UNDERSTANDING AND ATTRIBUTING CAUSES TO OTHERS’ BEHAVIOUR

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In the last unit we discussed personality traits inferences about what the personis like. Also, the unit served to introduce us to other units in the course. You can now describe competence and sociability. You can now move from observable information to personality traits. We are now ready to discuss another interesting and practical unit: understanding and attributing causes to others’ behaviour. We will now consider behaviour. Let us take a look at what other content you will learn in this unit as specified in the objectives below.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. identify the goals we have for interacting with people; 
2. explain affective cues; and 
3. describe the causes of behaviour. 

3.0 MAIN CONTENT

3.1 Goals

So far, we have discussed person perception as if it were a relatively rational process of taking in information about others and organizing it according to particular principles. Our goals and feelings about other people also influence the information that we gather about them. One such factor that influences how we gather information about others is the goals we have for interacting with them. In one study, (Klein & Kunda, 1992 cited in Taylor et. al. 2000) participants were told that another student would be either their partner or opponent in a forthcoming game. Those who expected the student to be their partner were motivated to see him as very high m ability, whereas those who expected him to be an opponent were motivated to see him as low in ability. After interacting with the student in a simulated quiz show during which the student answered some questions correctly and others incorrectly, the participant’s impression corresponded to their motivations. Those who expected the student to be their partner thought he was smarter than those who expected him to be their opponent. This occurred even though the student exhibited exactly the same pattern of answers in both conditions.

Goals have also been manipulated experimentally by telling participants either to form a coherent impression of a person (impression formation goal) or to try to remember the separate bits of information they might be exposed to (remembering goal). Generally speaking, under impression goal conditions, people form more organized impressions of others than when their goal is simply to remember the information (Matheson, et. al. 1991 cited in Taylor et. al. 2000).

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1

List the goals you intend to achieve by applying and getting admitted into the National Open University of Nigeria to read the Diploma in HIV Education management programme.
Clap for yourself for your active particil1atio~ in our discussion. Now, let us continue.

Anticipating future interactions with somebody creates very different social goals than simply trying to learn about that person, and research shows that people remember more and organize the information differently when they expect to interact with someone in the future. Another important point you must remember is that the need to be accurate usually produces more extensive and less biased information gathering about a person. Chen et. al. (1996 cited in Taylor et. al. 2000) also reported that the need to be accurate generally leads to more thorough and systematic processing of information about people than is true under conditions when accuracy is not a goal.

The type of impression one forms of another person also depends on the kind of interaction one anticipates having with that individual. Outcome dependency that is, the situation in which achievement of an individual’s own goals depends heavily on the behaviour of another person typically leads the individual to form a careful impression of the other. Participants whose goals are not dependent upon the behaviour of another person are more likely to form their impressions quickly and casually. Another powerful goal is communication. The process of gathering information for another person greatly influences not only what information people communicate to that other person, but also the impression they finally form themselves.


Sedikides (1990) asked participants to form their own impressions of a target to a third individual. Communication goals completely determined the information that was provided to the third individual such that they overrode the participant's own impressions. In fact, participants actually reformulated their own impressions in the direction of the positive, negative, or neutral impression they had been instructed to convey. When people communicate information about a target individual to a listener, they not only modify their own perceptions about the target, they systematically affect the impressions formed by the listener.

The influence of social goals on the kinds of impressions that people form of others is substantial. People who have a particular social goal when they interact with another person appear to make inferences that are consistent with their goals about the other person, even when they do not intend to do so or are completely unaware that they are doing so.
Try your hand on this question.

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2

How will you describe the process of gathering information on your study centre to another distance learner whom you come across in the bookshop? Let us go on.

3.2 Affective Cues

Sometimes we use our internal state as a basis for judging other people, and this can lead to systematic errors. When people are emotional, they are more likely to attend to emotional information and use that in their impression. Let us cite an example to drive the point home. When we are aroused, we tend to perceive other people in a more extreme manner than when we are not aroused (Stangor, 1990 cited in Taylor et. al. 2000). If you have just finished playing a table tennis game and you meet someone who strikes you as sleazy, your impression of the person as sleazy is likely to be more extreme than if you met the person having just come from reading a book.


Mood is another factor that can influence how another person is perceived. When we are in a good mood, we tend to see another person more positively, and when we are in a bad mood, we tend to view that person more negatively. The effects of mood appear to be stronger for judgments about unusual people than for more ordinary individuals. The reason is .that unusual people elicit extensive processing; therefore more information is available, and there is a longer time for mood to have an influence (Forgas, 1992). Mood may influence not only1he content of impressions we form of others, but also the process we use in forming them. A negative mood makes people more likely to use piecemeal processing in impression formation than categorical processing, even when categorical information is available to them.

3.3 Attributing Causes to Behaviour

One of the most important influences we make about other people is why they behave as they do. What causes one individual to be shy at a party and another to be outgoing? What prompts a romantic breakup between two people who had seemed so close? Attribution theory is the area of psychology concerned with when and how people ask ‘why’ questions. Theorizing about causal attributions that is, how and why people infer what causes what began with Heider (1958 cited in Taylor el. al. 2000). He argued that all human beings have two strong motives: the need to form a coherent understanding of the world and the need to control the environment. In order to achieve understanding and control, we need to be able to predict how people are going to behave. Otherwise, the world is random, surprising, and incoherent.


We are especially likely to make causal attribution when something unexpected or negative events create a need for greater predictability (Kanazawa, 1992, cited in Taylor et. al. 2000). To illustrate this point, researchers talked with distressed married couples who had come to a clinic  for marital therapy. Each person was asked to list positive and negative events that had happened in their marriage and to indicate how frequently those events occurred. They were then asked their thoughts about the events, which were coded for the presence of causal attributions. The researchers found that the most attributional thoughts were made about the most distressing event: their partner’s frequent negative behaviours or infrequent positive behaviours (Holtzworth et. al. 1985).

4.0 CONCLUSION

In this unit you have learnt about goals, you have therefore learnt about affective cues. In addition you have learnt about attributing causes to behaviour.

5.0 SUMMARY

1. What you learnt in this unit concerns goals and feelings about other people. 
2.  You also learnt affective cues. 
3.  Often we are in the position of wanting to know why a person committed a particular action. . 
4. You have therefore learnt attributing causes to behaviour. 

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

1. . State the reason the effects of mood appear to be stronger for judgments, about unusual people than for more ordinary individuals. 
2.  State the two strong motives that all human beings have and 
3. What do you understand by outcome dependency in relation to impression one forms of another person?