Causal attributions

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The reasons we give for the outcome of events often depends on the nature of the event. For example, if you do well in an exam to what do you ascribe your success? Is it because of your hard work, intelligence, or luck? Was it perhaps simply an easy exam? If you do badly is it because you didn't work hard enough or because you're not clever enough? Were there questions you weren't expecting, or ones the lecturer didn't cover?

People vary in the causal attributions they make depending on the outcome of events. We often tend to make external attributions for our failures or errors and internal ones for our successes. If we do well in the exam, it's because we worked hard or we're just clever - an internal attribution. If we do badly, then it's due to something to do with the exam not us - an external attribution. The fact that people's explanations for their actions can be dubious is important in a number of fields. In criminological psychology, for example, attention is generally paid to the reasons criminals give for their actions so that those reasons can be understood and action taken based on them. Typically, they explain their offending as being due to some external cause rather than due to something within themselves. However, in studies of criminal behaviour, it is quite possible that the explanations offenders give for their offending might not bear any relation to the real reasons for the offence. Tn almost every such study, it is found that people will seek to excuse these behaviours by seeking out external, unstable and specific causes, rather than internalizing personal responsibility. In other words, when we humans do bad things, we typically say, "But it wasn't my fault”!’ (Maruna & Mann, 2006, p. 156). According to Maruna and Mann, there is a belief that the excuses that offenders give precede the offence. In other words, it is the situation the offender finds him or herself in that gives rise to the offence: ‘He was in my way,’ ‘She was wearing a short skirt," ‘I was drunk'. Furthermore, excuses and justifications are regarded as ways of avoiding responsibility, the implication being that law-abiding citizens don't do that kind of thing. ‘Yet, the psychological literature on excuse making is clear that taking full responsibility for every personal failing does not make a person normal, it makes them extraordinary - and possibly at risk of mental illness" (p. 162). As a result, Maruna and Mann (2006, p. 158) argue that: ‘criminological psychology may be guilty of committing something akin to the “fundamental attribution error" [...] writ large’.

Evans (2017) argues that the idea that we are capable of explaining our behaviour is an example of folk psychology. He points out that opinion pollsters are guilty of this when they ask people why they intend to vote in a particular way. However, ‘one of the basic rules of psychology is that people will answer any damn silly question you put to them. That does not mean you should believe the answers' (p. 12). In his book, ‘The Mind Is Flat’, Nick Chater takes an even stronger view: ‘There is no inner world. Our flow of momentary conscious experience is not the sparkling surface of at vast sea of thought - it is all there is" (Chater, 2018, p. 8). In a section on The Illusion Of Explanatory Depth, he argues that:

'Chess grandmasters, it turns out, can’t really explain how they play chess; doctors can't explain how they diagnose patients; none of us can remotely explain how we understand the everyday world of people and objects. What we say sounds like an explanation - but really it is a terrible jumble that we are making up as we go along' (p. 28).

Summary

Our thinking can be influenced by the way information is framed. It is possible to persuade people to make decisions based on a peripheral route (via Type 1 thinking) on the assumption that they will avoid the central processing route (Type 2 thinking). We are very good at making assumptions on flimsy evidence, such as pragmatic implications, which can often be very useful but can lead to mistaken inferences. Alliteration and rhyme can have a greater impact in persuasion than prosaic statements (the ‘Keats effect').

Judgements of a politician's competence can rely on superficial features such as what someone looks like rather than an analysis of policies or history (see also Chapter 8 ‘Confirmation Bias Revisited'). Furthermore, there is evidence that we tend to confabulate when we try to justify or explain our actions or choices.

We are even prone to confabulating when we assess our own strengths and weaknesses. The BTAE, or the illusory superiority effect, refers to a bias whereby a majority of people feel they are better than average. There is also the imposter syndrome where some high achieving people feel that they are frauds.

When we perform an action leading to an outcome, the success of that outcome can be ascribed to either internal causes or external ones. In a prison study, some offenders attributed their offending on external factors influencing them rather than internal ones. While they are being judged for not taking responsibility for their actions, they are not doing anything other than what most of us do.

The fact that we are sometimes poor at explaining our behaviour is known as the ‘illusion of explanatory depth'. We make up explanations as we go along.

Causal attributions

Summary

Suggested Further Reading