Module 74 Attribution, Attitudes, and Actions

LEARNING TARGETS

• 74-1 Identify what social psychologists study, and discuss how we tend to explain others’ behavior and our own.
• 74-2 Discuss how our attitudes and actions interact.

• 74-1 What do social psychologists study? How do we tend to explain others’ behavior and our own?

Personality psychologists (Unit X) focus on the person. They study the personal traits and dynamics that explain why, in a given situation, different people act differently. (Would you have acted as Willems did, helping the jailer out of the icy water?) Social psychologists focus on the situation. They study the social influences that explain why the same person acts differently in different situations. (Might the jailer have acted differently—opting not to march Willems back to jail—under differing circumstances?)

social psychology

the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.