We have seen that we use personality traits to help us understand and communicate about the people we know. But how do we know what traits people have? People don't walk around with labels saying I'm generous, or I'm aggressive on your foreheads. But if Jay hits joy, we might conclude that j is aggressive. And if Mark leaves a big tip for the waiters, we might conclude that he's generous. It seems natural and reasonable to make some inferences because we can assume often but not always correctly, that behavior is caused by personality.
It is G's aggressiveness that causes her to heat and it is marks the generosity that lies to his big tip, although we can sometimes interfere personality by observing behavior, but this is not always the case. Remember that behavior is influenced by both our personal characteristics and the social context in which we find ourselves well This means is that the behavior we observe other people engaging in might not always be reflective of their personality. Instead, the behavior might be caused more by the situation rather than by underlying person characteristics, perhaps a jakey joy not because three is really an aggressive person, but because the joy insulted or provoked her first, and perhaps Mark left a big tip in order to impress his friends, rather than because he's truly generous. Because behavior can be influenced by both the person and the situation. We must attempt to determine which of these two causes actually more strongly the Thurman behavior.
The process of trying to determine the causes of people's behavior is known as causal attribution. Because we cannot see personality we must work through interference. So when a couple we know breaks up, next slide will seem to be a match made in heaven. We are naturally curious. What could have caused the breakup wasn't something one of them said or did, or perhaps threats from financial hardship was the corporate. Making a causal attribution can be a bit like conducting a social psychology experiment, we carefully observe the people we are interested in, and we know how they behave in different social situations.
After we have made our observations, we draw our conclusions. We make a personal or internal or dispositional, also called attribution, when we decide that the behavior was caused primarily by the person, and a personal attribution might be something like the sentence. I think they broke up because Sarah was not committed to the relationship. It Other times, we may determine that the behavior was caused primarily by the situation. So we call this making a situational attribution. A situational attribution might be something like I think they broke up because they were under such financial stress.
If you had other times, we may decide that the behavior was caused by both the person and the situation. For example like this, I think they broke up because Sarah's lack of commitment really became an issue once they had financial troubles.