CHAPTER 3

SOCIAL COGNITION

INTRODUCTION

The way in which people come to an understanding of both others and themselves has been a major
focus of study for social psychologists. The topic is critical for an understanding of social behaviour
because how people process information and make judgments of others and how they explain the
causes of behaviour have an important influence on their own behaviour. Moreover, as you will see
in this unit, social psychologists have found that learning how people understand their own and
others’ behaviour provides a clear basis for solving a variety of everyday problems ranging from
insomnia to poor school performance.

Social cognition is the process in which people think about themselves and the social world – how they
select interpret, remember and use social information to make judgments and decisions. How people
think about the social world’s people rely on a variety of mental shortcuts that serve them well. They
use quite practical, adopt different procedures and rules according to their goals and needs in that
situation.

In an early study on person perception Harold Kelly (1950) gave a group to students one of two
descriptions of a lecturer whom they had never met, and then had the lecturer lead a discussion. In
one case, students were told that the lecturer was a rather warm person, industrious, critical, practical
and determined. But in a second condition, a group of students was told that the same lecturer was
“a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical and determined.” The crucial difference was the
substitution of the word cold for warm in the second description. You may be surprised to learn that
the substitution made a drastic change in the way the lecturer was viewed in the two conditions.
Students who were told that the lecturer was cold rated him far less positively after the discussion
than those who were told that he was warm, although the behaviour of the lecturer was invariant
across the two conditions. The Kelley experiment, now considered a classic, illustrates an early view
of person perception, which concentrated on the way in which individuals focus on particular traits
when forming overall impressions of others. According to this perspective, certain traits play an
unusually large role in determining a general impression. These traits are known as central traits.
Central traits serve to organise the impression and provide a framework for interpreting information
that is received subsequently. Solomon Asch (1946) suggested that the meaning of additional
descriptive traits is altered by the presence of a central trait. Thus the word “determined” when
describing and individual means something very different, depending upon whether it is preceded by
the word “warm” or “cold”.

Schemas: Holding our Impressions Together

Given the diversity of people and settings that one encounters passing through everyday life, we might
suspect that people could easily become overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of information relating
to what others are like. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, people need to organise their impressions
of others. The way that they are able to do this is through the production of schemas. Schemas are
organised bodies of information stored in memory. The information in a schema provides a
representation of the way in which social world operates as well as allowing us to categorise and
interpret new information related to the schema. We all hold schemas relating to everyday objects in
our environment. We might, for instance, hold a schema for automobiles –we have an idea of what
they look like, how they are used, what they can do for us and how to differentiate them from other
vehicles such as buses and horse and buggy. More importantly, from a social psychological point of
view we hold a schema for particular people (one’s mother, girlfriend, boyfriend, brother, or sister)
and of classes of people playing a given role (mail carriers, teachers, or librarians). Each of these
schemas provides a way of organising behaviour into meaningful wholes.

Like a scientist, all of us, in our everyday lives, develop theories that help us understand ourselves and
the social world. These theories called Schemas are mental structures people use to organise their
knowledge around themes or topics or subject. A schema is a way of representing the memory
process. In other words, people do not respond to what they see, rather they interpret it based on
previous experience that is represented in memory as a schema.

Self-schema is defined as a generalisation about the self-based on experience we use to interpret

events related to the self. Similarly, we have schemata about other people too.

The general form of schema can be defined as an organised configuration of knowledge, derived from
past experience that is used to interpret our experience.

We have schemas about many things – other people, ourselves, social roles and specific events.
Schemas effect what information we notice, think about and remember.

Schemas are often resistant to change – they show a strong perseverance effect, remaining unchanged
even in the face of contradictory information. Perhaps even worse schemas can sometime be self
fulfilling.
People have role schema – these represent the organised abstract concepts we have of people in a
particular role, such as cowboy, professor, devoted lover.

Other schemas focus on groups. The most familiar is the group stereotype – it is belief about typical
characteristics of members of a group or social category, and which attributes specific traits to a
particular group of people. Example: certain communities are assumed to be stingy (money wise),
absent minded or aggressive etc.

Prototypes

Prototype – is an abstract ideal of the schema – for example may be about his body type, mannerisms
etc. we assume leaders to be busy – so a well composed and relaxed leader goes contrary to our
schema.

