What Are Attributions & How Do They Influence Us?

In July of 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer, a 31-year-old man living alone in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was arrested after police entered his apartment and found a dead body in his bedroom, a large number of body parts stored throughout the apartment, and photographs of young men both before and after they had been murdered. Dahmer soon confessed to killing 17 teenaged boys and young men over a period of 13 years, often having sex with their bodies, dismembering them, and finally eating their body parts:

Most of his victims were gay men. He achieved notoriety after his arrest following the discovery of several decaying bodies in acid vats in his apartment. Severed heads were found in his refrigerator and plans for an altar of candles and human skulls were found in his closet.... Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Dahmer admitted to eating the biceps of his eighth victim, Ernest Miller, whose skeleton he also kept, noting that human flesh "tasted like meat" to him.

Dahmer even engaged in lobotomizing some of his victims by drilling holes into their heads and pouring chemicals inside their [frontal lobes in order to turn them into mindless sex slaves]. He wanted to find a way to make them stay with him forever. (Wikipedia Entry on Dahmer , May 1, 2006)

Why did Dahmer commit these horrifying acts, which included necrophilia[∂] and cannibalism? Was there something in his childhood that could explain his later behavior? Did he, perhaps, experience unspeakable parental cruelty involving sadistic physical and/or sexual abuse along with the constant threat of imminent death? It seems that this was not the case. In fact, there was nothing remarkable about his childhood experiences, except those he created because of the gradual development of severe personality disturbances.

Beginning at the time he entered first grade, Dahmer developed into an extremely shy, insecure, and anxious child — traits that became even more extreme as he grew into adolescence:

He looked tense, his body very straight. He grew increasingly shy during this time and when approached by other people, he would become very tense. More and more, he remained at home, alone in his room or staring at television. His face was often blank, and he gave the more or less permanent impression of someone who could do nothing but mope around, purposeless and disengaged. He had one friend, who drifted apart from him at age fifteen. (Bardsley, 2oo5, Chapter 15)

During adolescence, Dahmer began to have erotic fantasies involving sexual contact with the bodies of dead males — fantasies that included killing and dismembering them. As these fantasies intensified, Dahmer began to isolate himself more and more from others (his high-school "classmates considered him a loner and an alcoholic" Bardsley). His alcoholism worsened over time. It caused him to flunk out of college in his first semester and to be discharged early from the army; and it probably was a factor in several incidents of indecent exposure and, eventually, in the sexual molestation of a 13-year-old boy when he was 28. Years after Dahmer's arrest for this crime, his father, Lionel Dahmer, stated that it was then that he realized that his:

son would never be more than he seemed to be — a liar, an alcoholic, a thief, an exhibitionist, a molester of children. I could not imagine how he had become such a ruined soul.... For the first time, I no longer believed that my efforts and resources alone would be enough to save my son. There was something missing in Jeff.... We call it a "conscience"... that had either died or had never been alive in the first place. (Dahmer, 1994)

Nevertheless, Lionel expressed much love for his son and continued to support him, even throughout the trial for the 17 murders and after.

After being sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms (957 years), Jeffrey Dahmer read a statement to the court in which he offered his own explanation for his appalling crimes:

It is now over. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace. I know how much harm I have caused.... Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins.... I ask for no consideration. (Bardsley, 2005, Chapter 21)

With this statement, Dahmer seemed to be implying that, just as a person with Alzheimer's Disease cannot help but forget and to act in uncharacteristic ways, he could not help killing men and deriving sexual satisfaction from what he did to their dead bodies. In other words, Dahmer made an "attribution" that absolved him of personal responsibility for his actions. Your attribution for Dahmer's actions also probably involved a severe mental illness, although it is unlikely that you would agree with him that this illness removed any personal responsibility he had for performing the murders, engaging in sexual acts with their dead bodies, and eating their body parts.

An attribution is an inference made about the cause of an event. We constantly make attributions about the causes of events around and within us. For example, if you get a high score on a psychology test, you may attribute the high score to your superior intellect, your hard work, the test's lack of difficulty, the fact that you copied from the person in front of you, or any one of many other possible causes. The attribution you make will determine your expectations about future test scores, your current emotions about yourself and the course, your strategy for studying for future tests, your motivation to study, whether you will withdraw from the course, and so on. etc.

