Social Psychology

Fundamental attribution error

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to explain other people's behaviour mainly by dispositional, or personal, factors such as personality, intention or ability, while giving too little weight to situational pressures. Most people make this kind of causal judgement about others by default, so situational explanations are often overlooked even when they are available. The bias is an asymmetry in observation: the observer does not see the context that the actor experiences directly, and so attributes the act to the person. It should not be confused with the actor-observer bias, which is a narrower pattern in which people explain their own behaviour by situations and other people's behaviour by dispositions. Stereotypes and schemas are cognitive structures about groups or concepts, not attribution tendencies, so they are a different category of phenomenon. For example, when a driver cuts in front of you, the quick judgement 'he is reckless' is typical of this error, whereas 'he may be rushing to a hospital' is the situational explanation that people tend to neglect.

Cognitive dissonance and attitude change

Cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant tension that arises when a person holds two cognitions, or a cognition and a behaviour, that are inconsistent with each other. People reduce this tension either by changing the behaviour, by changing the attitude, or by adding justifications. In Festinger's insufficient justification paradigm, the amount of attitude change depends on how much external justification is available for the behaviour. External justification, such as a large reward or a severe threat, gives the person an adequate reason for acting and therefore reduces dissonance, so attitude change is small. Internal justification arises when a person freely chooses to act with only a small external inducement, so the person must explain the behaviour by coming to believe in it. This is why counter-attitudinal advocacy, such as writing or delivering a speech against one's own view, produces the largest attitude shift when the incentive is smallest. A brief example: a student who is paid heavily to say a course is enjoyable feels little need to change his opinion, whereas one who is paid very little may come to believe the course is enjoyable after all.

Attribution and judgment biases

Several named biases in social judgement are frequently tested as matching items, and each must be associated with its exact description. The Barnum effect is the tendency to accept a vague personality description as accurately describing oneself, even though the description could fit almost anyone. The reference group effect is the tendency to evaluate oneself with respect to one's own social or cultural group rather than in absolute terms. The self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for one's successes while downplaying one's responsibility for failures, whereas the self-effacing bias is the reverse, the tendency to take blame for failures while downplaying one's role in successes. Confirmation bias is the tendency to observe, select and interpret information in ways that agree with one's existing expectations about a person, so that the behaviour seen is the behaviour expected. A schema is the general mental framework that guides this interpretation, while anchoring is the reliance on an initial piece of information when making estimates, so neither names the selective observation described here. A useful memory aid is that the self-serving bias protects the self's image of success, and the self-effacing bias is the less common opposite.

Groupthink

Groupthink, as described by Janis, is a pattern of faulty group decision-making in which the desire for harmony and consensus overrides critical evaluation of alternatives. It typically arises in highly cohesive groups led by a directive leader, under time pressure or stress. Its characteristic symptoms include an illusion of invulnerability, which produces excessive optimism and risky decisions, and an illusion of unanimity, in which silence is interpreted as consent. Members who are reluctant to voice doubt censor themselves, and premature consensus replaces careful deliberation. Reduced individual effort within a group is social loafing, and uncertainty about one's task is role ambiguity, so neither should be classed as symptoms of groupthink. The main remedies are to keep the leader impartial, so that he or she does not reveal a preferred position, to remind members that each person is accountable for the group's decision, and to encourage open critical evaluation of alternatives. By contrast, a leader who takes all decisions on behalf of the group centralizes judgement and suppresses dissent, while reaching consensus quickly leaves no time for evaluation, and both of these increase rather than reduce groupthink.

Social influence and persuasion theories

Moscovici's conversion theory distinguishes between the influence of majorities and of minorities. Majority influence mainly produces a comparison process, in which the target attends to the relationship between the source and himself or herself. The result is typically overt, public compliance with the majority position, and the target's private attitude may remain unchanged, so conflict is resolved by public agreement rather than by private conversion. Minority influence, by contrast, triggers a validation process in which the target pays closer attention to the issue itself and reconsiders its content, which can lead to genuine private change. Targets are also reluctant to agree publicly with a minority, because agreeing risks being labelled deviant. The elaboration likelihood model, proposed by Petty and Cacioppo, describes two routes to persuasion. The central route involves careful critical evaluation of the arguments, while the peripheral route relies on cues such as the attractiveness or credibility of the source. The likelihood of elaboration, that is, of critical evaluation of arguments, is determined by two factors: the processing motivation of the recipient and the processing ability of the recipient. Processing error and processing validity are not parameters of this model.

Self-serving attribution bias

The self-serving attribution bias is the tendency to explain outcomes in a way that protects or enhances self-esteem, by attributing successes to one's own ability or effort and failures to external causes such as bad luck, unfair conditions or other people. It is the default self-protective explanation that most people apply to their own results, and it is the opposite of the self-effacing pattern. Because the causes of a failure are displaced onto outside agents, a student who blames an unfair test, others' cheating or a poor teacher for a failing grade is showing the externalizing pattern that the exam classifies as projection. The term rationalization, by contrast, refers to offering plausible but often false reasons to justify one's conduct, and repression refers to pushing unacceptable thoughts out of awareness, so these terms should be kept distinct from the blame-shifting described here. Remember that the defining feature is the asymmetry between success, credited internally, and failure, blamed externally.

Distributive justice and equity

Justice research distinguishes several kinds of perceived fairness. Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of the allocation of outcomes, such as resources, pay, rewards or benefits, among individuals or groups. It is distinguished from procedural justice, which concerns the fairness of the methods and rules used to make allocation decisions, and from interactional justice, which concerns the fairness of interpersonal treatment, such as respect and courtesy, during those decisions. Informational justice concerns the adequacy and honesty of explanations given for decisions. Equity theory, which is closely related to distributive justice, holds that people judge a distribution to be fair when the ratio of their outcomes to their inputs matches the ratio of the outcomes and inputs of a comparison other. When this ratio is perceived as unequal, people experience distress and attempt to restore balance. For example, a worker who receives the same pay as a colleague who contributed far less may feel that the allocation is unjust even if the procedure used to set the pay was transparent.