Schemas about extremely common events are usually called scripts. A script is a standard sequence
of behaviour over a period of time. The essence of a script is in its boundedness in time, its causal flow
and its being simple, coherent, perceptual unit – ex: a wedding in a community goes through a serious
of rituals connected to each other and follow a pattern many schemas contain. Ex: a category that
embodies the significant attribute or ideal of the category – for example in India the name of Sachin
Tendulkar is an exemplar of the category ‘cricket’.

The personality types that we derive in the case of person perception are organised into schemas
known as prototypes. Prototypes are schemas that organise a group of personality traits into a
meaningful personality type. For example, Nancy cantor and walter Mischel (1979) suggest a
frequently held prototype concerns a person labeled on a general level as committed. At the most
specific level called the subordinate level— the prototype consists of different types of committed
individuals for example monks, nuns and activists. At the middle level of specificity, there are basic
classes of individuals: the religious devotee or social activist. The subordinate and middle levels of
specificity are subsumed under the broader super ordinate level which encompasses the prototype as
a whole.

The importance of prototypes lies in three directions:

i) Prototypes allow people to recall more readily, recognise and categorise information about
others. In a sense then information processing capabilities are enhanced through the use of
prototypes.
ii) Prototypes help us to organise the social world around us. By observing relatively few traits
or behaviours, we are able to categorise people into certain prototypes and this in turn allows
us to form expectations about others’ behaviours.
iii) Prototypes allow people to plan behaviour in social interactions more readily.

FUNCTION OR SCHEMATIC PROCESSING

Advantages

Schemas and information processing – schemas help us process an enormous amount of information
swiftly and economically.

Schemas aid recall – memory often works best when we have a schema representation of past event
or people.

Schema speed up processing – it is easier to process information relevant to the schema.

Schemas aid automatic inference – schematic processing can occur almost automatically, without any
conscious effort. When meeting a friendly person, you may automatically attribute to him other
characteristics associated with friendliness – kindness wart.

Schema aid information – schema can help us fill in missing information where there are gaps in our
knowledge.

Schemas aid interpretation – schemas help you interpret ambiguous situation.

A person having no knowledge about ‘mumps’ would have no confusion about other inferences
about ‘mumps’ schemas allow confident inferences about matters that would otherwise not be clear.

Schemas provide expectations – schemas contain expectations about what should happen expected
match lead to unpleasantness.

Schemas contain affect – use of a particular schema can produce an emotional response called
‘schema-drives-affect’ - for example schema for politician. This schema can have ‘affective response’
attached to it. Some of us feel positively about politician and think of them as helpful law makers, but
others may feel negatively thinking of them as power hungry and corrupt.

Heuristics

Although we think all human beings are rational, logical and do cognitive effort to analyse our social
worlds, Fiske and Taylor argued that we are quite the opposite i.e. we are cognitive misers. As
cognitive misers we are reluctant to expand our cognitive resources and we look for any opportunity
to avoid engaging in the effortful thoughts. According to Fiske and Taylor, our mental processing
resources are highly valued, so we engage in numerous ways to save time and effort when trying to
understand the social world.
People save time and effort in making judgments by using heuristics. Heuristics are time saving
mental shortcuts that reduce complex judgment to simple rules of thumb. They are quick and easy
but can result in biased information processing (Ajzen,1996) they have been used instead of more
time consuming, but more accurate, strategies. The most commonly used types of heuristics are –
representatives and availability.

Representatives Heuristics – it is a tendency to allocate a set of attributes to some one if they

match the prototype of a given category. It is again quick and easy way of putting people into
categories.

The important draw back in such categorisation is the base rate fallacy which is the tendency to ignore
statistical information (base rates) in favor of representative ness information.

For example: Even when you have the data that ‘gender is uncorrected with managerial and
administrative roles in some organisations, there would be more likelihood of attributing more
managerial roles to men than women, because such roles are more representative of men than
women

The Availability Heuristic: it is the tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event in
terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event. It is related to the concept of accessibility,
which is the extent to which a concept is readily brought to mind.

For example: you might feel more anxiety about taking a flight if you have just heard about a horrific
plan crash.

