Social Perception

Social perception is a term in social psychology that defines an individual’s ability to create an impression or judgment of other individuals or social groups. This is formed through observation and understanding existing information about an individual and drawing out conclusions from the information. This kind of perception is classified under social cognition, the brain’s ability to store and process available information associated with creatures of the same species. Aside from available information, observers with different moods and temperament can account for a variety of perceptions.

Social perception in psychology and other cognitive sciences can also be described as that part of perception that allows people to understand the individuals and groups of their social world, and thus an element of social cognition. It also allows people to determine how others affect their personal lives.

Many psychologists and sociologists agree that an individual’s social perception can have some inaccuracies or even be utterly wrong. It is inevitable that people will have biases, which causes wrong perception. One example is the in-group bias. An individual is more likely to perceive someone in a positive light if he is a member of the individual’s group, such as in a family or a clique. This favouritism can also be seen among romantic couples, where a partner sees more of his partner’s good qualities as opposed to the bad. In contrast, an individual can have prejudice against someone who is not affiliated with the group.

Another kind of biased social perception is the halo effect. Usually, people have a tendency to associate positive qualities with people who are physically attractive, rather than with people who might be plain-looking or even ugly. Studies have shown that babies react more to pictures of beautiful women, by staring at them longer, than to pictures of less-appealing women. The halo effect can also explain why many people have judged and misunderstood subcultures to be rebellious, anti-social, and even disruptive.

Social perception can also be affected by nonverbal communication. In a process called joint attention, a person can hint to his companion to judge an object or another person by merely looking and pointing. A person’s smile or smirk towards a subject can hugely influence another person’s opinion of it, whether positive or negative. Social perception is an individual’s way of making order of his environment.

Perceiving a person or an object as such can greatly determine the individual’s actions. A dark alleyway, for example, will always be seen as a dangerous part of the street and will almost always be avoided. Tourists who are in need of direction will most likely approach a person who looks friendly or who is already smiling. In a way,

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social perception helps an individual decide on an action that will secure his betterment or survival.

While social perceptions can be flawed, they help people to form impressions of others by making the necessary information available to assess what people are like. Missing information is filled in by using an implicit personality theory: if a person is observed to have one particular trait, observers tend to assume that he or she has other traits related to this observed one. These assumptions help to “categorize” people and then infer additional facts and predict behaviour.

Social perceptions are also interlinked with self-perceptions. Both are influenced by self-motives. Society has the desire to achieve beneficial outcomes for the self and to maintain a positive self-image, both for personal psychic benefits and because we know that others perceive us as well. It is human nature to want to create a good impression on others, almost as if self-perceptions are others’ social perceptions.

Theories of Social Perception

1. The Social Identity Theory

Social Identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group as originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 80s. The social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to explain intergroup behaviour.

Social identity theory is best described as primarily a theory that predicts certain intergroup behaviours on the basis of the perceived status, legitimacy and permeability of the intergroup environment. This contrasts with occasions where the term social identity theory is used to refer to general theorizing about human social selves. Moreover, and although some researchers have treated it as such, social identity theory was never intended to be a general theory of social categorization. It was awareness of the limited scope of social identity theory that led John Turner and colleagues to develop a cousin theory in the form of self-categorization theory, which built on the insights of social identity theory to produce a more general account of self and group processes.

The Interpersonal-Intergroup Continuum

Social identity theory states that social behaviour will vary along a continuum between interpersonal behaviour and intergroup behaviour. Completely interpersonal behaviour would be a behaviour determined solely by the individual characteristics and interpersonal relationships that exists between two or more people. Completely intergroup behaviour would be behaviour determined solely by the social category memberships that apply to two or more people. It is toward this

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latter end of the spectrum where an individual’s social identities are predicated to be highly influential.

