1. What is Social Psychology?
Scientific study in which
Thoughts
Behaviors
Feelings
of one individual are influenced by the real, imagined, or inferred behavior or characteristics of other people

2. Social Thinking Our social behavior is affect by our cognition.
We all analyze why people act the way they do.
Is this person gone from class because they are ill or are they just being lazy?

3. Question
If we see someone cutting in line, at a movie theater what is your first thought?
Would your thoughts be different if you knew the person cutting the line? Why or Why not?

4. Fill out one sheet for a former teacher & one for yourself
We will get back to this later
It is either a….
Situational Attribution
Dispositional Attribution
Attribution Theory
Tries to explain how people make judgments about the causes of other people's behavior

5. Make guesses, or “attributions,” about the causes of their behavior.
We often make mistakes because of the biases we have

6. What is this an example of?
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

7. Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personality on behaviors
We often believe that someone does something because of who he is, not because of the situation.
Even when we are told a persons behavior is situational we still tend to attribute behavior to disposition.
Internal (personal) versus external (situational)
1. Internal (personal) attributions explain an outcome by looking within
an individual.
Examples—“I was able to accomplish my goal because I was able to break the larger goal into mini-goals that I could manage.” “I performed well on a test because I studied hard for the examination.”
2. External (situational) attributions (e.g., fate, luck, chance) explain an outcome by looking outside of an individual.
Examples—“I was unable to accomplish my goal because I had to help a family member who needed my assistance.” “I did not perform well on the examination because the teacher did not tell us what to study.”
Biases in the attributional process
1. The fundamental attribution error (also known as the correspondence bias) is overestimating internal (personal) influences and underestimating external (situational) influences when judging the behavior of others: “He’s poor because he’s lazy.” This is more likely to happen when we do not know the person well.
The Fundamental Attribution Error
2. Actor-observer bias is attributing one’s own behavior to external (situational) causes and the behavior of others to internal (personal) factors. “I was unprepared for the exam because there was a family emergency last night, but Sally was unprepared because she’s basically not that good at math.”
3. Self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute success to internal (personal) factors and failures to external (situational) factors. “I won the game today because I am a great athlete; yesterday I lost the game because the referee made some bad calls.
4. False consensus effect is the tendency to think other people share our attitudes more than they actually do. “I really like this one television show, so I assume most of my peers like it as well.”

8. Situation: Aaron Rodgers walks by without saying “Hello.”
Using the FAE explain how someone would explain his behavior.
"He is childish!"
Overestimating personality
Tendency to do this
“He just lost a game.”
But not this…
Underestimating the situation

9. ATTRIBUTION THEORY Actor-Perceiver Bias Actor-Observer Bias:
Actors favor external attributions for
their behavior, whereas observers are more likely to explain the same behavior with internal attributions.

10. Our Behavior - it’s US (internal) if we SUCCEED.
ATTRIBUTION THEORY
Self-Serving Bias:
We attribute causes of behavior to external causes if we fail & internal causes if we succeed.
Our Behavior - it’s US (internal) if we SUCCEED.
Our Behavior - it’s EXTERNAL if we FAIL. “She cut me off because she is a terrible driver!”
“I cut someone else off because I am late for work.”

11. Fundamental Attribution Error
Look at your results on your handout…
Count the number of times you circled “depends on the situation” for each
How have you demonstrated FAE, Self-Serving Bias, or the Actor- Observer Attribution?

12. An attribution question
Why did some in Houston and Florida not evacuate?
Was it due to a personal disposition
Nothing can harm me
They’ll save me if I need it
Or…was it due to their inaction to the situation
Did not have a car
Not offered transportation

13. HOW SOCIAL ERRORS AFFECT YOU
Our political views are also strongly influenced by what we choose to believe
ex: do you attribute poverty or homelessness to traits such as laziness, or external circumstances like lack of education and opportunity?
7 in 10 college women report that men have misread their polite friendliness (although appropriate for the situation) as a sexual come-on

14. What phenomenon is at work here?
Self-Serving Bias