That makes (con)sense(us)!

Hey everyone! Sorry for the terrible title (It's late).

This week I'm going to tackle attributions and one theory as to how people make them. As explained by Fritz Heider (1958) attributions are simply explanations for other's behavior and the theory that describes this process is known as attribution theory.

One theory that sprung from Heider's (1958) ideas about attributions is the covariation theory (Kelley, 1967). According to the covariation principle, something only explains (is the cause of) a behavior if it is both present when the behavior is present, but also absent when the behavior is absent (Kelley, 1967). There are three kinds of information that are useful for determining behavior, those being, consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency and these three kinds of information are used to understand and make attributions about an individual's behavior (Kelley, 1967).

Consensus information refers to determining if different people behave or react similarly or differently to the same stimulus (Kelley, 1967). This information allows attributions be attributed more to the situation or to the individual; if consensus is high (i.e. a lot of people respond the same way to the stimulus) then behavior is attributed to the stimulus, if consensus is low (i.e. different people respond in a number of different ways to the same stimulus) then behavior is attributed to the individual (Kelly, 1967).

The second type of information is distinctiveness. When deciding about an individual's behavior you would also like to know how they respond to other situations or stimuli (Kelly, 1967). If the behavior is low in distinctiveness (i.e. an individual responds the same way to all situations), their response is attributed to the individual; if distinctiveness is high (i.e. the individual does not always respond in the same way to a variety of situations) then behavior is attributed to the stimulus (Kelly, 1967).

Lastly, consistency information regards determining if the behavior is present every time the stimulus occurs or only some of the time (Kelley, 1967). If the behavior always occurs when the stimulus occurs then the behavior is high in consistency and is attributed to either the individual or the stimulus depending on whether the behavior is also high or low in consistency or distinctiveness; if the behavior is low in consistency (i.e. the behavior does not always occur when the stimulus does) then the behavior may be attributed to other irrelevant factors that relate to the situation and not due to the actual stimulus itself (Kelly, 1967).

As an example of this theory and process, my friend's girlfriend was recently mean to him for an entire day. Mostly she was not very responsive and generally grumpy and resulted in responding in less than nice ways to jokes, etc. When trying to decide the reason for this behavior I asked my friend why his girlfriend was acting this way and he attributed it to her large amount of homework and obligations she had that day. This is a fine explanation but I was not certain that it was the true explanation and the way to better determine if this was the true cause was to examine the three sources of information. First is consensus. Do people usually respond in grumpy ways when they have a lot of work to complete? Not always but that is definitely a common way for people to act when they are stressed, therefore I considered consensus to be high which therefore lended support to the probability that her behavior was due to the stimulus (i.e. her large workload). Next was distinctiveness, or, does this person react to different situations similarly. Generally, this person is in a good mood and is very pleasant to be around, therefore, distinctiveness was high (as they usually act differently) and again, it was likely that her behavior was due to her large workload. Last was consistency, or does this individual always respond this way when the stimulus is present. Well, unfortunately for my friend (because his girlfriend is a go getter and often has a lot of work) his girlfriend basically always responds in this way when she is very stressed, therefore consistency is high and the behavior was not attributed to random irrelevant situational factors.

Because both distinctiveness and consensus were high (and consistency was not low) I agreed with my friend and decided that her grumpy behavior was due to her situation (i.e. the large workload and high stress) and was not a personal factor. 

(Word count: 730)

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.

Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution in social psychology. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 15, 192-238.

Healthy Relationships

Earlier this week I attended a workshop for Healthy Relationships. While I felt that the presentation didn't have a ton of depth it did provide a lot of good information and considerations about healthy romantic relationships.

A main focus was on accepting oneself and how that was basically the most important quality for a good healthy relationship as, if you don't love yourself, how could you ever think that someone else could love you? So, that's was good, sounds like high self-esteem is a good thing. On top of that, qualities such as trust and communication were emphasized. Personally, I think communication is really important and in my relationships that has always been the most difficult thing to accomplish. While its importance was emphasized, I would have liked if the workshop approached more specific instances where communication can be difficult and how to approach those situations.

Lastly, an emphasis was put on communicating in an assertive but respectful manner. I liked this focus because, in line with my importance given to communication, I think it is very important in a relationship to be direct and clear with what you are thinking and feeling about the relationship. Additionally, this reasonably applies to any relationship, not just romantic ones. After the workshop, I found myself reflecting on the fact that I have been somewhat upset with my roommate recently which was silly because I didn't communicate well at all why I was upset (which of course resulted in nothing positive happening regarding the matter). Of course the best way to deal with this was not stewing but being clear with my roommate about what was bothering me and taking steps to address it.

They're smarter than that...

Hey everyone!

Before I start, watch this neat video and (ideally) form a positive impression of me and this blog post. 

Anyway, it's pretty easy to think back on experiences I've had and how I likely formed impressions of people and how that affected my behavior towards that person. Particularly interesting to me is when we have a pretty strongly formed idea about a person that is suddenly challenged and we deny whatever introduced that challenge to our idea about the person. The reason we deny the challenge is because of implicit personality theory which proposes that we have a network of traits that we associate together and therefore, when we know that an individual has one trait, that leads us to infer that they have other traits as well (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954; Schneider, 1973; Sedikides & Anderson, 1994).