This heuristic mechanism also gives rise to a bias called the false consensus effect (Gross & Miller,
1997). This is the tendency to exaggerate how common one’s own opinions are in the general
population.

The anchoring heuristics – It is often the case that a distinction is made between the availability
heuristic and another called anchoring heuristics. Anchoring is the tendency to be biased towards the
starting value (or anchor) in making quantitative judgement. It appears that our judgements on a
range of issues are significantly influenced by the point at which we start our deliberations ex: a harsh
verdict become subsequently harsher in their final decision than participants asked.

It is clear that we use heuristics routinely and consistently. In our daily life very often we do not have
time to think about every issue as important and self relevant and have all the information not that
often. Heuristic thought is used a great deal in social perception.
A unique heuristics that has received considerable attention from social psychologists because it
helps in understanding how people, think, feel and behave. It is a heuristic that defines attitudes and
social behaviour – social categorisation.

Construct

Construct is a key term for Kelly which is the way of interpreting the world and serves as a guide to
behaviour. Human beings have a tendency to choose constructs that will make the world
understandable and predictable. Kelly says that people do not strive for reinforcement or try to avoid
anxiety. They only try to validate their own construct system. He further suggests that conditions have
meanings only if they are constructed by the individual.

Social categorisation

Categorisation is the process if understanding what something is by knowing what other things it is
equivalent to and what other things it is different from. It is a way of classifying some collection of
objects, events, opinions, attitudes, concepts or people.

Categories are defined by prototype in dealing with social categories we can refer to prototype as
stereotype. How are they forming? Mostly based on social learning, experience and existing negative.
Stereotypes or shared distinctiveness.

Categories can be heterogeneous (made up of many different sorts of people) or homogeneous

(made up of only few people who are similar to each other).

Consequences of categorisation – categorisation typically leads to heightened accessibility of

stereotype consistent information. They do not only apply to relatively neutral categories like librarian
or waitress but seen to be also related to racial categories. These positive vs negative stereotypes
associated with different groups are therefore highly divisive and can contribute to continuing
problems of racial prejudice and discrimination.

Another important fact of Kelly’s is that every construct we use helps us to classify the similarities and
differences between people, objects and events. Each one of us develop only a limited number of
constructs and arrange them in order of importance. One person’s construct need not be identical
with another person’s, though they may be similar. He believes that to the extent that the constructs
are similar. People’s behaviour will be similar as well. For example: the belief system of a family. The
member of the family will behave similar if they have a strong belief system.
ATTRIBUTION: EXPLAINING THE CAUSES OF BEHAVIOUR

We turn now to an examination of how people observe behaviour and draw inferences about what
motivates behaviour. The process of attribution— an individual’s understanding of the reasons
behind peoples’ behaviour. Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and
how this relates to their thinking and behaviour. Heider (1958) was the first to propose a psychological
theory of attribution, but Weiner and colleagues (e.g., Jones et al, 1972; Weiner, 1974, 1986)
developed a theoretical framework that has become a major research paradigm of social psychology.

Correspondent Inference Theory

Correspondent inference theory (Jones & Davis, 1965) proposes that in order to make inference that
a person’s behaviour originated from personal dispositions, we firstly focus on the intention behind
the particular behaviour. Then we try to infer whether such intentions were caused by personal
dispositions or not. However, making such inferences becomes difficult because any particular
behaviour may produce number of effects. Therefore, to be convinced by our attributions we try to
discern that which of the effects the person actually intended and which were simply incidental. As a
perceiver, our decision about which of the several effects of the person’ behaviour was actually
intended depends on the factors that include the extent to which the effects were common, the
extent to which the effects were socially desirable and the extent to which the behaviour complied
with the normative perspective (Jones & Davis, 1965).

Firstly, the principle of non-common effects refers that we infer a person’s behaviour corresponding
to an underlying disposition when the behaviour has an exceptional or non-common effect which
could not be produced by any other behaviour.