The authors of social identity theory state that purely interpersonal or purely intergroup behaviour is unlikely to be found in realistic social situations. Rather, behaviour is expected to be driven by a compromise between the two extremes. The cognitive nature of personal versus social identities, and the relationship between them, is more fully developed in self-categorization theory. The social identity theory instead focuses on the social structural factors that will predict which end of the spectrum will most influence an individual’s behaviour, along with the forms that that behaviour may take.

Positive Distinctiveness

A key assumption in social identity theory is that individuals are intrinsically motivated to achieve positive distinctiveness. That is, individuals “strive for a positive self-concept”. As individuals to varying degrees may be defined and informed by their respective social identities (as per the interpersonal-intergroup continuum) it is further derived in social identity theory that “individuals strive to achieve or to maintain positive social identity”. It should be noted that the precise nature of this strive for positive self-concept is a matter of debate (see the self esteem hypothesis).

Both the interpersonal-intergroup continuum and the assumption of positive distinctiveness motivation arose as outcomes of the findings of minimal group studies. In particular, it was found that under certain conditions individuals would endorse resource distributions that would maximize the positive distinctiveness of an in-group in contrast to an out-group at the expense of personal self-interest.

Positive Distinctiveness Strategies

Building on the above components, social identity theory details a variety of strategies that may be invoked in order to achieve positive distinctiveness. The individual’s choice of behaviour is posited to be dictated largely by the perceived intergroup relationship. In particular the choice of strategy is an outcome of the perceived permeability of group boundaries, as well as the perceived stability and legitimacy of the intergroup status hierarchy. The self enhancing strategies detailed in social identity theory are detailed below. Importantly, although these are viewed from the perspective of a low status group member, comparable behaviours may also be adopted by high status group members.

Individual Mobility

It is predicted that under conditions where the group boundaries are considered permeable (e.g. a group member may pass from a low status group into a high status

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group) individuals are more likely to engage in individual mobility strategies. That is, individuals “disassociate from the group and pursue individual goals designed to improve their personal lot rather than that of their in-group”.

Social Creativity

Where group boundaries are considered impermeable, and where status relations are considered reasonably stable, individuals are predicted to engage in social creativity behaviours. Here, without changing necessarily the objective resources of in the in-group or the out-group, low status in-group members are still able to increase their positive distinctiveness. This may be achieved by comparing the in-group to the out-group on some new dimension, changing the values assigned to the attributes of the group, and choosing an alternative out-group by which to compare the in-group.

Social Competition

Here an in-group seeks positive distinctiveness via direct competition with the out-group in the form of in-group favouritism. It is considered competitive in that in this case favouritism for the in-group occurs on a value dimension that is shared by all relevant social groups (in contrast to social creativity scenarios). Social competition is predicted to occur where group boundaries are considered impermeable, and where status relations are considered to be reasonably unstable. Although not privileged in the theory, it is this identity management strategy that has received the greatest amount of attention.

Implications

In-group Favouritism:

In-group favouritism (also sometimes known as in-group bias, despite Turner's objections) is an effect where people give preferential treatment to others when they are perceived to be in the same in-group. Social identity attributes the cause of in-group favouritism to a psychological need for positive distinctiveness and describes the situations where in-group favouritism is likely to occur (as a function of perceived group status, legitimacy, stability, and permeability). It has been shown via the minimal group studies that in-group favouritism may occur for both arbitrary in groups (e.g. a coin toss may split participants into a ‘heads’ group and a ‘tails’ group) as well as non-arbitrary in-groups (e.g. in-groups based on cultures, genders, and first languages).

Importantly, “although vulgarized versions of social identity theory argue that ‘social identification leads automatically to discrimination and bias’, in fact, discrimination and conflict are anticipated only in a limited set of circumstances”. The likening of

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social identity theory with social competition and in-group favouritism is partly attributable to the fact that early statements of the theory included empirical examples of in-group favouritism, while alternative identity management strategies were at that stage theoretical assertion.

