4.1: Attribution Review

When Ms. Lopez walks into the classroom late, many students whisper to each other that she’s irresponsible and doesn’t care about the class. What they don’t realize is that she was stuck in traffic after helping a sick family member at the hospital that morning. Even though there were strong situational reasons for her lateness, the students quickly blamed her personality and assumed she was just a disorganized teacher. This scenario reflects a common error people make when explaining others' behavior.

Even though Gabriel has a steady job and enough money to meet his needs, he becomes increasingly dissatisfied after seeing his coworkers take expensive vacations and buy new cars. His growing frustration illustrates a psychological principle that suggests people evaluate their well-being in comparison to others often times feeling inferior or inadequate when comparing themselves to others.

After receiving a “C” on her essay, Olivia initially feels upset. But when she sees that several classmates got lower grades, she starts to feel more satisfied with her performance. Olivia’s reaction demonstrates how comparing ourselves to people doing worse can help protect and enhance one's self-esteem.

After seeing classmates get higher test scores and talk about college applications, Ariana begins to doubt her own accomplishments and feels less confident. This type of self-evaluation, where a person compares themselves to someone they perceive as doing better, can either inspire improvement or cause discouragement.

Psychologist Robert Zajonc conducted a series of studies in the 1960s to test how people form preferences. In one famous version, he showed participants nonsense words (like “kadilak” or “worbus”) or faces of strangers—but some were shown more often than others. Over time, people rated the more frequently seen words and faces as more likeable or familiar, even though they didn’t actually recognize them. Zajonc discovered that just being exposed to something over and over makes people like it more, even if they don’t fully notice or remember it. This became known as the:

When Lily orders coffee, the barista barely makes eye contact and mumbles her total. Lily thinks, “Wow, that guy is so rude.” She assumes that the barista is just a naturally unfriendly person—without considering that he might be tired, sick, or having a bad day. Lily is explaining the Barista's behavior based on her:

Maya is frustrated when her soccer teammate arrives late to practice. But then she remembers that there was an accident on the road near her teammate’s neighborhood. Maya explains her teammate's behavior based on her:

Maya hasn’t responded to her friend’s message in two days. She thinks, “I’ve been so busy with school and chores—I’ll reply when I can.” (She blames the situation she’s in.) But when her friend doesn’t text her back for a few hours, Maya immediately feels hurt and thinks, “She’s ignoring me on purpose.” (She blames her friend’s personality or intentions.)

Maya explains the same behavior happening to her and to another in a different way, this is the __________ at play.

After winning her tennis match, Ava tells reporters that her win was due to her intense training and focus. However, when she loses a week later, she blames the loss on poor weather and bad refereeing. Ava’s changing explanations depending on whether she wins or loses is an example of this psychological tendency...

These people who use this type of explanatory style (how we explain things to ourselves)

• - see negative events as temporary (it just happened)

• - don't let events affect their whole being (they compartmentalize it, it doesn't shut them down)

• - tend to blame external factors for negative events (it just happened to them)

They would explain a bad interview experience as:

"This was a bad interview, but I'll learn from it and do better next time. It doesn't mean I'll never get a good job."