In general, all of us rapidly make attributions for people's behaviors (including our own): we continually construct theories to explain the actions of ourselves and others. This suggests that we are all amateur psychologists: we make observations of behaviors and develop what seem to us to be reasonable causal explanations of those behaviors. Nevertheless, research shows that, being amateurs ( “naive psychologists”), our attributions tend to be determined not by careful reasoning about carefully collected evidence, but by schemas (such as social stereotypes) that, when activated, cause us to automatically process information. In other words, the cognitive unconscious in each of us makes use of intuitive processes of reasoning to construct simplistic causal explanations of behavior. Because many of our attributions are the products of automatic processes directed unconsciously by stereotypes and other schemas, we rarely realize how questionable they really are. Instead, our attributions often seem common sensical to us; and, therefore, we generally cannot understand how someone else could disagree with them, unless we attribute their refusal to accept our attributions to their stubborness — even to their "pig-headedness"!

Regardless of whether our attributions are correct or incorrect, they are important components of our interpretation of the the action and the social situation in which it is occurring. It is our interpretation that determines the cognitions and emotions we experience, as well as and the behaviors we express in response to the action. If our attributions reflect what actually is happening in the situation, our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors will tend to be appropriate to and adaptive in that situation. For example, if we see a man lying unconscious on a busy sidewalk (Darley & Latane, 1968), interpret this "action" as the result of a heart attack, and discover that the man actually did have a heart attack, our responses will be appropriate (we will offer the man help and call for an ambulance). If, on the other hand, our interpretations are distorted and inaccurate, our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors will tend to be inappropriate to and maladaptive in that situation. If we see that same man lying unconscious on a busy sidewalk, interpret this "action" as the result of a night of drunkenness and debauchery, our responses will be inappropriate (we will walk by him, perhaps shaking our head in disgust and disapproval). Thus, if we want to help others to respond adaptively and flexibly to situations, it is essential that we understand how they make attributions and what factors lead them to make mistaken attributions.

Kelley's Covariation Theory of Attribution
For several decades, social psychologists have investigated the mental structures and processes we use to make attributions, and why we can feel so certain that our attributions are correct even when we have not given them careful thought. One very influential theory of attribution was developed by Harold Kelley (1967). In order to describe Kelley’s theory, it will help to introduce some simple terminology. Let's use the following event: “Jeff cannot start his car.” This event has three components. First, there is the action, which is defined as the behavioral event we are trying to explain. Second, there is the actor, which is defined as the individual performing the action. Third, there is the situation, which is defined as the situational context in which the action occurs. The actor, action, and some aspects of the situation are listed in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Actor, Action, & Some Aspects of the Situation
In the Example Described Above.

In making an attribution for this event, we are trying to figure out why the car won’t start. How would you determine this? The first thing you probably would want to know is whether the cause involves something about Jeff (for example, perhaps he has amnesia and forgot that he had a set of keys for the car) or something about the car (for example, perhaps the battery is dead). In other words, the first thing we want to do is to determine if the cause of the action is internal to or external to Jeff.

When we make an internal attribution for an action, we infer that the cause of the action is inside the actor — that is, that it is due to a “personal factor,” such as a trait, a motive, amnesia, a bad mood, brain damage, and so on. When asked to explain Jeffrey Dahmer's actions, you probably said something like, "he obviously was crazy — only a severely disturbed person could even think of doing the things he did!" In this case, you made an internal attribution for his actions: you inferred that the cause of his actions was a mental disorder. When we make an external attribution for an action, we infer that the cause of the action is outside the actor — that is, that it is due to a “situational factor,” such as loud music, a criticism made by another, a bad day at work, a lack of oxygen in the air, poor lighting, and so on. If you had attributed Dahmer's actions to an evil demon that possessed his body and forced it to murder people and then perform unspeakable acts with their bodies, you would be making an external attribution for his actions: you would have inferred that an external entity inhabiting his body (but not his mind) actually committed the heinous crimes.

How do we make such attributions? What information do we use? These were the questions asked by H. H. Kelley (1967). In developing what came to be known as the Covariation Theory of Attribution, Kelley tried to understand how we, in our everyday lives, make inferences about the causes of actions — what kinds of information we use to reach such decisions. stated that there are three types of information that determine the attributions we make: consensus, consistency, and pervasiveness (which Kelley referred to as "distinctiveness"). When considering each type of information, we try to answer a specific question:

• Consensus. Do other actors perform the same action in similar situational contexts?
• Consistency. Does the actor perform the same action in similar situational contexts?
• Pervasiveness. Does the actor perform the same action in situational contexts different from the current one?

