dimensions:
Biases in the attribution process When trying to explain behaviour we may have biases for one particular cause rather than another, for example we may favour situational causes over dispositional etc. A bias is basically a prejudice that produces mistakes. Biases seem to arise from our assumption that simple explanations are to be preferred to more complex ones, so rather than use all the information available we select either just the dispositional or just the situational. Putting it another way we act as “cognitive misers.” We shall consider three such biases: 1. The fundamental attribution error (FAE) Is a tendency to place too high an emphasis on dispositional or personal characteristics and ignore other variables such as the specific circumstances at the time of the action. We have already seen an example of this in the Jones & Davis study (1967) in which participants judged a person’s true feelings about Fidel Castro from an essay they had written even though they had been told that the author had been told to write their comments. Napolitan & Goethals (1979) is a classic experiment here. Participants were asked to talk to a woman who behaved in a cold, aloof and critical manner. Before talking to her, participants were told either that the woman was like this naturally, or they were told that she had been asked to behave in this way. However, afterwards when they were asked about what the person was really like they ignored previous information and believed that she really was cold and critical. They repeated the procedure with other participants using a woman that was friendly and kind and found just the same. Situational factors were only considered when the participants had the opportunity to chat to the woman a second time and see her behaving differently.
You should all be familiar with the FAE from last year since many of you believed that teachers in Milgram’s experiments were sadistic or nasty for delivering shocks to the genteel Mr Wallace. You were basing your attribution on dispositional factors rather than on the situation in which the teacher found themselves (in a prestigious setting being intimidated by an experimenter in his lab coat). In fact this precise situation was studied by Bierbrauer (1979) who got participants to watch video footage of the Milgram procedure. Participants made exactly the same judgements as many of you.
Ross et al (1977) randomly allocated participants in a quiz. Some became questioners (and had to devise their own questions), some answered the questions (contestants) and others watched. Afterwards both the contestants and the observers rated the questioners as more knowledgeable, ignoring the obvious situational variable that they had clearly asked questions about topics they knew lots about! Ross (1975) believes that this approach gives us a greater sense of predictability and control over our environment and over time we have probably learned that it is an efficient and generally accurate method of generating first impressions.
There is some evidence that once a dispositional error has been made that it is difficult to change. Ross et al (1974) told female students that either they had done well or badly on a problem-solving task. They were then informed that the feedback that they had been given was not necessarily correct and that the scores were false. The students were then asked to rate how well they thought they had done on the task and if they were to retake the test, to predict how well they think that they would do. Ross et al found that those students who were originally told that they had done well rated their ability higher and also predicted that they would do well if they took the task again. In other words the students made dispositional attributions on the initial feedback even though they knew that it was not correct. However FAE doesn’t appear to be universal and seems more prevalent in Western culture. This should come as no surprise given the more individualistic outlook of Westerners. We tend to assume that people are responsible for their behaviour whereas Eastern and African culture with a greater emphasis on the family and Society is more likely to consider the person’s situation and the pressures on them at the time of the behaviour. Walster (1966) found that we are more likely to make a dispositional attribution if the consequences of the behaviour are more serious. Participants were told that a man had parked his car at the top of a hill and it had rolled backwards. Those told that the car had caused injury to a small child thought the man was more guilty than those told that the car simply collided with another car, although of course, the man’s actions were the same in both cases. One final point, which I suppose is valid for all of these biases. Harvey et al (1981) point out that before we start talking of errors in the attribution process it would be first useful to know what the correct attribution would be!
2. The actor-observer effect When explaining our own behaviour (the actors) we tend to explain it in terms of things going on around us at the time, that is we use situational attributions, whereas, as we’ve already seen, when explaining another person’s behaviour we tend to use dispositional explanations (we make the FAE). There are a number of possible reasons for this: We see ourselves as complex and unpredictable and certainly object to attempts to categorise us. As a result we like to see our own behaviour as flexible and adapting to our circumstances. On the other hand we feel happier being able to predict the behaviour of others so we look for more straight forward and unchanging explanations of their behaviour based on the more constant characteristics of personality and disposition. We know ourselves better than we know others so can take into consideration the ways we have behaved in similar situations in the past and how our own behaviour has changed according to circumstances. Unless we know the observed person very well we won’t have this past experience to base our decision on so assume the person is always that way (dispositional). Considers perceptions. From our own perspective we see the world around us (our situation) so focus on this. We are not in our own field of vision (well only bits are). However, when we look at others we can see all of them and they become the most interesting bit of our view so we tend to focus on them rather than on their surroundings!Research evidence. Nisbett et al (1973) asked people to say what 1. They liked about their girlfriend and 2. Their best friend liked about their girlfriend
When describing what they liked about their own ‘lady’ they used twice as many situational attributions than situational ones. When describing what their best friend liked they used as many dispositional as situational. Note: for the purpose of this research dispositional was determined by judging from the actor’s point of view, for example ‘He likes women that look like Kylie Minogue’, whereas situational was judged when comments referred to the ‘entity’ being described (nb: ‘entity’ is the researchers’ term for the girlfriend not mine), for example “She has good taste in music.” In a similar study by the same team participants were asked to give reasons for their own and a friend’s choice of college course. Again, when explaining their own they chose situational variables whereas they tended to choose dispositional for their friend’s choice.