Applications

Prejudice:

Prejudice is drawing (typically) negative assumptions about someone or something before having enough information to guarantee accuracy of those judgments. In respect to social identity, the integrated threat theory of prejudice states that four types of perceived threats felt from an out-group act as triggers for inter-group prejudice: realistic threats (those to body and possessions, for example), symbolic threats (those to ways of life), inter-group anxiety, and negative stereotypes. In studies of cultural prejudice, not all four types of threats need to be involved for prejudice to be observed. Additional research in cultural prejudice discovered that realistic threats have larger impacts on prejudice displayed by people who highly identify with the in-group, symbolic threats and negative stereotypes have no significant effect differences between high and low identifiers, and inter-group anxiety plays a more significant role for low identifiers.

Additionally, social identity influences the perception of a person being prejudiced. In-group members tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt in ambiguous situations, attributing events to external rather than internal causes. As such, research shows that people who share in-group status with the potential targets of potentially prejudicial behaviour, as well as people who display moral credentials are less likely to be judged as prejudiced by in-group members than by out-group members.

2. Self Verification Theory

Self Verification is a social perception theory that asserts why people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, that is self-views (including self-concepts and self-esteem). A competing theory to self-verification is self-enhancement or the drive for positive evaluations.

Because chronic self-concepts and self-esteem play an important role in understanding the world, providing a sense of coherence, and guiding action, people become motivated to maintain them through self-verification. Such strivings provide stability to people’s lives, making their experiences more coherent, orderly, and comprehensible than they would be otherwise. Self-verification processes are also

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adaptive for groups, groups of diverse backgrounds and the larger society, in that they make people predictable to one another thus serve to facilitate social interaction. To this end, people engage in a variety of activities that are designed to obtain self-verifying information.

Developed by William Swann (1983), the theory grew out of earlier writings which held that people form self-views so that they can understand and predict the responses of others and know how to act toward them.

Difference between Positive and Negative Self-Views

There are individual differences in people’s views of themselves. Among people with positive self-views, the desire for self-verification works together with another important motive, the desire for positive evaluations or “self enhancement”. For example, those who view themselves as “insightful” will find that their motive for both self-verification and self-enhancement encourage them to seek evidence that other people recognize their insightfulness.

In contrast, people with negative self-views will find that the desire for self-verification and self-enhancement are competing. Consider people who see themselves as disorganized. Whereas their desire for self-enhancement will compel them to seek evidence that others perceive them as organized, their desire for self-verification will compel such individuals to seek evidence that others perceive them as disorganized. Self-verification strivings tend to prevail over self-enhancement strivings when people are certain of the self-concept and when they have extremely depressive self-views.

Self-verification strivings may have undesirable consequences for people with negative self-views (depressed people and those who suffer from low self-esteem). For example, self-verification strivings may cause people with negative self-views to gravitate toward partners who mistreat them, undermine their feelings of self-worth, or even abuse them. And if people with negative self-views seek therapy, returning home to a self-verifying partner may undo the progress that was made there. Finally, in the workplace, the feelings of worthlessness that plague people with low self-esteem may foster feelings of ambivalence about receiving fair treatment, feelings that may undercut their propensity to insist that they get what they deserve from their employers (i.e.: workplace bullying).

These findings and related ones point to the importance of efforts to improve the self-views of those who suffer from low self-esteem and depression.

Effects on Behaviour

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In one series of studies, researchers asked participants with positive and negative self-views whether they would prefer to interact with evaluators who had favourable or unfavourable impressions of them. The results showed that those with positive self-views preferred favourable partners and those with negative self-views preferred unfavourable partners. The latter finding revealed that self-verification strivings may sometimes trump positivity strivings.