Consensus. When considering consensus information for the event, “Jeff cannot start his car,” our question would be: are other people unable to start Jeff's car? If several other people also cannot start Jeff's car, we probably would attribute the cause of the action, "cannot start his car," to something external to Jeff — probably to some problem with the car itself (perhaps it is out of gasoline). If everyone but Jeff can start the car, we probably would attribute the cause of the action, "cannot start his car," to something internal to Jeff — probably to deficient knowledge about how to start cars (perhaps it's an antique car with a choke, and Jeff cannot remember how to use the choke). You would need more information before you could do this. In general, we make an internal attribution when there is low consensus (most actors do not perform the same action in the same situation) and we make an external attribution when there is high consensus (most actors perform the same action in the same situation). We make one or the other attribution even when we do not know precisely the factor causing the action. The internal/external attributional dimension is typically the most important in our everyday lives, and it definitely is the first attribution we make whenever an event captures our attention.

Consistency. Not only do we want to determine if the cause of an action is internal or external to the actor, we also want to determine if it is likely to reoccur in the future. This can be inferred from consistency information. When considering consistency information for the event, “Jeff cannot start his car,” our question would be: is Jeff unable to start his car each time he tries to? If Jeff never is able to start his car, we would infer that, whatever the cause (internal or external), it is a stable one — it endures over time. If Jeff always is able to start his car except on this one occasion, we would infer that, whatever the cause (internal or external), it is an unstable (temporary) one. In general, we make a stable attribution when there is high consistency (the actor performs the same action in the same situation on many occasions over time) and we make an unstable attribution when there is low consistency (the actor rarely performs the same action in the same situation over time).

Pervasiveness. When we say that an event is pervasive, we mean that it occurs across many different situations — it is prevalent or widespread. The cause of an action is pervasive when it has effects not only in the current situational context, but in different situational contexts as well. For example, iron will rust anywhere on earth because the cause of rusting iron, oxygen, is pervasive. When considering pervasiveness information for the event, “Jeff cannot start his car,” our question might be: is Jeff able to start other cars? If Jeff is unable to start any other nearby car, we would infer that, whatever the cause (internal or external, stable or unstable), it is a general (global) one — it occurs in different situational contexts. If Jeff is able to start any other nearby car, we would infer that, whatever the cause (internal or external, stable or unstable), it is a specific one — it occurs only in the situational context that includes Jeff's car. In general, we make a general (global) attribution when there is high pervasiveness (the actor performs the same action in other situations) and we make a specific attribution when there is low pervasiveness (the actor does not perform the same action in other situations).

Let’s take the concepts of consensus (internal/external attributions), consistency (stable/unstable attributions), and pervasiveness (global/specific attributions) and apply them to another everyday example. Let's say that, on the day that the class received their grades for Test 4, you noticed that the person next to you received an A (because he kept telling you, along with anyone else who would listen). What attributions would you make for the grade (see Figure 2)? In collecting consensus information, you would attempt to discover how most people did. If you found that most people, including yourself, received either an A or a B on the test, you would make an external attribution for the student's grade: perhaps the test was too easy. If most people, including yourself, received either a D or an F, you would make an internal attribution for the student's grade: perhaps he is very intelligent.

Figure 2. The Actor, Action, & Some Aspects of the Situation
In the Example Described Above.

In collecting consistency information, you would attempt to discover how the student did on the three previous tests in this course. Given that he is the sort of person who likes to broadcast his test grades to others (as well as the sordid details of his personal life), this should be a simple task for you. If he received an A on Test 1, an A on Test 2, and a B on Test 3, you would make a stable attribution (whether internal or external) for his grade on Test 4: you might predict that he will receive a high grade on Test 5. If, instead, he received a D, an F, and a C on the first three tests, you would make an unstable attributrion for his grade on Test 4: you might predict that, on Test 5, he again will receive a low grade.

Finally, in collecting pervasiveness information, you would attempt to discover his grades on tests in other courses that he was taking that semester. Since he is the sort of person who thinks that everyone wants to know about his life and exploits, again this should be a simple task. If he received an A on his most recent chemistry test and a B on his most recent history test, you would make a general (global) attribution for his grade on Test 4: whether the cause of his Test-4 grade is internal or external, stable or unstable, it is a general one (for the present, at least: perhaps he only recently developed the motivation to study, and is doing so in every course). If he received D on his most recent chemistry test and an F on his most recent history test, you would make a specific attribution for his grade on Test 4: whether the cause of his Test-4 grade is internal or external, stable or unstable, it is is not a factor that is affecting his performance in other courses.