Secondly, we tend to infer a person’s behaviour corresponding to an underlying disposition when the
outcomes consequent to the behaviour are socially undesirable. Being engaged in socially desirable
behaviours simply indicates our tendency to appear normal and like other people and does not specify
any personal disposition. However, low socially desirable behaviours are inferred because of a
personal disposition.
Finally, the perceiver evaluates the normativeness of the behaviour in order to infer that the
behaviour is resultant of the person’s personal disposition. Normativeness refers to the behaviour
which is normally expected from a person in given social situation. When behaviour does not conform
to the social norms in the situation the behaviour seems to have been freely chosen and not forced
on the person in question. Jones and Davis (1965) further argued that the behaviours complying to
the social norms generally do not reveal about the individual dispositions. Alternately, the behaviours
that contradict social norms are attributed to the personal dispositions.

Thus, correspondent inference theory states that we are most likely to conclude that others’
behaviour reflects their stable traits and dispositional factors (i.e., we are likely to reach
correspondent inferences about them), when that behaviour is freely chosen, yields distinctive, non-
common effects and is low in social desirability.

Jones and Davis’ theory helps us understand the process of making an internal attribution. They say
that we tend to do this when we see a correspondence between motive and behavior. For example,
when we see a correspondence between someone behaving in a friendly way and being a friendly
person. Dispositional (i.e., internal) attributions provide us with information from which we can make
predictions about a person’s future behavior. The correspondent inference theory describes the
conditions under which we make dispositional attributes to the behavior we perceive as intentional.
Davis used the term correspondent inference to refer to an occasion when an observer infers that a
person’s behavior matches or corresponds with their personality. It is an alternative term to
dispositional attribution.

So, what leads us to make a correspondent inference? Jones and Davis say we draw on five sources
of information:
1. Choice: If a behavior is freely chosen it is believed to be due to internal (dispositional) factors.

2. Accidental vs. Intentional Behavior: Behavior that is intentional is likely to be attributed to the
person’s personality, and behavior which is accidental is likely to be attributed to situation / external
causes.

3. Social Desirability: Behaviors low in sociable desirability (non conforming) lead us to make
(internal) dispositional inferences more than socially undesirable behaviors. For example, if you
observe a person getting on a bus and sitting on the floor instead of one of the seats. This behavior
has low social desirability (non conforming) and is likely to correspond with the personality of the
individual.

4. Hedonistic Relevance: If the other person’s behavior appears to be directly intended to benefit or
harm us.

5. Personalism: If the other person’s behavior appears to be intended to have an impact on us, we
assume that it is “personal”, and not just a by product of the situation we are both in.

Kelleys’ Casual Attribution Theory or Co-Variation Model

Covariation Model The theories discussed in the preceding sections primarily focus on make
attribution of behaviour on a single instance. However, in real life situations we make attributions of
person’s behaviour based on information obtained from several instances. Such multiple behavioural
observations and comparisons do not only facilitate the process of causal attribution, but also
increases the accuracy of attribution. Kelley (1967, 1973) proposed that we process and analyse the
information regarding a person’s behaviour obtained from several observations in the same way a
scientist does. Kelley argued that there may be various possible factors or causes of behaviour. In
order to identify these causes covariation principle is applied. We attribute the behaviour to the factor
that is both present when the behaviour occurs and absent when the behaviour fails to occur; the
cause that co-varies with the behaviour.

Suppose, while going toward your office you notice a road accident. There may be at least two
potential causes to which the accident may be attributed: internal causes (personal attributes of the
person involved in the accident, such as rough driving), external causes (abrupt driving by others,
sudden exposure to damaged road). Kelley (1967) proposed that while employing the principle of
covariation to determine whether the behaviour was caused by the internal causes or external causes,
people focus on three types of information: consensus, consistency and distinctiveness.
Consensus is the extent to which people react to a given stimulus or event in the same manner. It
refers to whether all persons behave in the same way or only a few people behave in that way. For
example, whether all persons driving on that side of road meet an accident (high consensus), or is
that person only who has encountered with an accident while driving on that side of road (low
consensus)?

Consistency refers to the extent to which the person behaves in the same way at different occasions
and situations. If the person meets an accident on many different occasions, his/her behaviour is
(similar) high in consistency. If s/he has been never met a road accident earlier, his/her behaviour is
low in consistency.

