Attributions SAQ Rewrite Essay

Submitted By Daniel86105
Words: 480
Pages: 2

Prompt: Describe the role of situational and dispositional attributions in explaining human behavior Attributions are defined as how people interpret and explain causal relationship in the social world. Within attributions, there are sub categories of situational attribution and dispositional attribution. Situational attribution is defined as one relating the cause of events to external factors, while dispositional attribution is one classify personal factors as the causation of events. With these two forms of attributions, scientists can then evaluate human action. The studies that demonstrate the two kinds of attributions relate to human behavior are Milgram's study (1963) and Lau and Russle's study(1980). In Milgram's study, situational attribution is used to describe the participants' behavior. Milgram hypothesizes that humans tend to obey authority figures. For the experiment, he gathers participants from different ages, races, sexes and occupations to represent the whole population. Milgram uses deception, a technique to omit unwanted factors while the participants are unaware of, which guarantees the participants are assigned to the role of a teacher in the experiment instead of a student. The teacher's role is to monitor the students answers and electrify the students if the wrong answers are selected. At a certain point the teachers notice the students are yelling in pain and wish to withdraw. However, the presence and persuasion of researcher behind the teachers cause 63% of the teachers proceeding and disregarding the objection of the students. In Milgram's experiment, the teachers seem confound and do not know what actions to take. The teachers' decisions of continuing on with the research are influenced by the language of the authority (researcher), which is an external factor. It is the persuasion of the authority that result in the teachers actions; thus, the act of obeying authorities in real life, which the teachers demonstrate in the research are classified as