Self-verification motives operate for different dimensions of the self-concept and in many different situations. Men and women are equally inclined to display this tendency, and it does not matter whether the self-views refer to characteristics that are relatively immutable (e.g., intelligence) or changeable (e.g., diligence), or whether the self-views happen to be highly specific (e.g., athletic) or global (e.g., low self-esteem, worthlessness). Furthermore, when people chose negative partners over positive ones, it is not merely in an effort to avoid interacting with positive evaluators (that is, out of a concern that they might disappoint such positive evaluators). Rather, people chose self-verifying, negative partners even when the alternative is participating in a different experiment. Finally, recent work has shown that people work to verify self-views associated with group memberships. For example, women seek evaluations that confirm their belief that they possess qualities associated with being a woman.

Self-verification theory suggests that people may begin to shape others’ evaluations of them before they even begin interacting with them. They may, for example, display identity cues (i.e.: impression management). The most effective identity cues enable people to signal who they are to potential interaction partners.

Physical appearance, such as clothes, body posture, demeanor. For example, the low self-esteem person who evokes reactions that confirm her negative self-views by slumping her shoulders and keeping her eyes fixed on the ground.

Other cues, such as the car someone buys, the house they live in, the way they decorate their living environment. For example, an SUV (a Jeep) evokes reactions that confirm a person's positive self-view.

Self-verification strivings may also influence the social contexts that people enter into and remain in. People reject those who provide social feedback that does not confirm their self-views, such as married people with negative self-views who reject spouses who see them positively and vice-versa. College roommates behave in a similar manner. People are more inclined to divorce partners who perceived them too favourably. In each of these instances, people gravitated toward relationships that provided them with evaluations that confirmed their self-views and fled from those that did not.

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When people fail to gain self-verifying reactions through the display of identity cue or through choosing self-verifying social environments, they may still acquire such evaluations by systematically evoking confirming reactions. For example, depressed people behave in negative ways toward their roommates, thus causing these roommates to reject them.

Self-verification theory predicts that when people interact with others, there is a general tendency for them to bring others to see them as they see themselves. This tendency if especially pronounced when they start out believing that the other person has misconstrued them, apparently because people compensate by working especially hard to bring others to confirm their self-views. People will even stop working on tasks to which they have been assigned if they sense that their performance is eliciting non-verifying feedback.

3. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The theory of cognitive dissonance in social perception proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements. An example of this would be the conflict between wanting to smoke and knowing that smoking is unhealthy; a person may try to change their feelings about the odds that they will actually suffer the consequences, or they might add the consonant element that the smoking is worth short term benefits. A general view of cognitive dissonance is when one is biased towards a certain decision even though other factors favour an alternative.

Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment.

The phrase was coined by Leon Festinger in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, which chronicled the followers of a UFO cult as reality clashed with their fervent belief in an impending apocalypse. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology. Cognitive disequilibrium is a closely related concept in the cognitive developmental theory of Jean Piaget: the inevitable conflicts a child experiences between current beliefs and new information will lead to disequilibrium, which in turn motivates the child's progress through the various stages of development.

Cognitive dissonance theory warns that people have a bias to seek consonance among their cognitions. According to Festinger, we engage in a process he termed “dissonance reduction”, which he said could be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors. This bias gives the theory its

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predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling irrational and even destructive behaviour.

A classical illustration of cognitive dissonance is expressed in the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop (ca. 620–564 BCE). In the story, a fox sees some high-hanging grapes and wishes to eat them. When the fox is unable to think of a way to reach them, he decides that the grapes are probably not worth eating, with the justification the grapes probably are not ripe or that they are sour (hence “sour grapes”). This example follows a pattern: one desires something, finds it unattainable, and reduces one's dissonance by criticizing it. Jon Elster calls this pattern "adaptive preference formation".

Perhaps the most famous case in the early study of cognitive dissonance was described by Leon Festinger and others in the book When Prophecy Fails. The authors infiltrated a religious group that was expecting the imminent end of the world on a certain date. When that date passed without the world ending, the movement did not disband. Instead, the group came to believe that they had been spared in order to spread their teachings to others, a justification that resolved the conflict between their previous expectations and reality.

