Describe the various types of attributions people use to make inferences about the behaviors of others. Do attributions vary by age?

What will be an ideal response?


Causal attributions are explanations of why behaviors occur. A dispositional attribution is a causal attribution in which the cause resides within the actor. A situational attribution is when the cause is thought to reside outside of the actor. There is research indicating that younger people tend to focus more on dispositional information whereas middle-aged and older adults, due to increased life experience, may consider both types of information (situational and dispositional) when coming to conclusions about why people behave as they do. In a series of investigations, Blanchard-Fields provided subjects with vignettes in which the outcomes were positive or negative and then assessed whether the subjects felt the outcomes were due to dispositional factors, situational factors, or a combination of both. Older adults made more dispositional attributions, but only in negative outcome events.

Sociology

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