Attribution and media representations

Outline of attribution theory

• Human beings want to understand the world– Evolutionary advantages

• Events and human behavior call for understanding– Want to be able to predict future behavior

• Explanations are drawn from LTM for observed behaviors– Schema developed over time

Attribution

• Once explanations are developed they guide future explanations of similar behavior– Stimulus generalization

• People will be judged according to the attributed causes of their behaviors

• Future interactions with people whose behavior was attributed to some cause will be guided by those attributions

Attributions

• Those interactions will influence the relationship between the individuals

• Those interactions will affect the self-perception of the interactants

• Future behavior will be influenced by those self-perceptions, leading to new attributions and behaviors

Heider: Attribution is characterized by:

• Mental abstraction• Uncertainty reduction• Normativeness– Subsequent research called normativeness into

question

Influences over interpretation

• “The information contained in a behavioral episode is often ambiguous; that is, it is associated with multiple categories. For example, a silent response may be interpreted as empathic, submissive, or hostile.”

• Context• Prior knowledge of actor

• Heider (1958) argued that a number of influences on observers determine their attribution of causes of behavior as either dispositional or environmentally driven– Indication of intent– Effort– Implication of personality trait• Default dispositional

– Equifinality

• Locus of control (whose fault)• Stability (is it ongoing)• Controllability (Can I change it?)

Cues for attribution

• Consensus– Everybody’s doing it

• Distinctiveness– He’s the only one

• Consistency– Cross-situational

• Violations of social norms• Lack of situational cues

Free will

• Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) stressed that attributions of intentionality depend on the impression that the actor freely chose what to do. There had to be alternative options as well as a lack of situational pressures, such as coercion by others.

• A chosen option is most informative if its alternatives differ in their consequences, and if the person was able to foresee these consequences.

Biases

• Observer’s self-esteem and social identity• Observer’s attentional focus and perspective• Observed behavior’s implications with regard

to competence and morality– Immoral behavior requires immorality and success

requires competence but moral behavior does not require morality and failure does not deny competence

Audience factors

• Some audience members are more likely to make dispositional attributions while others are more likely to make situational attributions

Age of audience member

• Young children do not perceive enduring dispositional factors

• Older children (8-11 years) demonstrate opposite tendency

• Teens weigh both factors

Culture

• Americans emphasize dispositional factors• Eastern cultures emphasize situational

explanations• Difference increases with age--socialization

Process

• Identification– Choice of categorical definition of person, action

• Attributional processing– Evaluate competing hypotheses of • Momentary state (intention, feeling, goal)• Enduring disposition (aggressiveness)• Situational forces (lack of choice, compulsion)

Group membership

• Application of group knowledge to individual– “Stereotyping”

Observer’s processing goals

• Research shows that asking observers to focus on personality leads to increase in dispositional attribution

• Focusing on situation leads to an increase in situational attribution

Processing capacity

• Less time, capacity, distraction likely to increase default attributions– In U.S., that means dispositional

Self-attributions

• We don’t have the privileged insight into our own behaviors we think we do– We witness our own behaviors and then attributed

causes to them– Usually we interpret them in ways biased in our favor

• Good intentions• Environmental influences

– Those with low self-esteem may attribute self-deprecating causes

• Attributions we developed in the past may affect our current self-attributions

• Some of those attributions may come from our experience attributing causes to behaviors depicted in media

• We tend to attribute “dispositional” causes to characters on television, etc.– We don’t take environmental constraints upon behavior into much

account• Other cultures may be more likely to do so• More processing effort tends to increase our sensitivity to environmental

influences– Affects the workings of dispositional theory

Self-serving bias

• When good things happen to me, I deserve it (I worked hard or I am a special person).

• When good things happen to you, you don’t deserve it (the teacher likes you or you just got lucky).

• When bad things happen to me, it’s not my fault (the teacher doesn’t like me or he started it).

• When bad things happen to you, it’s your fault (you should work harder or you should be more careful).

Inclusion in disposition theory

Observed behavior Attribution Character

evaluation

Other relations to entertainment

• Sometimes a good deal of the enjoyment of a narrative is tied to the process of attribution—figuring out why someone did something– Tying motive to action– Explaining circumstances that led to actions

Additional implications

• Persuasion• Evaluating people and groups– News, non-fiction as well as fiction

• Narrative– E.g., cop shows

• Stereotyping