Not My Type

Attribution:

Attribution deals with explaining as to whether or not a person's behavior is situational or depositional. So if someone is rude to you, you may wonder if it was just the situation , or if that is a personality trait or deposition of their's and they act that way all the time.

According to the book, the fundamental attribution error is, the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of the personal disposition. The book uses the example of a group of students being told that a woman's behavior is situational, but when she acts nice they view her personal disposition as being warm, and when she acts rude they view her personal disposition as being cold. Even though they were told that her behavior is situational.

Stereotyping in Everyday Life:

According to the book, stereotyping is a generalized belief or assumption about a certain group of people. These generalizations are sometimes accurate but are often overgeneralized. A very basic example of stereotyping is to say that blondes are dumb. Obviously, that is an overstatement. There are some blondes that are very smart and well educated, but there may be some blondes that are dumb out there.

Illusory correlations is perceiving a relationship where none exists. Illusory correlations are related to stereotyping because stereotyping may be creating an illusory correlation towards a certain group. For example, on the prejudice worksheets, some people put down that Chinese people all look alike. Well we are creating that relationship, but that is an over generalization because I am sure that people can tell the difference between Chinese people. (That might not be the best example.)