I stupid is what type of attribution

People were then asked to recall behaviors that were relevant for a job for which Jane was being considered. Those who evaluated her for a job a "research librarian" recalled twice as many instances of introverted behavior as extroverted behavior.

Those evaluating her for a job as real estate salesperson recalled twice as many extroverted behaviors as introverted behaviors. Remember, both groups read about the same Jane!

They were then asked how well suited Jane would be for the other job. Those who had evaluated her for the salesperson job thought she would make a lousy research librarian, whereas those who had evaluated her for the research position thought she was very well suited for the job. MORAL: According to Mark Snyder, Even if someone doubted an erroneous idea enough to go and test it, "one would nevertheless be particularly likely to find all the evidence that one needs to confirm and retain the belief.

Impressions can be self-fulfilling prophesies. Because our own actions evoke appropriate reactions form others, our initial impressions are often confirmed by the reactions of others. EX: Men were given photographs of relatively attractive or relatively unattractive women. They then had phone conversations with the woman they thought was in the picture. They tended to act differently towards the women they thought were attractive, and the women, in turn, tended to act differently towards them - the "attractive" women tended to act more poised, confident, amiable, sociable and outgoing.

Attribution is the process through which we link behavior to its causes - to the intentions, dispositions and events that explain why people act the way they do. Must decide whether behavior should be attributed to characteristics of the person who performed it dispositional or to the surrounding situation. Put another way, are the causes of an action internal to the actor or external? EX: Suppose neighbor is unemployed. You might judge that he is lazy, irresponsible or unable dispositional attribution.

Alternatively, you might attribute unemployment to racial discrimination, evils of capitalism, poor state of the economy situational. Dispositional attributions define suffering due to personal problems - solutions involve treating the individual.

Situational defines suffering as a social problem - prescribes changes in the social structure. EX: Status of women may be attributed to personal dispositions fear of success, poorer skills.

Solution is psychotherapy, assertiveness training, etc. Or, it could be due to sexual prejudice and discrimination - solution may be the ERA, adequate daycare, etc. Depressives have a different attributional style than non-depressives.

They are often more realistic in their attributions, which may be why they are depressed! See below for more detail. Successes are more likely to endure if we attribute the success to our own internal characteristics, rather than external causes. EX: Suppose you lose weight. If you attribute your success to a diet program, once you are off the program you may regain the weight. If you think you "did it yourself," then you'll be less likely to need outside help to maintain the weight loss.

EX: So-called crummy teachers may be more effective than "good" teachers in some ways. Why did you learn the material? A crummy teacher can force you to learn the material by yourself, so you know you don't need him in order to learn.

Much of teaching should be teaching people to learn how to learn. Kelley argues that when we make causal attributions we analyze information essentially the same way that a scientist would. In other words, we assess whether the behavior occurs in the presence or absence of various potential causes. In doing so, we use the Principle of Covariation : we attribute the behavior to the potential cause that is present when the behavior occurs and absent when the behavior fails to occur - the cause that covaries with the behavior.

For example, if you know that a political candidate's position shifts from pro to anti-nuclear freeze depending on the views of his audience, you are likely to attribute his behavior to the audience context i.

Kelley says we use three types of information. NOTE: The Kelley theory is not just limited to the persuasiveness of spoken communication - it applies to attributions for any behavior. Consensus - Do all or only a few people respond to the stimulus in the same way as the target person. Consensus asks about generalization across actors. Distinctiveness - does the target person respond in the same way to other stimuli as well?

This asks about generalization across situations. Consistency - does the target person always respond in the same way to this stimulus? This asks about generalization across time. LLH - attribute to actor internal. Brown has trouble starting most cars. Low Distinctiveness. Few people have trouble starting this car.

Low consensus. Conclusion: Something about Mr. Brown is keeping him from starting the car. Brown has trouble starting most cars" would be interpreted by most of us as "Mr. Brown has trouble starting most cars most of the time. HHH - Attribute to object external.

Most people have trouble starting this car. High consensus. Brown has no trouble starting most other cars High distinctiveness. Conclusion: Something is wrong with the car. NOTE: High consistency is implied. Few people have trouble starting this car today. Brown has little trouble starting other cars today high distinctiveness. Brown rarely has trouble starting this car low consistency.

Conclusion: Something about the circumstances is keeping Mr. Brown from driving this car. Personal characteristics are affecting him in this particular situation. Perhaps he drove a different kind of car yesterday, and are doing things unsuited to his car shifting gears improperly.

Attributional style can also determine the types of attributions that are made. That is, your personality may determine whether you attribute things to internal or external characteristics. The theory of attributional style was developed by Seligman based on his work on depression. This is a bad event. What might have caused it?

This is an internal-stable attribution. Seligman says that depressives are disposed to this kind of attribution. This is internal but unstable i. I won't always be bored with math problems. Or, I was tired on the day of the exam.

Implications of each: External-Unstable is the best - the bad event isn't your fault, and there is hope for better things in the future. External-Stable leaves you with no hope for the future, but at least it isn't your fault. Internal-Unstable says it is your fault, but fortunately, you can prevent the bad thing from happening again.