Reasonably this would occur both when we hear a positive or negative trait (or get information) about a person, that information would lead us to assume other traits about a person that are connected with the initial information we obtained. Furthermore, this is why we deny the information that challenges our construction for the person. In other words, when the new information contradicts the current associations with traits and behaviors, we dislike it because we have made the assumption that the person will not act that way or have that trait because it is not associated with the original information we obtained.

A personal example of this happened last year with friend who attends another university. In short, there was a girl who liked him quite a bit and was quite pushy with her affections and he was not interested in a relationship with her (or encouraging affection from her due to the emotional nightmare that would likely result). One time towards the end of the summer, she convinced him that she should sleep over because she was too drunk to drive home despite the fact that he knew that he shouldn't let her in order to not encourage such behavior (I'm not encouraging drunk driving here, just she could have stayed at a nearby friends house, or had someone come pick her up, or whatever).

Now, this dude is usually reasonable and makes pretty good and responsible decisions with things such as school work, how he has fun, but also definitely in helping people with inter/intra personal concerns. In fact, these are central traits to me regarding my friend meaning that they are traits that exert a significant effect in my overall impression of him (Asch, 1946). Because these traits are so important to me, they are even more significant when challenged.

Therefore, upon hearing about his actions I could not believe it. My friend was not one to make decisions such as these lightly. This made me question, how did he end up acting this way when it seemed like such a bad decision? It is easy to see how I would assume that he would not act in such as way because my previous experience with this friend would make me think that he would act in a more responsible manner. For quite some time, I questioned the tale's legitimacy (I heard about it through another friend) as it was not in line with the traits I currently associated with my friend. Even as I became convinced that it was true, I twisted the details to make it consistent with what I thought of my friend such as, “oh, he only let her do that because he was worried for her safety.” In time, I finally had to accept that it happened just as it was told to me, but importantly, I initially strongly resisted the actual sequence of events and all the relevant information.

In sum, I associated a certain way of behaving for my friend and when his behavior did not conform to my associations I resisted the truth of his behavior actually occurring. In the end, his relationship with this girl got all worked out, don't worry. But seriously, it was complicated.

Word count: 638

Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290.

Bruner, J. S., & Tagiuri, R. (1954). Person perception. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 634-654). Reading, MA: Addision-Wesley.

Schneider, D. J. (1973). Implicit personality theory: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 79, 294-309.

Sedikides, C., & Anderson, C. A. (1994). Causal perceptions of intertrait relations: The glue that holds person types together. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 294-302.

All I do is win

Hey everyone! This week I'm talking about self-esteem. Self-esteem involves an individual's total positive and negative thoughts and opinions about the self (Coopersmith, 1967). Furthermore, self-esteem fluctuates regularly in response to events and experiences that happen to an individual such as receiving a bad grade on a test, getting asked out on a date, or scoring a goal in a soccer game (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991). As we all know, people can vary in their levels of self-esteem with high-esteem being associated with confidence, liking oneself, etc. For an example of two individuals who likely posses high self-esteem see the video below...

While I find this video very entertaining, if you found it annoying or disheartening please see the video at the end to help decompress.

Anyway, one theory as to why humans need self-esteem was proposed by Leary and Baumister (2000). Leary and Baumister (2000) proposed that self-esteem serves as an indication of how we are doing socially and alerts us to when we need to improve (as well as when we do a good job) due our behavior being under the judgment of others. Therefore, it encourages us to feel bad when we experience a negative social interaction and encourages us to modify our behavior in order to gain the approval of others and makes us feel good and behave in a similar manner when we do something that improves our self-esteem (Leary & Baumister, 2000). This would mean that self-esteem makes us more successful (ideally) by helping us to recognize our strengths and weaknesses.

Now, because we know that as humans we need self-esteem and that it serves a function for us (other than just making us feel good) it also makes sense that we would try to preserve it. This can be accomplished in multiple ways but one such way is self-handicapping. Self-handicapping is essentially when people give themselves an excuse or take actions to reduce their performance due to an anticipated failure (Berglas & Jones, 1978). This makes sense because it gives individuals the ability to blame something else (whatever the self-handicap is) for their failure rather than a personal shortcoming or lack of ability.

I know that I especially used to take advantage of this tactic when I was a first year. Upon getting back a test and receiving a grade that was lower than I would have liked, I would rationalize to myself that I am just taking so many courses that I don't have time to adequately study for all my classes. Now this was not true in the slightest as I still had plenty of free time which I liked to use for nonacademic activities. Other times I would complain that I had a headache at the time of the test or that I stayed up late the night before studying and that my low sleep impacted my performance. Of course, the root of the problem was my study habits and not taking responsibility for my work and time management. This pattern continued for my entire Fall semester and it was the Spring semester when I managed to make some changes in my behavior. Essentially I got much better about doing all of my regular work and getting it done on time but before I was able to do that, I was regularly self-handicapping in order to maintain my self-esteem while doing poorly in some courses.

Word count: 530

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Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 405-417. 

Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.

Heatherton, T. F., & Polivy, J. (1991) Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 895-910.

Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 1-62.