There are other ways that cognitive dissonance is involved in shaping our views about people, as well as our own identities.

For instance, Self-evaluation maintenance theory suggests that people feel dissonance when their cherished skills or traits are outmatched by close social ties (e.g. Jill the painter feels dissonance because she is friends with a master painter - Jill can either care less about painting, or justify her inferiority in some other way). Balance theory suggests people have a general tendency to seek consonance between our views, and the views or characteristics of others (e.g. the religious believer feels dissonance because his partner does not believe the same things - dissonance which the believer will be motivated to justify). People may self handicap so that any failures during an important task are easier to justify (e.g. the student who drinks the night before an important exam in response to his fear of performing poorly).

4. The Implicit Personality Theory

People tend to group sets of personality traits together. Such groupings are part of each person’s implicit personality theory. When we observe that a person has some of the traits in a cluster, we automatically assume that s/he has the rest as well (Hochwalder, 1995). If one meets a warm, friendly and intelligent person, one will assume also that s/he is trustworthy and dependable if one tend to implicitly group those characteristics together [warm, friendly, intelligent, trustworthy and

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dependable].

If one believes that people who are detached and aloof are also arrogant and cold-hearted, your observation of an aloof person will lead one to also assume that s/he is also arrogant and cold-hearted [aloof, arrogant and cold-hearted].

The theory states that we each have about the relationships of certain traits helps us deal with the complex information we receive in social interactions. Using this model, one would have a more favourable impression or a not so favourable impression about an individual been evaluated. On the other hand, one might average these pieces of information, in which case, ones impression about the person been observed will just be about the same – that is a warm person is simply warm without all the other traits like friendly, intelligent, trustworthy and dependable added on to it, or an aloof person, just aloof and not arrogant and cold-hearted. The average of the two or more pieces of information, in this case your impression would remain about the same – the average of the favourable traits would be close to the value of each of them alone.

The averaging model is probably closer to what you would actually do, except that it would not be so quite simple. Instead, certain pieces of information would be seen as more important, and thus would be weighted more heavily than others; ones overall impression would represent a weighted average of the information one have about the person.

5. The Drive Theory

The terms drive theory and drive reduction theory refer to a diverse set of motivational theories in social psychology. The Drive Reduction Theory, developed by Clark Hull in 1943, was the first theory for motivation (Dewey, 2007). Drive is an “excitatory state produced by a homeostatic disturbance” (Seward, 1956). The drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain psychological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied. When a need is satisfied, drive is reduced and the organism returns to a state of homeostasis and relaxation. According to the theory, drive tends to increase over time and operates on a feedback control system, much like a thermostat.

In social psychology, the drive theory was used by Robert Zajonc in 1965 as an explanation of the phenomenon of social facilitation. The audience effect notes that in some cases the presence of a passive audience will facilitate the better performance of a task, while in other cases the presence of an audience will inhibit

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the performance of a task. Zajonc’s drive theory suggests that the variable determining direction of performance is whether the task is composed of a correct dominant response (that is, the task is perceived as being subjectively easy to the individual) or an incorrect dominant response (perceived as being subjectively difficult).

In the presence of a passive audience, an individual is in a heightened state of arousal. Increased arousal, or stress, causes the individual to enact behaviours that form dominant responses, since an individual’s dominant response is the most likely response, given the skills which are available. If the dominant response is correct, then social presence enhances performance of the task. However, if the dominant response is incorrect, social presence produces an impaired performance.

Corroborative Evidence

Such behaviour was first noticed by Triplett (1898) while observing the cyclists who were racing together versus cyclists who were racing alone. It was found that the mere presence of other cyclists produced greater performance. A similar effect was observed by Chen (1937) in ants building colonies. However, it was not until Zajonc investigated this behaviour in the 1960s that any empirical explanation for the audience effect was pursued.