Internal-Stable is the worst - it is your fault, and the problem is likely to persist. Is the cause of your unsuccessful job search due to something about you or something about other people or circumstances?

Seligman said depressed persons are characterized by a particular attributional style - specifically, they tend to make internal-stable attributions for bad events e. I am bad at math. These are the most punishing of all possible attributions, the worst for self-esteem, and the one making the worst predictions for future performance. Depressives may have an unrealistically dark view. On the other hand, it may be that normal people take an unrealistically bright view.

There is a lot of evidence that normal people are subject to self-serving biases. Sidelight: Self-serving biases are not necessarily maladaptive. For example, self-serving biases can help you to deal with adversity. A study of cancer patients showed that every woman interviewed thought she was doing as well as, or better than, other women in coping with breast cancer, and that belief seemed to sustain them in their struggle. Women tended to compare themselves to people worse off than themselves.

Correspondent Inferences Theory analyzes the conditions under which observers will conclude that dispositions of actors are sufficient explanations for the actor's behavior. According to the theory, factors that affect whether or not a dispositional attribution is made include:.

The strength of environmental forces on behavior. If perceived environmental forces are strong, people are not likely to make dispositional attributions. The theory is concerned with how people explain or attribute various causes to events.

According to the 'attribution theory' it is normal for people to look for explanations or causes - that can be attributed to their own success or failure. An assumption of the attribution theory is that people will interpret their environment in such a way as to maintain a positive self-image.

There are three main categories of attributes for explaining success or failure: Internal or external Stable or unstable Controllable or uncontrollable. Examples of internal factors may be that you are either stupid or bright or not interested etc.

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 15, 1— Zimmermann, F. Reciprocal effects between adolescent externalizing problems and measures of achievement. Download references. The German Research Foundation DFG , the Senate Administration for Education, Youth, and Science in charge of approving empirical research in schools in Berlin, Germany, and the headmasters of the participating schools reviewed and approved the research protocol and questionnaires.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Ursula Kessels. A further approval of the protocol by the university ethics committee is not required for projects of this type because research on school students is under direct supervision of the Senate Administration for Education, Youth, and Science.

Participation was voluntary and informed consent was secured from all participants. All participants were at least 14 years old, meaning that parental permissions did not have to be obtained according to the regulations of the Senate Administration.

No identifying information was obtained from participants and we had no reason to assume that our study would do any harm. Participants were fully debriefed afterwards. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Reprints and Permissions. Not stupid, but lazy? Psychological benefits of disruptive classroom behavior from an attributional perspective.

Soc Psychol Educ 23, — Download citation. Received : 21 January Accepted : 05 March Published : 08 April Issue Date : July Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Download PDF. Abstract Disruptive student behavior is a frequent part of school life, most often shown by male students and related to many negative academic outcomes.

Introduction Disruptive behavior in class has many negative effects on both students and teachers. Disruptive behavior in school Empirical studies have covered a variety of different problem behaviors in the classroom.

Social outcomes Adolescents vary in the reasons they give for failure in order to manage their public images in ways that promote social approval from the different actors in the classroom Juvonen Gender-related outcomes Not only peer status but also perceived masculinity and femininity should be linked to both amount of academic effort e. Study overview and hypotheses In this study, we examined the psychological benefits of showing disruptive behavior for low-achieving students from an attributional perspective.

Method Sample The sample consisted of ninth graders 98 female and 79 male students, one who did not indicate gender from two German academic-track schools Gymnasium. Experimental design and dependent variables In order to keep the internal validity of the vignette experiment as high as possible as well as to minimize the risk of biasing the results by providing irrelevant details, we contrasted a student who showed disruptive behavior with a student who did not show disruptive behavior.

Table 1 Dependent variables, descriptive statistics, and intraclass correlations Full size table. Results Descriptive results The means and standard deviations of the ratings of the target students are presented in Table 1 , separately for the disruptive and unobtrusive target students.

Full size image. Table 2 Random intercept model predicting social outcomes and intelligence Full size table. Table 3 Cross-level interaction model predicting target frequency and gender typicality Full size table. Table 4 Random intercept model predicting masculinity and femininity Full size table. Discussion In the current study, we brought together different strands of research in order to test a novel explanation for disruptive behavior in students, that is, the triggering of face-saving attributions for academic failure by evoking teacher reprimands.

Social outcomes and intelligence The findings that the disruptive student was conceived of as more popular, but less liked, are fully in line with our hypotheses and earlier findings on students showing low academic effort De Bruyn and Cillessen ; Engels et al. Gender-related outcomes Regarding this aspect of our research, our results indicate that, irrespective of other benefits, disruptive behavior leads to the ascription of masculinity see also Jackson , indirectly implying higher benefits for disruptive male students than for disruptive female students.

Conclusion Disruptive student behavior is a frequent part of daily school life and is a burden for teachers and an obstacle to student learning e.

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