Author Archives: Kenzo Le Vaillant

Attribution biases

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Context

The way we make attributions has been a topic of psychology for some time now and many models have been created to try and explain these.

One of the earliest was the naive scientist model which thought humans made attributions rationally from objective observations. However, humans don’t observe s rationally as was thought.

This is why, the cognitive misers model and motivated tactician model was created.

The cognitive miser model believes that we process objects and events by using the path which requires the least energy to do so. In the motivated tactician model , we process things in ways relevant to our goals and motives.

The biases

Biases generally make ourselves and our group look better and the others look worse.

The self serving bias is a good example. This bias represents how we see our own actions and make attributions to ourself. For example, we have tendency to attribute our successes to our ability and internal factors and our failures to external causes such as the environment, luck and others.

This bias has 2 subgroups. The self enhancing bias and self protecting bias. The main goal of the bias is to keep a positive view of ourself. This can be done in two ways, by making us look better than we are or by hiding our weaknesses.

The first corresponds to the self enhancing bias and the latter to the self protecting bias. An example of the self protecting bias is self handicapping. This is when we don’t do or do something before a certain task to be able to use it as an excuse for failing the task.

The self serving bias also helps form what is called the self enhancing triad. This is a certain way we tend to perceive ourselves. The three components are an exaggeration of our control over events, unrealistic optimism and an overestimation of our own good points.

The Actor observer effect has similar results but from a different point of view. This looks at who is doing the action, the actor and who is looking at them, the observer and it mainly arrises in negative situations.

When we are the actor, we usually know the context behind our actions, the external factors. We also know how we behaved differently in the past. This is why we will have a tendency to attribute our actions to external factors.

On the other hand, when we are the observer, we don’t know the situation of the actor and will attribute the behaviours to their internal traits.

Most attribution biases keep this rule on attributing own behaviours externally, especially when they have a negative outcome, and others internally.

The Correspondence bias or the Fundamental attribution error is an example. This is simply the tendency to attribute others behaviours to their dispositions.

Their are many explanations for this effect. The first is language. Mot languages, including english, make it easier to speak of someone and their actions than someones situation, context and the actions.

Next is our memory and attention. The individual doing the action attracts more attention than the whole situation behind it making it generally easier to remember internal causes than the situational causes.

The third is essentialism. This is also a type of bias in which we think people’s behaviours represent their core stable, unchangeable features. Essential features.

Finally is the outcome bias where we believe that an individual intends on all the outcomes of what they do.

A similar effect is the ultimate attribution error. This is simply the fundamental attribution error but with the individuals replaced but our own and other groups.

This is also similar to what is called ethnocentrism. This is how an individual sees the world from the perspective of their culture and think theirs is the best.

This view of the world can also be found in the false consensus effect. This effect explains how we think others think the same way as we do.

This may be because we think our own thought are normal, thus others will think the same way. But this can also be enhanced by the fact that we usually are with people with similar cultures and ways of thinking.

Part 1 : Types of schemas

Part 2 : Schemas, use and relation with time

Part 3 : Biases, emotions and how we make impressions

Part 4 : Attributions. What and why

Part 5 : Attributions in different contexts and styles

Attributions in different contexts and styles

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Context

Attributions have different applications in different situations we have already seen one example in relationships.

May others exist such as to our own behaviours and emotions, task performance and between groups.

Attributions about ourself

Attributions are used to explain why others do things. however, there are many situations in which we don’t have a clear idea of why we are doing something.

In these cases we look at ourselves objectively and try to find a reason for our behaviour. This reason will then be linked to ourself and change how we feel or think of something.

This is called self perception theory.

Emotions can have unclear roots too.

Emotional responses are said to have 2 components. Physiological arousal and cognition. these 2 are supposed to be linked and cause one another.

The physiological arousal is when we sweat and feel our heart rate going up. In this case the linked cognition could be a certain object that was seen or heard.

Psychologists thought that they might be able to change the response to a certain object by manipulating this connection.

The upper example could explain a phobia where the object is what the individual is afraid of and the emotion felt is fear.

If the individual could associate the physiological response to something else, which preferably doesn’t involve fear, like exercise, they could remove the fear or even the phobia.

This is called the misattribution paradigm and is thought to have potential effects in treating depression, anxiety and panic attacks, although strong effects haven’t been found yet.