Zajonc’s drive theory is based on an experiment involving the investigation of the effect of social facilitation in cockroaches. Zajonc devised a study in which individual cockroaches were released into a tube, at the end of which there was a light. In the presence of other cockroaches as spectators, cockroaches were observed to achieve a significantly faster time in reaching the light than those in the control, no-spectator group. However, when cockroaches in the same conditions were given a maze to negotiate, performance was impaired in the spectator condition, demonstrating that incorrect dominant responses in the presence of an audience impair performance.

Evaluation Apprehension

Cottrell’s Evaluation Apprehension model later refined this theory to include yet another variable in the mechanisms of social facilitation. He suggested that the correctness of dominant responses only plays a role in social facilitation when there is an expectation of social reward or punishment based on performance. His study differs in design from Zajonc’s as he introduced a separate condition in which participants were given tasks to perform in the presence of an audience that was blindfolded, and thus unable to evaluate the participant's performance. It was found that no social facilitation effect occurred, and hence the anticipation of performance

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evaluation must play a role in social facilitation. Evaluation apprehension, however, is only key in human social facilitation and not observed in animals.

Attribution

Attribution is a concept in social psychology addressing the processes by which individuals explain the causes of behaviour and events; attribution theory is an umbrella term for various models that attempt to explain those processes. Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider in the early part of the 20th century, subsequently developed by others such as Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner.

Attribution is commonly misused to imply ‘identification’. An attribution is however not an identification. Attributions always retain an element of doubt, either due to the rarity of the item, atypical physical characteristics or other factors. An attribution is a subjective declaration, or opinion, and if additional scholarly information becomes available at a later date, an attribution may be subject to change. Identification, on the other hand, is not subject to change. Identification presents the exact nature of an object and/or its origins without question as to the accuracy of that determination.

Background

Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider during the early years of the 20th century. In his 1920’s dissertation Heider addressed a fundamental problems of phenomenology; why do perceivers attribute the properties of an object they sense, such as its colour, texture and so on, to the object itself when those properties exist only in their minds? Heider’s answer was to consider the object being perceived and the physical media by which it is sensed – the ticking of a watch causing vibrations in the air for instance – to be quite distinct, and that what the perceiver’s senses do is to reconstruct an object from its effect on the media, a process he called attribution. “Perceivers faced with sensory data thus see the perceptual object as ‘out there’, because they attribute the sensory data to their underlying causes in the world”.

Heider subsequently extended his ideas to the question of how people perceive each other, and in particular how they account for each other’s behaviour, person perception. Motives played an important role in Heider’s model: “motives, intentions, sentiments ... the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behaviour”. Heider distinguished between personal causality – such as offering someone a drink – and impersonal causality such as sneezing, or leaves falling. Later

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attribution theorists have tended to see Heider's fundamental distinction as being between person (or internal) causes and situation (or external) causes of behaviour.

Types

Explanatory Attribution

People make explanatory attributions to understand the world around them and to seek reasons for a particular event. For example, if Jacob’s car tire is punctured he may attribute that to a hole in the road; by making attributions to the poor condition of the highway, he can make sense of the event without any discomfiture that it may in reality have been the result of his bad driving.

Interpersonal Attribution

Sometimes, when our action or motives for the action are questioned, we need to explain the reasons for such actions. Interpersonal attributions happen when the causes of the events involve two or more individuals. More specifically, you will always want to present yourself in the most positive light in interpersonal attributions. For example, let’s say Bola and her boyfriend had a fight. When Bola explains her situation to her friends, she will say she tried everything to avoid a fight but she will blame her boyfriend that he nonetheless started a fight. This way, Bola is seen as a peacemaker to her friends whereas her boyfriend is seen as the one who started it all.