Kelley’s theory can help us understand where people go wrong in their reasoning about events. Let's consider the example of a man who did not get a job he applied for, a job that he really wanted. This man will become become very distressed and angry at himself if he interprets the event in a distorted and negative manner — if he infers that his failure to get the job is due to the "fact" that he is stupid and incompetent, which are internal, stable, and general attributions. Explaining one's failures by pointing to internal, stable, and general characteristic tends to lead to negative cognitions ("I am worthless"; "Nothing will ever get better for me"), negative emotions (depression and anxiety), and negative behaviors (withdrawing from social interactions; lack of eye contact). The tendency to make internal, stable, and general attributions for negative life events is called a depressive attributional style. Research has shown that people with depressive attributional styles are more likely to develop major depressive episodes when they experience negative life events (REFERENCE). In our example, a cognitive psychotherapist would work on helping the man make more realistic attributions for negative life events such as failing to get a desired job. The therapist might do this by encouraging the man to consider consensus information ("how many other people applied for the job and did not get it?"), consistency information ("does he consistently not get jobs for which he applies?"), and pervasiveness information ("does he often fail at other important life tasks?"). By getting the man to test his negative attributions, the psychotherapist hopes that he will see that the evidence does not support them. The ultimate goal is to help the man change how he views himself so that his attributions for negative life events become less negative; and the ideal result would be for the man to see negative life events as providing opportunities for positive changes in his life.

Study Questions

1. What are attributions and how do they affect our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors?
2. What is an example from your everyday life that provides an illustration of your answer to the preceding question?
3. How are internal and external attributions similar?
4. How do internal and external attributions differ?
5. What information helps us to make either an internal or an external attribution?
6. What is an example from your own life in which you made an internal or an external attribution based on such information? (Note: Please indicate the actor, action, and situation in your example.)
7. How are stable and unstable attributions similar?
8. How do stable and unstable attributions differ?
9. What information helps us to make either a stable or an unstable attribution?
10. What is an example from your own life in which you made a stable or an unstable attribution based on such information? (Note: Please indicate the actor, action, and situation in your example.)
11. How are general (global) and specific attributions similar?
12. How do general (global) and specific attributions differ?
13. What information helps us to make either a general or a specific attribution?
14. What is an example from your own life in which you made a general or a specific attribution based on such information? (Note: Please indicate the actor, action, and situation in your example.)
15. What is a depressive attributional style and which emotional problems is it associated with?
16. How would a cognitive psychotherapist help a person with a depressive attributional style?

What Are Attributional Biases?

A major theme of Section 5 is that, in everyday life, we often are unaware of situational factors that influence our cognitions, emotions, and behavior. This is because these situational factors activate schemas that cause us to automatically process information important for our responses to the situation. Because of the influence of schemas, this information is processed in biased ways. There are two main types of biased information-processing: cognitive biases and motivational biases.

A cognitive bias is a tendency to think about and respond to events in particular ways because of the manner in which our minds process information. A simple cognitive bias can be seen in our tendency to perceive more easily things that change in the surrounding environment (such as movement in the bushes ahead of us) than things that do not change (such as the rabbit that "froze" when it heard us coming down the path). Our minds seem to have been "built" to rapidly perceive environmental changes, probably because aspects of the environment that are quickly changing tend to be more important for our survival than are aspects of the environment that do not change. Some argue that most cognitive biases exist because, on average, they produce cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral responses that are adaptive (REFERENCE). For example, the bandwagon effect is the tendency to believe that something is true simply because many other people believe that it is true. This cognitive bias probably is adaptive overall: if many people believe that something is true, it is more likely that it actually is true, at least when compared to something that few people believe is true.

A motivational bias is a tendency to interpret events in ways that support our desires, needs, and wants. For example, wishful thinking is a tendency to interpret evidence according to what we want to be true. If you're hoping to get a raise at work, and you make a mistake that cost your company a lot of money, you may reason that, since your boss yelled at you for less than five minutes, whereas he usually yells at co-workers who have made big mistakes for 20-30 minutes, you probably still are going to get the raise. Motivational biases are adaptive in the sense that they help to decrease stress; but if they lead people to develop irrational beliefs about important aspects of the world, their ability to respond adaptively to their environments will be reduced.

Next, you will learn how the process of making attributions can be affected negatively by cognitive and motivational biases.

