Transcript Fundamental Attribution Error

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVIXZhH4M4
Social
Psychology
Attribution Theory:
• Heider noted that behavior is either based on
internal disposition or external situation
(attribution theory)
– Teacher notices an aggressive student
• Is the student’s hostility reflecting an aggressive
personality?
• Is the student’s hostility a stress response?
Fundamental Attribution Error:
•Tendency to attribute others’
behaviors to dispositional causes and
our own to situational causes.
•Overestimates influence of personality and underestimates influence of situation
Fundamental attribution error
• Social liberals are more likely to ascribe
poverty to situational attributes than social
conservatives.
• Difference between theory and error?
• Errors occur when we see people in only ONE
role, not both
• Remember: our attributions – to individuals’
dispositions or to their situations – should be
made carefully. They have consequences
•Attitudes: Beliefs and feelings that
predispose our reactions to objects,
people and events.
•Attitudes will guide our actions if:
•Social pressure is minimal.
•Attitude is specifically relevant to behavior:
• cheating on taxes, isn’t cheating.
•We are keenly aware of attitude.
Attitude affects Action:
Persuasion and Decisions
• Central Route to PERSUASION: is when you think
and analyze – people focus on facts/arguments
and respond w/favorable thoughts
• Peripheral Route: people influenced by incidental
cues using heuristics, famous peoples
endorsements, jokes to persuade, or sound bytes.
– Often times the faster route, snap judgments
– Think “no child left behind”
Actions affect Attitudes
•Foot in the door phenomenon:
•tendency to comply with larger
request after we have complied with a
smaller one. Simple – to get people to agree, start small, end big
•Gateway drugs. Stealing. Racism.
•People can be move away from their attitudes
because they begin rationalizing behavior at
smaller steps.
Milgram Experiment
• Unethical, yet still produced
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f6LLV
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Milgram’s Experiment
• Predicts thru a survey – professionals said only
1% would go all the way and kill the person
because 1% are sadists (fae)
– overestimates power of individuality,
underestimates situation
• 63-65% of subjects went to danger
• 19 variations on Milgram experiment with up
to 90% obedience
•Compliance was greatest when:
•Person giving orders was close and a legitimate
authority figure from a prestigious institution.
•When the victim was depersonalized.
•There were no role models for defiance.
Why do actions change attitudes?
•We feel motivated to justify our actions.
•When aware of conflict between attitude
and behavior we feel tension called
cognitive dissonance.
•The more dissonance the more likely we
are to change attitudes.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• Theory that we act to reduce the discomfort
(dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts
(cognitions) are inconsistent.
– For example: when our awareness of our attitudes and of
our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance
by changing our attitudes
• Conclusion: Cruel acts shape the self. But so do acts
of good will. Act as though you like someone, and
you soon will. Changing our behavior can change
how we think about others and how we think about
ourselves.
Lessons of obedience studies.
•Experiments are not designed to replicate
everyday behaviors, but study underlying
causes.
•When kindness and obedience clash,
obedience wins.
•It’s enough to have ordinary people
corrupted by an evil situation.
•Leadership counts, dissent!!!
Role-Playing Affects Attitudes
• Role (cluster or prescribed actions) playing
can affect attitudes.
– Adopting a new role feels “phony” at first, but
then you start acting in the role, eventually – the
role becomes you.
Dr. Philip Zimbardo
• Wanted to study evil from the inside
• What makes good people go wrong?
– Too vague a question, but guided his study
– Ex: Poverty
• Described as systemic evil
• 1/5th children group up in poverty, ghetto – defined by
Zimbardo as personal growth in absence of nature and
people die young
• Epigenetics of poverty – growing up poor remakes
genetics to be prone to disease, etc
Zimbardo’s Research: Evil
1.
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4.
Harm (psychological)
Hurt (physical)
Destroy (morally)
Crimes against humanity (genocide)
•
Most evil is done by systems
Expanded Evil
• Is it just a case of bad apples?
• Is it a bad barrel?
• Is it a bad barrel maker?
•1971 Stanford Prison Experiment:
•At first role will feel unnatural, but
eventually you become the role.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0
Real world: Abu Gharib
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SPE – 5th night, prisoners began to simulate anal sex
AG – took weeks
SPE – bags over head for parole board
AG – bags over head for interrogation
AG – ultimate dehumanization
• Box picture torture – mask, stand on box until you fall, attach false
electrodes until he fell and would shock, no shock, just laughter, for fun
• All AG torture happened at night, not day shift
• Night shift was told to get info by any means necessary without authority
• Zimbardo’s conclusion
– **our soldiers were good, their barrel was bad
Rumsfeld approved torture in BARREL not outside
The Lucifer Effect
• Lucifer Effect – individuals in groups who are good
become situationally evil
What do you think it is? Do you agree with Zimbardo?
– Bad apples? Bad barrel? Bad barrel maker?
Why turn evil?
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Dehumanization
Diffusion of responsibility
Obedience to authority (Milgram studies)
Group pressure
Moral disengagement (Bandura)
Systemic Evil
• China kills 1 million annually
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Encouragement of smoking
54% of men smoke, masculine culturally
Controlled media, forbids anti-smoking campaign
Women don’t smoke
Sichuan Tobacco Primary School “Ingenuity is fruit.
Tobacco will help you succeed”
• Evils – war/genocide, poverty, slavery, sex traffic
(most profitable), climate change (evil of inaction)
Situation Evil
• Milgram – 1st research to quantify evil,
electrocute a stranger
– Background: Jewish kid, not far separated from
Holocaust, wanted to know why there was blind
obedience
– Studies were done at Yale
– “All evil is the cloak of semantic confusion”
• Israel/Palestine BOTH have moral reasons for killing
each other… how does this make sense?
Are there circumstances that make
people good?
• We have no idea
• Heroes don’t exist in psychology today, they
exist in situation
• Without heroism, compassion is useless
• Heroism is the highest civic virtue
• Very gray area between shift of good and evil
Prosocial networks = positive deviancy
Can one person make a difference?