Attributions of task performance

This theory is about how we see success or failure and the relation to the individual.

There are 3 aspects of task performance which we make attributions to.

Locus, stability and controllability.

The locus is whether the performance, outcome was because of external factors, such as chance or other people, or internal, due to ability etc.

Stability and controllability are as they seem. How stable or unstable the performance is and how much control will the individual have on future similar tasks.

The different types of attributions depending on each factor can be put into a table.

Attributions styles

First of all, why do we make attributions ?

One of the main reasons are to reduce uncertainty about the world around us.

The individual differences that exist in our use of attributions are called attributional styles.

These are said to come from childhood and how one is raised.

There are 2 ways to categorise attributional styles.

The first is the ASQ or Attributional style questionnaire which measures attributions used in aversive events.

It focuses on 3 dimensions, internal/ external, stable/ unstable and global/ specific. The global/ specific factor is the attributed range of the effects of the event.

Another test is the ACS or the attribution complexity scale. This one measures the complexity of the attributions an individual makes. Like for cognition, people make attributions to different complexities.

Although the research looking at these has given limited and inconsistent results, it has been found to be able to predict depression at a certain degree.

For example, in the ASQ, there is a depressive attrbutional style which is an internal, stable and global style. This style of attributions has been found to increase depression, helplessness and to have negative effects on mental health.

Part 1 : Types of schemas

Part 2 : Schemas, use and relation with time

Part 3 : Biases, emotions and how we make impressions

Part 4 : Attributions. What and why

Next Part : Attribution biases

Attributions. What and why

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Attributions

An attribution is when we try to explain someones behaviour.

It happens inside our heads and is subject to heuristics and biases as much as impressions are.

Attributions give us a sense of understanding of the world around us and reduces uncertainty. It also gives us information of how others think, facilitating communication.

Attributions in relationships

Attributions can actually be applied to interpersonal relationships and have different roles in the different stages of a relationship.

In the first stage, formation, attributions facilitate communication and reduces ambiguity. Although in the next stage of maintenance, it is less used, it plays an important role in the outcome of the final stage.

This stage is called dissolution. In this stage, two people will often find that they can’t seem to agree on which attributions to use. This is called an attributional conflict and has a high association to relationship dissatisfaction.

The attributions used on the other are also important in a relationship. Studies have found that happily married couples tend to attribute positive behaviour to the stable personality traits of their partner and negative behaviours to unstable and uncontrollable external factors.

Theories of attribution

Many theories and models about attributions have been made.

An early one was the naive psychologist model.

This model believed that humans tried to be like psychologists and would deduce the cause of some behaviour using rational observations.

This model is based on 3 principles :

Because we feel like our own behaviours are motivated, we try to look for the causes of others behaviours to find their motives.

Attributions help us find stable characteristics of the world which help us understand and predict things.

When making attributions, we distinguish between internal factors that are related to personality and the individual to external factors that are related to the environment and the situation.

Although, for the last one, we have a tendency to link things to internal factors more than external factors, even with evidence against.

This is because of the second principle. Internal factors are more stable and enduring. Thinking having found a relation between an event or behaviour and an internal factor gives us the feeling of understanding the world better.

This tendency, in addition to evidence showing we aren’t able to think very rationally, created the correspondent inference theory.

Different sources of information will be linked to internal factors to different degrees.

Freely chosen behaviour are more linked to internal factors.

Behaviour with non common effect too. These are behaviours that have specific results that can’t e produced from other behaviours. We tend to assume it to be an internal behaviour as we think the individual intended on causing the specific results.

Socially undesirable behaviour, out of role behaviours and behaviours with that affect us is usually attributed to internal factors.

There are two types of behaviours that affect us. Those with hedonic relevance, which only have direct consequences to us and high personalism behaviour which are behaviours that we think intend on harming/ benefiting us.

The covariation model was made including a little of both theories.

This model states we assign cause of behaviour to the most covarying factor, that is the factor that is consistently linked to the behaviour and the specificity to the behaviour/ situation.

These are said to be 3 factors called consistency, consensus and distinctiveness.

A high consensus behaviour is something that is done by many, while a low means it is done by only certain people.

High distinctiveness in this case means it is done only in one situation while a low means it is done in many situations.

When the consistency is low, the cause is assumed to be something else.

