error of attribution

1. What is the difference between dispositional factors and situational factors?

     A situational factor would be things outside once immediate control, eg, the enviornment, the actions of a person they dont know, or it could even be like the equipment one uses. For example: Floods happen close to your hometown. you would feel fear and sadness, fear if the flood will continue moving to your town. sadness for the neighbor town's  damage.

     Dispositional factor has to do with a person ( internal) impact like an action or even that changed you or affected you psychologically. For example: you have been bited by an  dog when you were little, then once you grown up, but the fear of dog will never disappear, because you have such experiment tells you dog is dangerous.

 

2. Explain and give an example of the fundamental error of attribution.

     The fundamental attribution error happens all the time in our lives.  It happens when we are estimating someone we dont really know by some of the behavior or clue we perceive from that person. For example: when people are driving the cars, out of sudden an driver drive rashly and cut line infront of you  without any warn. Then you would be mad at that driver and give a bad impression to him/her, because he is rude and stupid to cut the line infront of you without any warn. Or, you would think maybe he/ she has something really important that she/he forgot the rule and that is more understandable.

3. Explain and give an example of the self-serving-bias error of attribution.

    A self-serving bias is when a person describes their own behavior and tend to choose attributions that are favorable to themselves. Which means that people like to take credit for their good actions and let the situation account for their bad actions. For example:  I did not do well on the mock exam, if you ask me why i didnt do well? I would blame for some external conditions immediately, like: it was too noisy out there, or i did not sleep well, i was ill. but I wont say, i did not do well because im stupid nor i m a bad student. That is Self-serving- bias.

4. Explain two possible explanations for these errors.

  people are having the  fundamental attribution error is because we are judging or complimenting someone by the first impression and we dont think any deeply.

   But on the self-serving- bias, people are always trying to get compliment from the others when they have done something right because  they feel good about themselves, but people usually dont want take responsibility when they make mistakes, so people would let the situation account for their mistakes but not themselves.

5. What does the study by Miyamoto and Kitayama tell us about cultural differences in attribution errors?

    it tells us that people from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental- attribution error hat people from collectivist culture. And the research suggest that individualist cultures engage in self-serving bias more than do collectivist cultures

The week for psychology

Asch’s studies of conformity (1956)

Your assignment is to choose two of the studies listed above, research them in detail and write a brief summary about each.  Your summaries should include:

• the aim of the study
• the basic method of the study
• the results
• the conclusions
• strengths and limitations
• ethical concerns

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment (1971)
  This is a most controversial experiment even now.  Phil Zimbardo and his colleagues started this experiment on August 17, 1971.Zimbardo choose 24 healthy and most psychologically stable college students by paying 15 dollar per day as volunteers.  It suppose  be an experiment last 1-2 weeks, but it did not last long- 6 days only exact. Zimbardo was forced to pull the plug because of the disturbing behavior from guards and negative reactions from the prisoners. The aim of the study was to explore the psychology of prison life and what kind of situation are affecting people's behavior- to make miserable .
the method in this study was quite simple: the 24 male were randomly assigned to 2 groups, which were prison guards(12), and Prisoners(12). The guard were given power to deliver punishments as they saw necessary, they also had to wore sunglasses to prevent any eye contact and wore the army clothes just like real guard. Prisoners wore dirty and uncomfortable prisoner clothes. They also wore chains around their ankles to remind them of their powerlessness.

but the results were unexpected : at the first few days, guards were abusing their power in a horrific way, and those prisoners were violently abused and humiliated on a regular basis. These normal healthy students were turning into monster in less than 72 hours. The experiment was totally out of control before Zimbardo's attention.  At the second day, the riot broke out, some guards used fired extinguishers to batter protesters- when the research team werent around.  Those guards became wild, unpredictable violent and sadistic.
At the same time, within 36 hours since the experiment started, one of the prisoners started to show signs of insanity.( began react crazy, to scream , to curse. and he was really suffering and regretted, and wanted to be released.)

the conclude of this study support the idea of situational attribution, rather than dis-positional attribution.
means it was the situation that turned the guards to become sadistic and violent, not their personalities.
Also, this study is used to support the cognitive Dissonance Theory.

However, it has always been a controversial experiment event, because as doing the study, should not give any harm nor psychologically issues. But we can see almost all people involved got mental disturbance, which is highly unethical!  It should least protect the safety of the participants.