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In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions—judgements and assumptions about why people behave in certain ways. However, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality. Rather than operating as objective perceivers, people are prone to perceptual errors that lead to biased interpretations of their social world. Attribution biases are present in everyday life. For example, when a driver cuts someone off, the person who has been cut off is often more likely to attribute blame to the reckless driver's inherent personality traits rather than situational circumstances. Additionally, there are many different types of attribution biases, such as the ultimate attribution error, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and hostile attribution bias. Each of these biases describes a specific tendency that people exhibit when reasoning about the cause of different behaviors.
A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting a self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace, interpersonal relationships, sports, and consumer decisions.
The halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively or negatively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas. Halo effect is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality." The halo effect is a cognitive bias which can possibly prevent someone from accepting a person, a product or a brand based on the idea of an unfounded belief on what is good or bad.
Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigmas are commonly related to culture, gender, race, socioeconomic class, age, sexual orientation, body image, physical disability, intelligence or lack thereof, and health. Some stigma may be obvious, while others are known as concealable stigmas that must be revealed through disclosure. Stigma can also be against oneself, stemming from negatively viewed personal attributes in a way that can result in a "spoiled identity".
Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views. It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment and self-verification . Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information, but can sometimes be accurate.
Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.
The ultimate attribution error is a type of attribution error which proposed to explain why attributions of outgroup behavior is more negative than ingroup behavior. Ultimate attribution error itself described as a cognitive bias where negative outgroup behavior is more likely attributed to factors internal and specific to the actor, such as personality. The second component of the bias is a higher chance of attributing negative ingroup behavior to external factors such as luck or circumstance. This bias is said to reinforce a negative stereotype and prejudice about the outgroup, and favouritism of the ingroup through positive stereotypes. The theory was later extended to the bias that positive acts performed by ingroup members are more likely a result of their personality, whereas, if an ingroup member behaves negatively, it is more likely a result of situational factors.
Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable and come about from various influences in the individual experience. The commonly used definition of implicit attitude within cognitive and social psychology comes from Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji's template for definitions of terms related to implicit cognition: "Implicit attitudes are introspectively unidentified traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects". These thoughts, feelings or actions have an influence on behavior that the individual may not be aware of.
Self-image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to an objective investigation by others, but also items that have been learned by persons about themselves, either from personal experiences or by internalizing the judgments of others.
Ambivalent prejudice is a social psychological theory that states that, when people become aware that they have conflicting beliefs about an outgroup, they experience an unpleasant mental feeling generally referred to as cognitive dissonance. These feelings are brought about because the individual on one hand believes in humanitarian virtues such as helping those in need, but on the other hand also believes in individualistic virtues such as working hard to improve one's life.
Role congruity theory proposes that a group will be positively evaluated when its characteristics are recognized as aligning with that group's typical social roles. Conversely, the stereotype fit hypothesis suggests that group members will experience discrimination in different social roles or positions to the extent that their group stereotypically does not have characteristics associated with success in the position. For instance, women may not be considered a good fit for a managerial position if being aggressive is seen as a characteristic of a successful manager. Due to stereotype fit, men may be considered more qualified for the position and are not only more likely to be hired, but are also more likely to be promoted as well.
Sexual stigma is a form of social stigma against people who are perceived to be non-heterosexual because of their beliefs, identities or behaviors. Privileged individuals, or the majority group members, are the main contributors of placing sexual stigmas on individuals and their minority group. It is those who hold a higher status that determine within a society which groups are deemed unworthy of a higher status by labeling their specific actions or beliefs. Stereotypes are then produced which further the debilitating effects of the label(s) placed on group members with non-heterosexual beliefs or practices.
Social tuning, the process whereby people adopt other people's attitudes, is cited by social psychologists to demonstrate an important lack of people's conscious control over their actions.
In social identity theory, an implicit bias or implicit stereotype, is the pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group.
Stigma management is the process of concealing or disclosing aspects of one's identity to minimize social stigma.
Dr. Jennifer Crocker is a professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar in Social Psychology at Ohio State University. She is also a former president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Her publications are on the subject of self-esteem and the contingencies and interpersonal goals that individuals have that are a clear reflection of their level of self-esteem.
There is a great deal of research on the factors that lead to the formation of prejudiced attitudes and beliefs. There is also a lot of research on the consequences of holding prejudiced beliefs and being the target of such beliefs. It is true that advances have been made in understanding the nature of prejudice. A consensus on how to end prejudice has yet to be established, but there are a number of scientifically examined strategies that have been developed in attempt to solve this social issue.
Praise as a form of social interaction expresses recognition, reassurance or admiration. Praise is expressed verbally as well as by body language.
In social psychology, a positive stereotype refers to a subjectively favourable belief held about a social group. Common examples of positive stereotypes are Asians with better math ability, African Americans with greater athletic ability, and women with being warmer and more communal. As opposed to negative stereotypes, positive stereotypes represent a "positive" evaluation of a group that typically signals an advantage over another group. As such, positive stereotypes may be considered a form of compliment or praise. However, positive stereotypes can have a positive or negative effect on targets of positive stereotypes. The positive or negative influence of positive stereotypes on targets depends on three factors: (1) how the positive stereotype is stated, (2) who is stating the positive stereotype, (3) in what culture the positive stereotype is presented.
References
- ↑ Crocker, Jennifer; Major, Brenda; Stelle, Claude (1998). "Social Stigma". In Gilbert, Daniel T.; Fiske, Susan T.; Lindzey, Gardner (eds.). The Handbook of Social Psychology. Vol. Two (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 519–521. ISBN 978-0-19-521376-8.
- ↑ Whiteley, Bernard E.; Kite, Mary E. (2010). The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. pp. 428–435. ISBN 978-0-495-59964-7.
- ↑ Snyder, Melvin L.; Kleck, Robert E.; Strenta, Angelo; Mentzer, Steven J. (1979). "Avoidance of the handicapped: An attributional ambiguity analysis". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 37 (12): 2297–2306. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.12.2297. ISSN 1939-1315.
- 1 2 3 Crocker, Jennifer; Voelkl, Kristin; Testa, Maria; Major, Brenda (1991). "Social stigma: The affective consequences of attributional ambiguity". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 60 (2): 218–228. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.2.218.
- ↑ Hoyt, C.L.; Aguilar, L.; Kaiser, C. R.; Blascovich, J.; Lee, K. (2007). "The self-protective and undermining effects of attributional ambiguity" (PDF). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 43 (6): 884–893. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.10.013.