CONTINUATION OF STEREOTYPING IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

Attribution:
People make observation all the time of the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of those we meet and use these observation to make inferences about what they are like.
Terms like disposition, personality character are often use to explain the more enduring features of people and to summarise the behaviour observed and judgements we have made and predict from these observation in appropriate circumstances.

Attribution process:
Attribution is the term used to describe the way in which we make judgements about people's feelings, attitudes and disposition from their verbal and non-verbal behaviour.
First, we locate the cause of the behaviour the term used for this is "locus of cause". For example, if a person lurched up to a display cabinet and knocked a piece of China off it, we might imagine that he intended to smash the China (an internal locus of cause which might imply that he had a temper). But if we know that he had tripped over a rug and put his hand out to save himself, then cause of his behaviour is seen to be outside him (external lotus of cause). Heifer (1958) cal this process the attribution process. Jones and Davis (1965) explored the causes of behavior and their implications for judgements of personality and identified three factors which tend to be involved.

• Intention: there is a distiction made between behaviour which is intended and that which is caused by circumstances outside the individual. Also an assessment has to made of the individual's 'power to act'. For example, when we observed someone performing a task and want to make a judgement about his/her intelligence, we need to take into account how difficult the task is.

• Norms: It is necessary also to match behaviour against established norms of behaviour e.g. what most people will do in the same situation like if most people get nine of ten grammatical problems right person who only get four right would be judged to be less intelligent. E more the behaviour we observed deviates from the norm the confidence we are likely to have in attributing enduring characteristics to the actor.

• Social Cues: A politician is expected to appear graves and sincere that is what is expected of him/her and so is little indication of what his/her personality really look like. We have a good idea of what people in a given set of circumstances, if they do this it does not tell us much about them, it is only when behaviour deviates from this that we can infer what they are really like.