Storms (1973) Two actors have a conversation. One observer is paired with each actor, and positioned so they see what their respective actors see. Afterward, observers make the same attributions of causal influence as their paired actor.
Put more simply, when they see the video of their own performance they are likely to make the same attributions as a person watching their behaviour than a person creating their behaviour (i.e. more dispositional than situational). These actor-observer differences do have implications however. If people assume their behaviour is determined by situational variables then it seems natural that they will assume others will behave similarly in those situations. As a result personal behaviour is then perceived as the norm which may explain why people tend to underestimate their own abnormalities such as in pathological conditions such as schizophrenia and depression. Ross et al (1977) found that students overestimate the ‘commonness’ of their own behaviour, believing that other students will think and behave like themselves on more occasions than is really the case.
3. The self serving bias An even easier one to get your head round! As I said earlier, ask a student how they managed to achieve a grade A in their module 4 and they’ll happily take the credit, cos it was entirely due to hard work, time management, preparation and an alcohol free diet in the build up to exam day. Ask them why they got an unclassified and its more likely due to bad teaching, horrible exam, a bad cold the night before etc. We all do it! What you should notice straight away however, is how this differs from the last bias. Here we have people making dispositional attributions about their own behaviour, BUT only when that behaviour is favourable. There is so much evidence for this theory (experimental and anecdotal) that it is far too much to cover. Here’s a few: Johnson et al (1964) got participants (students) to teach maths to a group of children who were then tested. However, the tests were rigged. The teachers of the boys who had done well tended to attribute this to their own good teaching, whereas the teachers of the children that performed poorly tended to blame lack of motivation in the children. Lau & Russell: American footballers claim credit for victories (determination, motivation etc), but attribute defeats to bad luck, poor refereeing decisions etc. Watch any post match interview with any football manager on a Saturday afternoon! Kingdom: Politicians attribute election victories to personal qualities such as honesty, trust (laughable though this may seem) and election defeats to national trends, protest votes, tactical voting and the like.
Possible explanations for the SSB
1. Self esteem/motivational Attributing success to personal qualities is good for building self esteem whereas attributing failure to external factors helps to preserve self esteem. This has the knock on advantage of motivating us to continue even when things are not going our way. If you see your failing in an exam to external factors then you are more likely to persevere knowing that with additional effort you’ll be able to tackle the problem next time.
2. Intentions/cognitive Generally when we carry out a task we intend to succeed, otherwise there would be little point in doing it. Generally, expected success is attributed to internal factors whereas unintended or unsuccessful outcomes are attributed to external factors. Pennington et al (1999) make the point that you have probably noticed yourself; these two explanations are similar and practically impossible to separate out! Note: When we look at depression in module 5, we’ll see an example of this in reverse. Abramson (1978) noticed the tendency of some depressed patients to attribute success to external factors and failure to internal. Abramson’s theory stemmed from Seligman’s research into learned helplessness and together they have been used to develop various successful therapies for the treatment of some depressed patients. On the subject of football managers, as I was, another favourite ploy before big games is to use the ‘self-handicapping bias.’ This is merely an extension of the self serving bias and is often referred to by football pundits as ‘using a bit of psychology.’ As you’ve probably noticed in the week before a game managers might say that their key striker has a ‘groin injury’ or the goalie is ‘in doubt’ etc. Then after the event, any failure can be attributed to problems in the build up, i.e. to situational factors.
