Social cognition, attribution and social influence
Introduced| English |
|---|
| fundamental attribution error/ˌfʌndəˈmentl ətrɪˈbjuːʃn ˈerə/ |
| normative influence/ˈnɔːmətɪv ˈɪnfluːəns/ |
A decision before an answer
- Watching a stranger's mistake, people blame the person; making the same mistake themselves, they blame the situation.
- Your goal: Apply attribution theory and its characteristic errors.
Assign the cause
- Attribution assigns causes to behaviour: internal (dispositional) or external (situational). The fundamental attribution error over-uses dispositional explanations for others, and the actor-observer asymmetry reverses this for ourselves.
- Correspondent inference asks when an act reveals a trait: freely chosen, unexpected or low-consensus acts are the most informative.
A shopper, furious after a parking ticket, screams at a friend who tells him to calm down. Which theory best accounts for the outburst?
Residual arousal from the ticket intensifies the later anger; that is excitation transfer.
Separate the influences
- Normative influence is conforming to be accepted; informational influence is accepting others' behaviour as evidence about reality.
- Asch's line studies showed conformity to a unanimous majority on unambiguous judgements; Milgram's obedience studies showed destructive compliance with an authority. Conformity falls sharply with one dissenting partner.
Conforming to a group in order to be accepted, despite private doubt, is:
Acceptance-seeking conformity is normative; informational influence takes the group as evidence about reality.
Resolve the dissonance
- Cognitive dissonance is the tension from holding inconsistent cognitions, reduced by changing attitudes or justifications; with insufficient external justification, people internalise the behaviour.
- Persuasion follows the elaboration likelihood model: the central route (arguments) produces durable change when audiences can and will think; the peripheral route (cues, attractiveness) is fragile.
Screaming at a friend after a parking ticket is excitation transfer: residual arousal intensifies the later anger. Reminding yourself of a strength after a comparison threat is self-affirmation. Agreeing with a unanimous group on an obvious line length is normative conformity. A vague appeal working only when the audience is distracted is peripheral-route persuasion.
In the elaboration likelihood model, the durable route through argument quality is the ____ route.
Central-route change requires the ability and motivation to think; the peripheral route rests on cues.
Protect the self
- Self-evaluation processes include self-affirmation (restoring worth in an unaffected domain), self-verification (seeking confirming feedback), self-monitoring (adjusting self-presentation) and the self-serving bias.
- Excitation transfer lets residual arousal from one event intensify a later emotional reaction.
Do not merge conformity and obedience (peer pressure versus authority), or call every dispositional inference an error; the error is neglecting the situation, not using traits at all.
Which answer fits this case?
Apply attribution theory and its characteristic errors
Obedience and conformity are two names for the same social process.
Obedience follows an authority command; conformity follows peer pressure without a command.
Keep the distinctions
- fundamental attribution error 基本归因错误 — Over-attributing others' behaviour to disposition while neglecting the situation.
- normative influence 规范性影响 — Conforming to gain acceptance or avoid rejection, distinct from informational influence.
- Apply attribution theory and its characteristic errors.
- Distinguish conformity, obedience and the two influence routes.
- Explain dissonance, persuasion routes and self-evaluation processes.
Match each term with its precise meaning in this lesson.
Keep the distinctions stated in the teaching example.
Put this lesson’s reasoning or event sequence in order.
The order follows the stated process; check each stage before the next.