However, when the consistency is high, if both other factors are too, the behaviour is attributed to external factors and if both others are low, it is attributed to internal factors.

The problem is, this model also has its flaws. One being, humans aren’t very good at assessing covariations.

A notion called causal schemata which would deal with this issue was developed. This is experienced based beliefs related to how certain things interact and cause an effect.

Part 1 : Types of schemas

Part 2 : Schemas, use and relation with time

Part 3 : Biases, emotions and how we make impressions

Next Part :Attributions in different contexts and styles

Part 6 : Attribution biases

Biases, emotions and how we make impressions

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Context

Impressions are ideas and thoughts we get about a certain thing/ person from a limited amount of information. Thus, essentially, they are cognitive short cuts.

This is because when making an impression, we use the information presented, schemas and our own deduction.

We like deducing and finding answers. The problem is that our way of reasoning or deducing isn’t always the most logical or correct way. And there are certain types of errors we often make.

These are called biases. Biases are another type of heuristic and is defined as errors made when judging something, someone …

Types of biases

There are many different biases that we have. Too many to list all of them. But if we look at biases that are used when making impressions of others, we can narrow down to some main ones.

The positivity/ negativity bias

When there is no noticeable negative information, we usually assume that the person is a good person.

However, in general, negative information gets more attention from the brain than positive information does. This makes it easier to find negative information, especially once one has been found and gives it a strong effect on the impression.

The primacy/ recency effect

Information comes in different orders. Information that comes first and last is usually remembered better than anything that comes in between.

This is also why during the tip of the tongue phenomenon, you usually remember the first and last letters of the word but not the middle of it.

Because of this difference, information presented first and last will leave a strong influence on the impression made.

Physical appearance

Although some of us may not like this one, physical appearance actually has an influence on many factors.

One famous study found that for the same individual, people would estimate that person to be taller depending on his position. The more important his position was, the taler they estimated the height.

Good looking/ attractive men were thought to be better at their jobs while for women it was the opposite.

Personal construct and the implicit personality theory

These two are more individual ways we form biases.

The personal construct is how people develop different ways to form impressions of others. Thus an individual born in an environment where most women are very nice or mean will be more likely to form impressions of women as nice/mean.

Implicit personality theory is how people develop different ways of linking distinct traits. For example, one person might link the traits nice and smart. That person will then think nice people are smart and vice versa.

Although these two are developed individually, they are usually shared within people of the same culture.

The configurational model

This model links impressions and biases together.

It states that two types of traits exist in making impressions and that one has a disproportionate influence on the overall influence.

The central traits are the traits that have a strong effect and are salient and vivid while the peripheral traits have a much weaker influence.

Salient means it is a trait that makes the individual stand out from other people and vivid means it is a trait that stands out from other traits of the individual.

Biases are what create the central and peripheral traits as it gives different strengths of influence on different information.

Emotions

It us said that there are 4 ways we process information of others.

Direct access, Motivated processing, Heuristic processing and Substantive processing.

The later 2 are strongly affected by emotions. While heuristic process is mainly processing information using short cuts, substantive processing is careful judgements made from the available information.

A positive mood will lead to positive information and a negative mood will lead to negative information to be kept. This is called mood congruence.

This is especially strong for first impressions as they generate emotions faster than later evaluations which will generate more complex emotions but slower.

Direct access is simply the use of schemas and categories.

This model also shows that motivation changes our making of impressions. If we are motivated to do or behave in a certain way when processing information, we will remember information that is relevant to the goal more.

Part 1 : Types of schemas

Part 2 : Schemas, use and relation with time

Next Part : Attributions. What and why

Part 5 : Attributions in different contexts and styles

Part 6 : Attribution biases

Schemas, use and relation with time

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When and how do we use schemas ?

Schema’s are used nearly all the time for one simple reason. They are energy efficient.

Several factors play a role in determining if a schema will be used or not.

One is called social judgeability.

In a case where using a schema may seem socially wrong, such as by gender or skin colour, we tend to use the schemas less.

Although social stereotypes and role schemas tend to be used more than schemas about ones traits.

In conditions when the cost of making a wrong assumption is too high, we will also use schemas less.

On the other hand, when the category is something that is very noticeable or relevant to the situation or you, those schemas will have a higher chance of being used.

These two factors are called detectability and relevance.