Distinctiveness refers to the extent to which the person behaves in a unique/ distinctive way to
various stimuli or events. The individual will show low distinctiveness if s/he behaves similarly in all
situations while there exists a high distinctiveness when the individual shows the behaviour in
particular situations only. If the person always gets involved in a road accident whenever s/he drives,
even when s/he drives on other roads, his/her behaviour (getting involved in the accident) is low in
distinctiveness. If the person does not get involved in an accident on other roads, his behaviour is high
in distinctiveness.

The causal attribution for the behaviour depends on the particular combination of consensus,
consistency and distinctiveness information that people associate with that behaviour. People usually
attribute a behaviour to the internal causes (personal characteristics of the person, the driver) when
the behaviour is low in consensus, low in distinctiveness and high in consistency. In contrast, people
usually attribute a behaviour to the external causes (rough driving by other drivers, the
context/damaged road) when the behaviour is high in consensus, high in distinctiveness and high in
consistency.
Attribution Theory of Three-Dimensional Model – Bernard Weiner

Attribution theory (Weiner, 1980, 1992) is probably the most influential theory with implications for
academic motivation. It emphasises the idea that learners are strongly motivated by the pleasant
outcome of being able to feel good about themselves. It incorporates cognitive theory and self-
efficacy theory in the sense that it emphasises that learners’ current self-perceptions will strongly
influence the ways in which they will interpret the success or failure of their current efforts and hence
their future tendency to perform these same behaviours.

According to attribution theory, the explanations that people tend to make to explain success or
failure can be analysed in terms of three sets of characteristics:

1) First, the cause of the success or failure may be internal or external. That is, we may succeed or
fail because of factors that we believe have their origin within us or because of factors that originate
in our environment.

2) Second, the cause of the success or failure may be either stable or unstable. If the we believe cause
is stable, then the outcome is likely to be the same if we perform the same behaviour on another
occasion. If it is unstable, the outcome is likely to be different on another occasion.
3) Third, the cause of the success or failure may be either controllable or uncontrollable. A
controllable factor is one which we believe we ourselves can alter if we wish to do so. An
uncontrollable factor is one that we do not believe we can easily alter. An internal factor can be
controllable (we can control our effort by trying harder) or uncontrollable (most people cannot easily
change their basic intellectual ability or change from being an introvert to being an extrovert).
Likewise, an external factor can be controllable (a person failing a difficult course could succeed by
taking an easier course) or uncontrollable (if calculus is difficult because it is abstract, it will still be
abstract no matter what we do).

An important assumption of attribution theory is that people will interpret their environment in such
a way as to maintain a positive self-image. That is, they will attribute their successes or failures to
factors that will enable them to feel as good as possible about themselves. In general, this means that
when learners succeed at an academic task, they are likely to want to attribute this success to their
own efforts or abilities; but when they fail, they will want to attribute their failure to factors over
which they have no control, such as bad teaching or bad luck.

The basic principle of attribution theory as it applies to motivation is that a person’s own perceptions
or attributions for success or failure determine the amount of effort the person will expend on that
activity in the future.

There are four factors related to attribution theory that influence motivation in education: ability,
task difficulty, effort, and luck. In terms of the characteristics discussed previously, these four factors
can be analysed in the following way:

Ability is a relatively internal and stable factor over which the learner does not exercise much direct
control.

Task difficulty is an external and stable factor that is largely beyond the learner’s control.

Effort is an internal and unstable factor over which the learner can exercise a great deal of control.
Luck is an external and unstable factor over which the learner exercises very little control.

It is the learner’s perception that determines how attributions will influence future effort. A learner
may believe that he is a “lucky person” and for him luck would be an internal and stable characteristic
over which he exercises little control. In other words, for this person “luck” is really what the
preceding list calls an “ability” or personality characteristic.

Likewise, a person may believe that she expended a great deal of effort, when in fact she did not, or
that an objectively easy task was difficult.
The basic principle of attribution theory as it applies to motivation is that a person’s own perceptions
or attributions for success or failure determine the amount of effort the person will expend on that
activity in the future.

