Overview
This lecture introduces social psychology, focusing on how situations and personal factors influence behavior, and describing key attributional biases such as the fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, self-serving bias, and the just-world hypothesis.
What Is Social Psychology?
- Social psychology studies how people affect one another and how situations influence thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
- The field considers both intrapersonal (within self, e.g., emotions, attitudes) and interpersonal topics (between people, e.g., helping, aggression).
Situational vs. Dispositional Influences
- Behavior is shaped by both situational factors (external, e.g., culture, roles) and dispositional factors (internal, e.g., traits, temperament).
- Situationism emphasizes external influences; dispositionism focuses on internal characteristics.
- Modern views combine both perspectives to explain behavior.
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
- FAE is the tendency to overemphasize internal causes and underestimate situational factors when explaining others’ behavior.
- Example: Assuming someone is rude rather than considering they had a bad day.
- The FAE is more common in individualistic cultures (focused on autonomy) than in collectivistic cultures (focused on group harmony).
Actor-Observer Bias
- Actor-observer bias is attributing others’ behaviors to dispositional factors but our own behaviors to situational factors.
- This bias arises because we have more information about our own situations than others'.
Self-Serving Bias
- Self-serving bias is attributing our successes to internal factors and our failures to external factors.
- It serves to protect self-esteem and is influenced by culture.
- Example: A team win is due to skill; a loss is blamed on bad referees.
Just-World Hypothesis
- The just-world hypothesis is the belief that people get what they deserve.
- This can lead to victim blaming, such as blaming poor people for their poverty and ignoring systemic factors.
- It provides belief in a predictable, controllable world but has negative social consequences.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Social psychology — study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.
- Situationism — view that behavior is determined by environment and context.
- Dispositionism — view that behavior is determined by internal traits.
- Fundamental attribution error (FAE) — tendency to attribute others’ behavior to internal factors, overlooking situational influences.
- Actor-observer bias — tendency to attribute others’ actions to disposition, but our own to situation.
- Self-serving bias — tendency to credit ourselves for successes but blame external factors for failures.
- Just-world hypothesis — belief that people get outcomes they deserve.
Action Items / Next Steps
- Review Table 12.1 comparing individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
- Reflect on personal examples of attributional biases.
- Prepare for discussion on how these biases affect perceptions in daily life.