When a schema has been used or processed recently, that schema will have a higher chance of being used. This is called availability. This also explains the use of schemas related to our mood. In a negative mood, we will use more negative schemas than in a positive one.

Individual differences also exist in the tendency to use schemas.

5 main factors have been said to create these.

Need for cognition, which is in how much detail they want to process something,
need of cognitive closure which is how quickly they want to process something,
uncertainty orientation which is how certain they want to be,
attributional complexity which is how complex they describe people and
cognitive complexity which is how complex their own cognitive processes and thoughts are.

Do schemas change ?

Schemas are created and developed through experience. This means they can get more precise and supposedly more accurate.

However, when we face information that contradicts our schemas, we tend to ignore them or interpret them in a way to keep our schemas.

If this information persists, then they may start to change.

3 different ways that schemas change have been suggested.

The 1st is called book keeping. In this method, change happens little by little. certain aspects of schemas get changed one by one.

Another is called subtyping. In subtyping, instead of changing the schema, a sub category is created in the schema to include the new type of information.

The third way is called conversion. Schemas don’t change, even when receiving contradictory evidence, for a certain time. But once it has received a large amount of that information, it will completely change.

Although it is possible that they are all used in different situations, subtyping is the one with the most scientific evidence behind it.

Part 1 : Types of schemas

Next Part : Bias, emotions and how we make impressions

Part 4 : Attributions. What and why

Part 5 : Attributions in different contexts and styles

Part 6 : Attribution biases

Types of schemas

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Context

Humans are social animals. Meaning, we live in communities and depend on each other.

However, with the large number of people around us, objects and new events we see all the time, the brain needed to find a way to process them without overheating.

These are what we call assumptions.

Psychologists have found many different ways we make assumptions daily such as attributions and cognitive short cuts.

Cognitive short cuts are methods we use to process information without spending too much time and energy on it. There are many types of cognitive short cuts, for example : schemas, heuristics and availability.

Schemas

Schemas are categories of knowledge we use when processing.

When we see something, we try to put it into a schema. This schema, which holds the information from our prior experiences with similar events or objects, will provide the details for it.

This is why we are able to assume we know about something without having to look at it carefully.

An example of a schema is a stereotype. For example, when we meet someone and are told they are from Japan, we may automatically assume that they are very polite.

What kind of schemas are there ?

There are 5 types of schemas in total.

The first is a person schema.

This is a schema we have about a specific person. We may have a person schema about a friend, for example, Friend A is a funny and energetic person.

The second type of schema is a role schema.

This is held against people who are in certain positions or jobs.

An example would be that we assume a doctor is rich and intelligent or that a boxer is aggressive.

The third is event schemas. These are also called scripts.

This, unlike the first two, isn’t about people but about specific situations. They tell us what to do when someone places their hand in front of you or when someone is talking.

The answers are, shake their hands and listen to them/ don’t talk.

The fourth is called a self schema.

This one is a schema about yourself. When you describe your personality, you are simply talking about your self schemas.

The last one is a bit harder to understand.

It is a content free schema.

A content free schema, is like a theory you have of the world around you, how you think things happen or behave.

For example, if your friend likes person A, then you must like person A too or if something god happened to you, something bad will soon happen.

They are schemas that don’t fall into the four categories above.

How schemas are created

Schemas are made of the experiences you have had with a certain object, person, situation… Even those that aren’t remembered.

Being told about something without experiencing it can also become part of a schema.

With time, humans create a large number of schemas. To be able to use them, they need to be well organised.

It is said that schemas are organised in a hierarchical manner with subgroups.

For example, in the schema, category of men, you may have the subtypes such as brother, father, professional athlete or colleague. In professional athlete, you might have schemas for athletes of different sports. The list goes on.

The categories are completely different from one person to another depending on their interest, jobs, cultures and many more factors.

An athlete may have specific schemas about each type of athlete while someone who isn’t interested in sports might simply think of all athletes in the same way, the “athlete” schema.

The more someone learns about something, the more the schema will develop by becoming richer in context and more specific.

The ideal person, object of a certain schema is called a prototype.

Next Part : Schemas, use and relation with time

Part 3 : Biases, emotions and how we make impressions

Part 4 : Attributions. What and why

Part 5 : Attributions in different contexts and styles

Part 6 : Attribution biases