Psych 280 1nd Edition Lecture 7 Outline of Last Lecture I. Simulation Heuristica. Counterfactual ThinkingII. The Norm-Exception RuleIII. The Action-Inaction RuleIV. Social Perceptiona. Internal v. External Attributionb. Consensus v. Distinctiveness v. ConsistencyV. Fundamental Attribution Error Outline of Current Lecture I. Reasons for Fundamental Attribution ErrorII. Actor-Observer EffectIII. Over-Justification Effecta. Limitations of over-justification effectCurrent LectureI. Reasons for Fundamental Attribution ErrorRemember, the fundamental attribution error (FAE) is the tendency for people to attribute the causes of someone’s behavior to internal factors (their personality traits) and ignore the influence the situation has on that person’s behavior. There are four main reasons why the FAE occurs:a. The behavior is more salient (noticeable) than the situation. People will focus on the behavior of the person because it is noticeable, whereas the situation isn’t asnoticeable.b. People are mentally lazy. Making an automatic internal attribution is a lot easier and requires less effort than making an external attribution, therefore, people will make the internal attribution since it requires less cognitive power.c. People don’t fully understand the situation that the behavior occurs in.d. Our language is very rich of words to describe personality traits, but our languagelacks words to describe situations.i. Language can label a behavior, but it cannot explain it!These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.Basically, people make the FAE because it is easy to make and because the behavior of a person is more noticeable than the situation which the behavior occurs in.II. Actor-Observer EffectThe “actor-observer” effect is modeled by the fact that people tend to attribute their own behavior to external (situational) factors and attribute the same behavior in other people to internal (personality, character) factors.*Note: Do NOT mix up the actor-observer effect with the self-serving bias/attributions. The actor-observer effect is a result of cognitive processes, because we are aware of our own situations more than we are aware of other people’s situations, whereas the self-serving biases/attributions are due to motivation distortion (want to save their self-esteem).III. Over-justification EffectThe over-justification effect is the tendency for people’s intrinsic motivation to decline/be undermined after giving them an extrinsic reason for doing the behavior. Intrinsic motivation is motivation to do an activity because the actor purely enjoys the activity. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is motivation to do an activity because of the things the activity leads to (for example, no one really wants to mop a floor unless they are given extrinsic motivation—money).a. There are limitations of the over-justification effect: [over-justification effect does not happen if…]1. The extrinsic inducement is never removed2. The extrinsic reward comes as a surprise (i.e. after the behavior)3. The extrinsic reward sends a message of competence to the
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