Theories

Common Sense Psychology

Fritz Heider tried to explore the nature of interpersonal relationship, and espoused the concept of what he called “common sense” or “naïve psychology”. In his theory, he believed that people observe, analyze, and explain behaviors with explanations. Although people have different kinds of explanations for the events of human behaviors, Heider found it is very useful to group explanation into two categories; Internal (personal) and external (situational) attributions. When an internal attribution is made, the cause of the given behaviour is assigned to the individual’s characteristics such as ability, personality, mood, efforts, attitudes, or disposition. When an external attribution is made, the cause of the given behaviour is assigned to the situation in which the behaviour was seen such as the task, other people, or luck (that the individual producing the behaviour did so because of the surrounding environment or the social situation). These two types lead to very different perceptions of the individual engaging in a behaviour.

Correspondent Inference Theory

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Correspondent inferences state that people make inferences about a person when his or her actions are freely chosen, are unexpected, and result in a small number of desirable effects. According to Edward E. Jones and Keith Davis’ Correspondent Inference Theory, people make correspondent inferences by reviewing the context of behaviour. It describes how people try to find out individual’s personal characteristics from the behavioural evidence. People make inferences on the basis of three factors; degree of choice, expectedness of behaviour, and effects of someone’s behaviours.

Co-variation Model of Attribution

When there is low consensus and distinctiveness, people make personal attributions for behaviors that are high in consistency. On the other hand, people make stimulus attributions when there is high consensus and distinctiveness.

Co-variation principle states that people attribute behaviour to the factors that are present when a behaviour occurs and absent when it does not. Thus, the theory assumes that people make causal attributions in a rational, logical fashion, and that they assign the cause of an action to the factor that co-varies most closely with that action. Harold Kelley’s co-variation model of Attribution looks to three main types of information from which to make an attribution decision about an individual’s behaviour. The first is consensus information, or information on how other people in the same situation and with the same stimulus behave. The second is distinctiveness information, or how the individual responds to different stimuli. The third is consistency information, or how frequent the individual’s behaviour can be observed with similar stimulus but varied situations. From these three sources of information observers make attribution decisions on the individual’s behaviour as either internal or external.

Three Dimensional Model of Attribution

Bernard Weiner proposed that individuals have initial affective responses to the potential consequences of the intrinsic or extrinsic motives of the actor, which in turn influence future behaviour. That is, a person’s own perceptions or attributions determine the amount of effort the person will engage in activities in the future. Weiner suggests that individuals exert their attribution search and cognitively evaluate casual properties on the behaviors they experience. When attributions lead to positive affect and high expectancy of future success, such attributions should result in greater willingness to approach to similar achievement tasks in the future than those attributions that produce negative affect and low expectancy of future success. Eventually, such affective and cognitive assessment influences future behaviour when individuals encounter similar situations.

Weiner's achievement attribution has three categories:

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1. stable theory (stable and unstable)2. locus of control (internal and external)3. control (controllable or uncontrollable)

Stability influences individuals’ expectancy about their future; control is related with individuals’ persistence on mission; causality influences emotional responses to the outcome of task.

Application of Attribution

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness was first found in animals when psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier discovered that the classically conditioned dogs that got electrical shocks made no attempt to escape the situation. The dogs were placed in a box divided into two sections by a low barrier. Since one side of the box was electrified and the other was not, the dogs could easily avoid electrical shocks by hopping to the other side.

However, the dogs just stayed in the electrified side, helpless to change the situation. This learned helplessness also applies to human beings. People feel helpless when they feel powerless to change their situation. This happens when people attribute negative results to their internal, stable and global factors leading them to think they have no control over their situation. Making no attempt to avoid or better the situation will often exacerbate the situations that people are faced with, and may lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses.

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Barry D. Smith. Psychology: Science and Understanding (1st Ed). New Baskerville: Von Hoffmann Press Inc. 1998.

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Marques, J. M., Robalo, E. M., & Rocha, S. A. (1992). In-group bias and the “black sheep” effect: Assessing the impact of social identification and perceived variability on group judgments. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 331-352.

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