Exam 5: Social Attribution: Explaining Behavior

Which of the following questions best reflects what attribution theory seeks to explain?

Hector plays golf every Saturday.His wife,Alicia,notices that after a winning round,Hector tends to play with the kids.After a losing round,he tends to watch television by himself.According to ________ ,over time,Alicia is likely to conclude that Hector's golf games can exert a causal effect on his behavior at home.

Flora will most likely attribute Jeremy's quiet,shy behavior to his introverted personality when

Recall that Peterson,Seligman,and colleagues (1993)examined the impact of attributions on academic success.Name the three dimensions along which Peterson and Seligman have assessed a person's explanatory style. Then give an example of a belief or type of thought that characterizes each of those dimensions.

What are the advantages of having an optimistic explanatory style?

In what ways are Americans' and Asians' attribution and impression formation processes similar? In what ways are they dissimilar?

Tiesha thinks that she did poorly on her exam because the questions were too hard,but that her friend did poorly because he is not smart.Tiesha's attributions reflect the

Explain the fundamental attribution error.Provide three explanations for why it occurs.

In her debate class,Mischa was assigned to give a "pro-life" speech on abortion.Before her speech,the teacher told everyone that Mischa had been assigned to take this position,regardless of her true beliefs.Research on the fundamental attribution error suggests that,after class,the other students will

The ________ is the idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the behavior.

According to ________,our confidence that a particular cause is responsible for a given outcome is reduced if there are other plausible causes that might have produced it.

________ theory focuses on the ways in which we answer such questions as,"Why does my roommate always play his music so loud?"

According to Dan Gilbert,the first stage of the attributional process entails making ________ attributions that are ________.The second,adjustment,stage entails making ________ that are ________.

The actor-observer difference is the tendency to make ________ attributions for one's own behavior,while making ________ attributions for others' behavior.

Rhonda tells you that she hates her new apartment.According to the covariation principle,which question would you ask to assess the consistency covariation dimension?

The view that personality is malleable and that abilities can be changed by environmental factors is most characteristic of

Ellen and Ernesto feel extra happy when reflecting on their relationship and the fact that they almost didn't meet at that party five years ago.It was only because Ellen's best friend's coat disappeared that she was still there when Ernesto arrived.When they think about how easily they could have missed each other,they are engaging in ________,and that they feel especially happy when they do so reflects ________.

Maria,Min,and Bobby ran for class president.When the votes were tallied,Maria received 38 votes,Min received 37 votes,and Bobby received 35 votes.According to Medvec and colleagues' (1995)study of Olympic athletes' emotional reactions,one would expect ________ to be the LEAST happy with the election outcome.

The self-serving bias tends to reflect all of the following EXCEPT

Recall that Dweck and her colleagues aimed to understand why boys and girls tend to explain their failures differently.To this end,they conducted an experiment that manipulated ________.The results showed that ________.