Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior
Attribution theory
Deals with how someone uses information to arrive at causal explanations for events. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal judgment. (Fiske and Taylor, 1991)
Attribute behavior to two causes:
Milgram (1963, 1974)
Aim: To investigate the extent to which participants would obey to authority figure
Procedure:
Deals with how someone uses information to arrive at causal explanations for events. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal judgment. (Fiske and Taylor, 1991)
Attribute behavior to two causes:
- Dispositional: attributing the cause of people's behavior to their internal characteristics (e.g. beliefs, personality, attitudes)
- Situational: attributing the cause of people's behavior to external factors (e.g. group pressure, social norms, weather, luck)
Milgram (1963, 1974)
Aim: To investigate the extent to which participants would obey to authority figure
Procedure:
- a series of 21 studies
- the participants play the role as the teacher
- electric shocks are given to learners (who are actually confederates pretending to be shocked) each time they made a mistake in a memory task
- the shocks are increasingly severe and eventually potentially lethal
- before his first study, he asked Yale psychiatrists and psychology student to predict the precentage of participants they thought would obey throughout to the maximum punishment (450 volts). Predicted: less than 1%, actual: 65%
- no one stopped before 300 volts
- participants showed signs of stress (e.g. sweat, tremble, biting their lips)
- participants displayed compliance because of authority figure (experimenter in labcoat)
- concluded as compliance because participants did not internalize the idea of giving the shock
- explains behavior situationally