Cognitive Attributional Biases
This is a general tendency, caused by the manner in which our minds have developed to process information, to think about events in ways that produce particular attributions. Probably the most important and common cognitive attributional bias is the fundamental attribution bias, which is the tendency of observers of an action to focus on personal factors of the actor and to ignore situational factors when making attributions. This bias leads us to make primarily internal attributions (to the actor) for an action. For example, if another driver (the actor) turns from a side street onto the road right in front of you (the action), thereby "cutting you off,” you (the observer) are likely to make the attribution that the actor is an “idiot.” In this case, you have made an internal attribution that also is stable (being an idiot is "full-time job") and general (it's difficult to stop being an idiot just by going from one situation to another).

This example demonstrates a cognitive bias because you did not even consider the possibility that situational factors caused the actor to pull in front of you. Perhaps a tree blocked his view of you the sun was glaring, temporarily blinding him. A study by Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977) provides a good example of the fundamental attribution bias. In this study, college students were asked to take part in a “quiz show” similar to shows like Jeopardy on television. Students were paired up and one was assigned randomly to the role of the “Questioner” whereas the other was assigned to the role of the “Contestant.” The Questioner was asked to develop ten “challenging but not impossible” questions in order to test the general knowledge of the Contestant. The Contestant then was asked to answer the ten questions. Because the Questioner typically developed difficult questions in his or her own area of expertise — questions that most people would not know how to answer (such as, “what is the longest glacier in the world?”) — the Contestant generally was able to answer only a few questions. On the other hand, the Questioner could answer all of them. So, who has more general knowledge: the Questioner or the Contestant? If you think carefully about this question, you would have to answer that, on average, we should expect the Questioner and the Contestant to be equally knowledgeable. This is because the participants were not assigned to be the Questioner or the Contestant based on their general knowledge of the world, they were randomly assigned to one or the other role and, hence, there should be no difference, on average, between the two groups.

Nevertheless, when asked the same question (“which one of you has more general knowledge?”), the Contestants typically said that the Questioner knew more. Participants assigned simply to observe the interactions between the Questioners and Contestants also believed that the Questioners had more general knowledge than the Contestants did. In other words, both the Contestants and the Observers ignored a situational factor important for the outcome of the contest — that the Questioners were asked to develop difficult questions to which they already knew the answers — and instead focused on personal factors within the Questioners and Contestants, and made the false attribution that the Questioners had more general knowledge (were “smarter”) than the Contestants. Think about it this way: if the roles were reversed so that the Questioners became the Contestants and vice versa, the former Questioners would have just as much difficulty answering the questions developed by the former Contestants. This can help us to understand better why participants in the Stanford Prison Study sometimes expressed dismay about (and sometimes hatred for) the cruel personalities of other participants: they (and perhaps you as you read the description of this study) ignored the important situational factor that was the primary determinant of their cruel actions — the randomly assigned social roles.

The fundamental attribution bias affects our attributions even when it is very clear to us that the situation and not an individual's personality is the cause of the individual's actions. Perhaps the best example involves the attributions people often make about the personalities of actors who obviously are performing an assigned role in a play, television program, or movie. It is amazing (until you learn about the strength of the fundamental attribution bias) that many people infer that actors have the personalities of the characters they are portraying. Lippa (1994) called this the “Mr. Spock Effect." In a television interview many years ago, Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played the character of "Mr. Spock" in the 1960's television series, Star Trek, told of the time that several NASA astronauts took him on a tour of a NASA facility. The astronauts explained to him the workings of a spacecraft in technical language unfit for a lay person. They assumed that “Mr. Spock” would understand this technical language, forgetting that the person in front of them was, in fact, Mr. Nimoy.

An actor expresses behaviors and speaks words based on a script written by others — words that, of course, are interpreted by the actor (as well as the director), but within the confines of a story that the actor (usually) has not written. Thus, the actor's behavior is determined primarily by external (situational) factors — the script and the role of the character in the story to be told — not the personality characteristics of the actor. Many observers of the actor's performance, however, attribute the actor's behavior to his or her internal personality characteristics: they infer that the actor has a personality similar to that of the character that he or she is playing, as was demonstrated in the Mr. Spock Effect above. This tendency to attribute the cause of an individual's behaviors to personal factors rather than to situational factors is a deeply ingrained "attributional bias" in most humans.

Motivational Attributional Bias
This is a general tendency to make desired attributions. For example, many people infer that, when something bad happens to a person, he or she must have done something to deserve it. This motivational bias is known as the just-world bias, which is defined as the need to believe that one lives "in a world where people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get" (Lerner & Miller, 1978, p. 1030). For example, people with the just-world bias are more likely to believe that rape victims must have done something that led to their rapes (such as wearing revealing clothing or flirting) — in effect, they are stating that the victims deserved to be raped!

