hello everyone and welcome to mr simplifies tutorials in this tutorial we're going to look at attribution theory and social psychology now on a generic basis human beings are known to be judgmental we love judging other people based on their actions and also judge ourselves all through our lives we love to try and decode why certain people do what they do and attribute their behavior to a cause we always like to try and decode people's behavior and also categorize them now this interpretation of behaviors by human being human beings is is what attribution theory is concerned with and that's what we're going to look at in this tutorial now what are internal and external causes for people's behavior now when a person behaves a certain way people try to attribute their behavior to either internal causes also called dispositional attribution or external causes also called situational attribution now this means that the person in question behaves this way because of either internal reasons like his or her personality the attitude his or her mood or motives or abilities now which are things they can actually control or because of external reasons like situational reasons uh environmental reasons etc which are actually beyond their control so we constantly try to try to understand what has actually led a person to behave a certain way are there are these factors internal to the person or external factors and how do we actually weigh internal and external causes against one another when we try and judge a person's behavior now according to psychologist harold kelly we try to use we tend to use three aspects of information to decide whether someone's behavior was internally or externally motivated now these factors are consensus distinctiveness and consistency now consensus uh deals with inspecting if a person's behavior is in line with what we perceive to be the norm and whether we think others would actually act in a similar way in the same situation distinctiveness uh deals with whether the person acts similarly across other situations and also with other people too or or if this was an exception okay and consistency deals with whether the same person uh acts the same way if the same situation occurs again okay and when there's a high level of consensus distinctiveness and consistency we tend to attribute the person's behavior to external factors and not to internal factors okay now let's look at an example to uh to make sense of this now let's presume that you regularly go to a gym and uh at a similar time each day so although you don't speak to too many people there you do say hello to some familiar faces that you bump into almost every day so there's this certain guy named john that you normally say hello to but on this occasion he walks right past you and ignores you completely okay so this is the situation now let's look at the three aspects of information again since uh you observe that other people are actually greeting one another and since other people are greeting one another and speaking to one another john's behavior isn't actually the norm so there's low consensus that's the first aspect you happen to see john saying hello to another lad almost immediately after he ignored you so his behavior has low distinctiveness okay now his behavior isn't consistent either as he has said hello to you in the past in a very similar situation so there's low consistency so because of this you then start attributing what happened you start attributing the situation to john's personality and think of him as somebody who is deliberately avoiding speaking to you or doesn't actually like you as a person that's what that's how you analyze the situation now what are the outcomes of of this attribution that you arrived into uh you have essentially laid a higher emphasis on his personality rather than the situation at hand or the external circumstances that might be at play now in reality uh it is quite possible that john didn't quite see you or or saw the other lad first and would have actually come to you and said hello to you uh a bit later on maybe after he said hello to the other person but you didn't take all of this into account you've just made a quick judgment uh and and have uh categorized uh john's personality as somebody you know who's who's probably who probably doesn't like you or probably has has a problem with you you might even go on to the extent of of thinking that john doesn't like the type of person that you are if you belong to a specific race or a religion etc you might actually start attributing his personality and analyzing his personality to the extent that you see problems with a lot of things that he does now this is what we call the fundamental attribution error now this directs to our tendency to over emphasize internal causes to explain the behavior of other people in other words we tend to conclude on the personality of other people before taking into account the influence of social or environmental factors now when it comes to judging other people in general we talk we tend to let internal factors outweigh the external factors and this is what this error refers to okay now let's look at the concept of biases we've already looked at the fundamental attribution error now let's look at the types of biases we could actually possess now the first bias type is self-serving bias now this bias refers to us attributing our successes our own successes to our own personal characteristics and blame outside variables for our failures okay so there is basically a change in in in behaviors when it comes to analyzing our success and our failures for example you would have seen that when people get a raise they tend to start thinking about how smart or intelligent they are and conversely if they get told off by their manager or get a disciplinary they tend to attribute it to external situations like stress traffic bad colleagues co-workers etc so that's the self-serving bias now actor observer bias now this bias refers to our tendency to attribute our actions to external causes or the situation at hand overall and attribute other people's actions on internal causes their personalities now for example it's commonly known uh that drivers always feel that anyone driving slow than them is is an idiot and anyone driving faster than them uh is a maniac this is uh quite a commonly known uh situation now this is in a way also the actor observer bias coming into play now we come to a rather interesting bias type called the halo effect which refers to our tendency to let a single trait of personality influence someone's overall personality now this can stem from our tendency to categorize people as either good people or bad people and and and actually not think about people as the combination of the two types now this is also called the physical attractiveness stereotype for example if you come across a waitress who happens to be really nice to you at the local coffee shop you tend to think of the person as a gentle caring and loving person overall now just because you get served an extra cookie or you get a nice smile you tend to think about that person being a nice person in general or if you encountered a really well-dressed smiling salesperson at a car or a watch showroom you tend to assume that the person is smart charming successful and confident without actually knowing the person so one or two traits of the person leads you to actually conclude things about the overall personality of the person now this is called the halo effect okay so these were some of the biases which which we live with and which is also which are also studied as a part of attribution theory now what do we learn from this now with with studying this uh one of the main things we learn is to actually take a step back and think before we make any rapid judgments on other people's personality and characteristics whenever you try and judge us a person uh you know whether it be a person you've just met or a person that you've known for a very long time it's always important to to try and understand the effect of of external uh causes it's always important to try and understand if there is an external cause at play uh resulting into the person behaving in in a slightly different way or in a way that you think is is not acceptable or is not consistent with the usual behavior dolled out by that person okay i hope that was helpful for you i thank you very much uh for listening into this tutorial on attribution theory i highly encourage you highly uh uh encourage you to uh to to like this content and mainly to please use the comment section to uh to recommend more topics to be covered in this channel again thank you very much for all your support so far keep up the support thanks very much take care bye