Introduction When used in everyday life the word ‘perception’ is often confused with the word ‘sensation.’ However, here and in psychology generally, the word perception means a combination of sensing and interpreting. It is not just the act of gathering information through the senses it is using the mind to make sense out of this incoming data. Social perception therefore looks at the way that we interpret or make sense of our social world. Fiske (2004) sums it up nicely: ‘[We] search the social horizon unaware that [we] are using mental binoculars and that things are much further away than they appear. All our experience is actually mediated or filtered through a psychological lens, our perceiving apparatus. Although we experience the World as if we take in a literal, unaltered copy, each person passes reality through a different lens.’ The thinkers and more aware of you may notice ideas here similar to those we encountered in memory, particularly that idea of reconstructive memory. Memory of course is a cognitive topic. The present topic is considered to be ‘social cognition’, but some of the ideas to be presented, such as schema theory are overtly cognitive which has led some psychologists to claim that aspects of social psychology are becoming too dominated by cognitive thinking.
Impression formation This is one of the oldest areas within social psychology and dominated the area between the 1950s and 1970s. Research at this time centred on central and peripheral traits, schemas and stereotypes, so we will be paying a visit to some old friends along the way and may call in for tea and biscuits.
Central traits Solomon Asch (he of the lines) believed that some characteristics are more important than others in helping us to make decisions about people and he referred to these as ‘central traits.’ Asch gave his participants the following adjectives to describe a person:
Practical, determined, skilful, industrious, warm, intelligent and cautious.
Afterwards the participants were given a list of 18 other adjectives to choose from. These were paired in opposites and the participants had to choose which of the pair would best fit that person, for example: generous/mean, happy/sad, popular/unpopular etc. Given the list above participants would typically choose the more positive adjectives such as generous and happy etc. However, when Asch gave participants the following list:
Practical, determined, skilful, industrious, cold, intelligent and cautious.
Participants now tended to choose the more negative adjectives such as mean, sad and unpopular. Warm and cold therefore are classed as central traits since they seem to colour the rest of our perception of a person. When Asch substituted other words such as ‘blunt’ or ‘polite’ into the descriptions these did not have this effect and he referred to these as peripheral traits. Clearly this experiment lacks ecological validity. We are expected to draw conclusions about a person based on a list of words and totally out of any sort of social context. Kelley (1950) attempted a more valid approach which involved fibbing to his students.
Procedure The students were told that their usual lecturer would be away that day and they were going to get someone instead and they would be expected to assess him at the end of the lesson. They were then read a description/biography of the teacher. The two descriptions were the same except, you’ve guessed it, one of them used the phrase ‘rather warm’ whereas the other described him as ‘rather cold.’ The students were then introduced to their new teacher and allowed to chat to him for 20 minutes during which time they were observed. After the chat they were asked to rate the teacher on a 15 traits, such as his knowledge of the subject and his personality.
Findings Those told he was warm typically rated him more favourably on all characteristics including his knowledge than those told he was cold. When allowed to chat with him 56% of those told he was warm had taken part in the discussion compared to only 32% of those students who were told he was cold.
According to Asch, central traits act to organise other traits whereas peripheral traits do not. Later we will attempt to explain peripheral and central traits using two theories:
More on these later. We shall also be using the same two theories to explain the primacy-recency effect.
Primacy and recency Familiar phrase, same meaning but different context: Asch (1946) Take the word list: Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious
When words were presented in this order, participants believed the person being described to be ‘an able person with some shortcomings.’ However, when the word order was reversed: Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent
(same words but now starting with the more negative and getting better) The person is now judged as ‘a problem whose abilities are hampered by serious difficulties.’ So same words, different order create a very different impression with the words that appear first seeming to have greatest effect (primacy effect). Clearly as with the Asch study for central and peripheral traits there are major issues here concerning ecological validity. *Abraham Luchins (1957) repeated the procedure but in a more realistic way:
Jim left the house to get some stationery. He walked out into the sun-filled street with two of his friends, basking in the sun as he walked. Jim entered the stationery store, which was full of people. Jim talked with an acquaintance while he waited to catch the clerk's eye. On his way out, he stopped to chat with a school friend who was just coming into the store. Leaving the store, he walked toward the school. On his way he met the girl to whom he had been introduced the night before. They talked for a short while, and then Jim left for school. After school Jim left the classroom alone. Leaving the school, he started on his long walk home. The street was brilliantly filled with sunshine. Jim walked down the street on the shady side. Coming down the street toward him, he saw the pretty girl whom he had met on the previous evening. Jim crossed the street and entered a candy store. The store was crowded with students, and he noticed a few familiar faces. Jim waited quietly until he caught the counterman's eye and then gave his order. Taking his drink, he sat down at a side table. When he had finished his drink he went home. What impression do you have of Jim? If you think of him as friendly, you agree with 78 percent of people who read this description. But if you examine the description closely you’ll find it’s composed of two very different portraits. Up to the sentence that begins "After school, Jim left...," Jim is portrayed as fairly friendly. After that point, however, a nearly identical set of situations shows him to be much more of a loner. Whereas 95 percent of the people who are shown only the first half of the description rate Jim as friendly, only 3 percent of the people who are shown only the second half do so. Thus, in the combined description that you read, Jim's friendliness dominates the overall impression. But when individuals read the same description with the unfriendly half of the paragraph appearing first, only 18 percent rate Jim as friendly. In general, the first information we receive has the greater impact on our overall impressions, i.e. primacy effect.