Students will be most persistent at academic tasks under the following circumstances:

1) If they attribute their academic successes to either (a) internal, unstable, factors over which they
have control (e.g., effort) or (b) internal, stable, factors over which they have little control but which
may sometimes be disrupted by other factors (e.g., ability disrupted by occasional bad luck);

2) If they attribute their failures to internal, unstable factors over which they have control (e.g.,
effort). If we want students to persist at academic tasks, we should help them establish a sincere
belief that they are competent and that occasional imperfections or failures are the result of some
other factor (such as bad luck or a lack of sufficient effort) that need not be present on future
occasions. (That is, ability attributions for success are likely to be beneficial, with the exception cited
in the next guideline.)

3) It is not beneficial for students to attribute their successes entirely to ability. If they think they
already have all the ability they need, they may feel that additional effort is superfluous. The ideal
attribution for success is, “I succeeded because I am a competent person and worked hard.”

4) When students fail, they are most likely to persist and eventually succeed if they attribute their
failure to a lack of appropriate effort. Therefore, it is extremely important that when students
perceive themselves as unsuccessful teachers help them develop the conviction that they can still
succeed if they give it their best shot.

Attribution of Success and Failure

In the age of tremendous competition in all spheres of our lives, people around us evaluate our
performances and make attributions regarding our successes and failures. For example, success of a
sports team in an important competition may be attributed to several causes. The team’s success may
be attributed to the intrinsic ability of the team members, effort exerted by the team members, easy
competition due to weak opponents or even luck. Thus, there may be four factors of success or failure:
ability, effort, task difficulty and luck.

In order to decide that which of these four factors was the actual reason behind the success or failure,
perceivers firstly determine the locus of control of the success or failure. That is, whether the reason
of success or failure was within the actor (internal or dispositional attribution) or it was caused by
some environmental factors (external or situational attribution). Secondly, the perceiver determines
the degree of stability of the success or failure. That is, whether the reason behind the result was an
enduring characteristic of the actor/environment (stable) or it was varying (unstable). The perceiver
can make a final attribution of success or failure only after deciding the internality-externality and
stability instability aspects of the causes.

Weiner (1986) proposed that the four factors of success or failure can be arranged in the form of a
matrix along the dimensions of internality-externality and stability instability of the causes. For
example, ability is usually considered as an internal and stable factor. Ability is primarily interpreted
as an internal characteristic of the individual and it is considered as a stable property which does not
varies quickly. On the contrary, effort is an internal and unstable property. Effort is exerted by the
individual (internal) and also, the same individual may exert different amount of efforts at different
occasions and at different tasks (unstable). Task difficulty is an objective characteristic of the task
(external) that remains constant for a particular task (stable). Luck or chance is an external and
unstable factor.

Performance of a person is attributed to internal or external causes after comparing his or her
performance with that of others. Extraordinary performances, regardless of good or bad, are
generally attributed to internal causes. We are more likely to evaluate a student as exceedingly able
or extremely motivated who secures very high grades in an extraordinarily tough examination.
Likewise, a student with unusually poor performance is perceived as weak in ability or very low in
motivational aspect. On the contrary, an average performance is generally attributed to external
causes. A mediocre performance of a student in an examination is attributed either to the tough
competition or to misfortune.

Whether observers attribute a performance to stable or unstable causes depends on how Consistency
in the individual’s performance over time plays a vital role in attributing a performance to stable or
unstable causes. Consistent performances are usually attributed to the stable causes. A student’s
consistent high grades in different examinations over a period of time are more likely to be attributed
either to his or her intelligence (ability) or to the low level of the examination (task difficulty).
Inconsistent performances are usually attributed to the unstable causes (varying efforts or
luck/chance).

ERRORS AND BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION

As explained by various attribution theories, perceivers examine their social surroundings, process
information, form impressions and interpret behaviours in a seemingly rational and logical manner.
Nevertheless, perceivers often diverge from the logical methods described by attribution theories and
commit many errors and biases in this process leading the perceivers to misinterpret the received
information and to make flawed attribution. We will now consider the biases and errors that are most
pervasive in the process of attribution.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Fundamental attribution error refers to a tendency in which we augment the impact of situational or
external factors and reduce the impact of dispositional or internal factors while attributing behaviour.
Jones and Harris (1967) presented an empirical evidence for fundamental attribution error in an
experiment in which he gave an essay to read to American college students. The essay either
supported or criticised the Castro government in Cuba. However, the research participants were
differently informed regarding the choice of position taken by the essay writer. The experimenters
informed half of the participants that the essay writer was free to choose his or her position, ‘pro’ or
‘anti’ Castro, while writing the essay (choice condition).While the other half of the participants were
informed that the position, ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Castro, taken by the essay writer was directly assigned to
them (no-choice condition).