*I only mention his Christian name since with Solomon Asch we seem to be getting a bit of a biblical theme going! Abraham sometimes worked with his wife Edith Luchins.
Evaluation Clearly Asch’s methods are very artificial so lack ecological validity. They are also prone to demand characteristics. Imagine someone coming up to you in the street and giving you a list of adjectives and asking you to decide on that person’s personality. Chances are you’ll want more information to go on, but in both the Asch and Luchins studies none of the participants complained of not having enough information suggesting they were trying to please the experimenters. In Asch’s ‘warm’ ‘cold’ experiment it could be that these two words stood out because they are different to the others. Rosenberg et al (1968) believe we have two dimensions for judging people; social and intellectual. Clearly words such as ‘skilful’ ‘industrious’ and ‘intelligent’ seem to fall into the latter with ‘warm’ falling into the former. In the follow up list all the adjectives also fall into the social so perhaps it’s not surprising that our choice from these is affected most by altering the only social adjective in the initial list! Hope that makes sense. Ask if you need clarification.
Adding ecological validity Jones et al (1968) participants watched a student attempting to solve a series of 30 difficult multiple choice tasks and they then had to assess his intelligence. In fact the student was a stooge (this is social psychology) who deliberately either did better on the first half or on the second. In fact the researchers predicted that those seeing him perform better on the second half would assume him to be more intelligent since it would suggest he was learning from his mistakes on the first half. In fact they discovered a very noticeable primacy effect. The student always got 15 out of 30. However, those seeing him perform better on the second half judged that he got an average of 12.5 compared to 20.6 (on average) if he performed better at the start!
Various explanation shave been put forward.
There do appear to be exceptions or conditions applied to the primacy effect:
Implicit Personality Theory (ITP) Bruner & Taguiri (1954) used Implicit Personality Theory to explain many aspects of social perception. Cardwell (2003) in his A to Z of Psychology describes IPT as ‘a set of assumptions based on our own perceptions about which personality characteristics are associated with which others.’ For example we are told that a person is ambitious we tend to assume that they are also hard working. Extrovert may be associated with friendly and approachable, artistic with unconventional and radical and so on. Clearly this is could be used to explain the central and peripheral characteristics reported by Asch. Cardwell goes on to explain that they are referred to as ‘implicit’ because although we all use them we are generally not aware of them and we have little evidence to base them on. However, like stereotypes, they do help to simplify our understanding of the World and make it easier for fast and efficient impressions of people to be made. Bruner & Taguiri (1954) believed that when we meet someone for the first time we create an impression based on very little information and then make assumptions to fill in any missing bits. For example given a list of characteristics about a person such as:
Practical, determined, skilful and industrious, we may also assume that they are serious and stable.
IPTs don’t stop at adjectives. Nouns, in particular proper nouns such as names can also generate a mental image or expectation. An example that is not to be quoted in an exam but which may trigger similar experiences for you: a friend of mine worked with a woman called Dorothy whom she talked about regularly. What mental image do you get for a Dorothy? Although I’d been told that Dorothy was a young 20 something American who often went out clubbing I still have a mental image of an old woman in her flowery dress and plastic rain hood pulling a tartan shopping trolley.
Implicit Personality Theories are usually shared by everyone within a culture and may also consider physical characteristics. Western examples would include blondes being ‘intellectually less effective’ (to borrow a term from Crutchfield), red heads being fiery, fat people being jolly and, dare I say it, high foreheads being associated with intelligence! Such ideas persist despite research suggesting that they are not based in fact. On top of these we often generate our own ideas based on personal experiences.
Finish the phrases below: John is energetic, eager and (intelligent/stupid) Julie is bright, lively and (thin/fat) Joe is handsome, tall and (flabby/muscular) Jane is attractive, intelligent and (likeable/unpleasant) Susan is cheerful, positive and (attractive/unattractive)
|