While being asked to evaluate the true attitude of the essay writer towards the Castro government
in Cuba, the participants viewed the writer’s attitude consistent with the opinions expressed in the
essay, regardless of the condition that the writer had choice to take his or her position in the essay
(choice condition) or not (no-choicecondition). Experimenters further reported that although the
research participants didnot completely ignored the fact that the writers of no-choice condition were
assigned the position to take, they attached less importanceto it and overestimated the attitudinal
disposition of the essay writer. Thus, the impact of the no-choice condition (situational or external
factor) was under estimated and the choice component (dispositional or internal factor) was over
[Link] error results from a failure by the observer to fully apply the subtractive rule.

Actor-Observer Bias

Actor-observer bias refers to the tendency to attribute other’s behaviour to internal/ dispositional
factors, while attributing our own behaviour to situational/ environmental factors (Jones & Nisbett,
1972). For example, a student who fails in an examination justifies his or her result to tough question
paper, very strict evaluation, not getting sufficient time for preparation, some sudden engagements
in family, etc. However, he or she explains similar results of other students by lack of their ability,
carelessness, indiscipline, etc. It has been observed that in clinical settings the clinical practitioners
tend to view their clients’ problem related to their internal stable dispositions, while the clients justify
their problems by the situational factors.
Arguably, actors and observers view each others’ performances with distinct perspectives. When we
are actors, we are not able to see our own behaviours. Rather the situational factors influencing our
behaviour are more readily noticed. However, when we are an observer the person’s behaviour is
more prominent than the environmental and contextual factors influencing the behaviour. Such
differential perspective of actors and observers lead to situational attributions for actors and
dispositional attributions for observers.

Furthermore, as an actor we are able to see our behaviours at different occasions and at different
places. Therefore, the information regarding the factors pertaining to the situation and context are
more readily available to us. However, as an observer we are able to see the person’s behaviour only
at one instance and in one situation. Consequently, we tend to presume that unlike us, other people
behave in same way at other occasions as well. In the other words, we presume higher level of
consistency in other person’s behaviour as compared to our own behaviour which leads to make
dispositional attributions for others and situational attributions for own behaviour (Nisbett et al.,
1973).

Self-Serving Bias

Self-serving bias refers to a general tendency that we acclaim for our achievements, but do not see
ourselves responsible for our failures. We generally claim that we succeeded at a task due to our
sheer ability (internal factor). However, we justify our failures with misfortune or task difficulty
(external factors). As an individual we have a strong need to enhance our self-esteem when we
achieve something significant, to protect the self-esteem while faced with failures. Millerand Ross
(1975) referred internal attribution to the successes as the self-enhancing bias, and external
attribution to the failures as the self protection bias.

Ultimate Attribution Error

Ultimate attribution error refers to the self-serving bias operated at the group level. It suggests that
we have strong tendency to defend our own group while making attributions. Pettigrew (1979)
suggested that relations between two groups largely affect the attribution members of each group
make for the members of other group for similar types of behaviours. Positive and socially desirable
behaviours of the members of our own group are attributed to internal qualities; however, similar
behaviours of the members of the other group are attributed to external factors. On the other hand,
negative behaviours of the members of our own group are attributed to internal factors; while, similar
behaviours of the members of the other group are attributed to internal traits.
Conclusion of the Module

It can be concluded from the above discussion that; social cognition is the way by which we process
social information. During social interactions we organise diverse information into a unified coherent
manner to form an impression of the other person. Also, by the process of attribution people try to
infer the causes of other persons’ behaviour. We observe another’s behaviour and infer backward to
its causes that explain why people act as they do. Various theories of attribution focus on the methods
we use to interpret another person’s behaviour and to infer its sources. Although the process of social
cognition is seemingly rational, observers often deviate from the logical methods and commit many
errors and biases in this process leading to misinterpret events and to make erroneous judgements.

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