The self-serving bias is a motivational bias involving the tendency of an actor to make an internal attribution for a success and an external attribution for a failure. For example, if you do well on a test, who or what usually gets the credit? Why, you do, of course! And if you don’t do well on a test, who or what usually gets the blame? Why, someone or something else, of course! (Perhaps even the teacher.) In this case, you are the actor and the action is the grade you received. The desire to feel good about ourselves (our desire to maintain or enhance our self-esteem in the jargon of psychologists) is the most likely cause of the self-serving bias.

Although the self-serving bias tends to be common, some people show the opposite tendency: the self-effacing bias, which involves the tendency of an actor to make an external attribution for success and an internal attribution for failure. If this sounds suspiciously like the depressive attributional style, that is because the two concepts are closely related. In addition, the self-effacing bias is much more common in communal (collectivistic) cultures — cultures in which individuals define themselves with respect to their places and roles within groups (families or communities, such as is the case in many Asian and African countries) The self-serving bias is more common in individualistic cultures — cultures in which individuals have their own personal identities mostly separate from any groups to which they belong (such as is the case in the United States, Canada, and many European countries).

Study Questions

17. How would you define "cognitive bias" in your own words?
18. How would you define a "motivational bias" in your own words?
19. How is a cognitive bias similar to a motivational bias?
20. How does a cognitive bias differ from a motivational bias?
21. What is an example of the "bandwagon effect" from your everyday life?
22. What is an example of "wishful thinking" from your everyday life?
23. How would you define the "fundamental attribution bias" in your own words?
24. What is an example of the fundamental attribution bias from your everyday life?
25. How did the study performed by Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977) provide evidence for the strength of the fundamental attribution bias?
26. How do the attributions often made with respect to the actions of a television or movie actor portraying a character provide evidence for the strength of the fundamental attribution bias?
27. How would you define the "just-world bias" in your own words?
28. What is an example of the just-world bias from your everyday life?
29. How would you define the "self-serving bias" in your own words?
30. What is an example of the self-serving bias from your everyday life?
31. How is the self-serving bias similar to the self-effacing bias?
32. How does the self-serving bias differ from the self-effacing bias?
33. In which type of culture is the self-serving bias most likely to be found?
34. In which type of culture is the self-effacing bias most likely to be found?
35. What would you predict about the relationship between the self-effacing bias and suffering from major depression? Why?
36. Which of the attributional biases listed above are cognitive biases and which are motivational biases?

The Sociocognitive Approach

You have learned in earlier sections about the unconscious effects of suggestion on our perceptions, memories, thoughts, emotions, actions, etc. With the social and cognitive concepts described in Section 5, it now is possible to provide a more formal definition of suggestion. In cognitive terms, suggestion is the uncritical acceptance of an idea that involves the activation of a schema. This initiates the automatic processing of relevant information, which determines one's cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to the situation. The statements (written and spoken) or actions of others can serve as suggestive influences, which unconsciously affects how one interprets the current situation. By affecting interpretation of the social situation, one will respond differently than if no suggestion had occurred (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. The Sequence of Mental & Behavioral Events Initiated By a Suggestion.

The suggestion activates a schema, which triggers the automatic processing of information, which leads to the development of expectations for how one will experience and respond to the social situation, which determines one's actual experience and responses.

During the second half of the twentieth century, social psychologists using a cognitiv apptoach to theory construction began to examine hypnosis and multiple personality disorder (MPD), two unusual psychological phenomena that had been a focus of scientific and medical interest since the late 1700s. These social psychologists used the model of suggestive influences outlined in Figure 3 to develop theories about hypnosis and MPD. They also subjected their evolving theory of hypnosis to intensive testing.

The Sociocognitive Theory of Hypnosis
Most people in the United States, including many psychodynamically oriented therapists, believe that hypnosis allows access to implicit memories, especially implicit memories of emotionally traumatic events that have been repressed in an effort to reduce the distress they cause (see Section 4). Hypnosis is used in therapy to transform these repressed memories from implicit to explicit memories. The major assumption underlying this therapeutic approach is that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness — a trance-like state that allows direct access to repressed or otherwise forgotten memories. Therapists hypnotize their clients and encourage them to remember these events.

For example, Fredrickson (1992) stated that: “If you are a very good hypnotic subject, and have a hypnotherapist who can help you with your own defenses, you can go beyond whatever blocks you have” (p. 148). Hypnosis, she stated, causes an altered state of consciousness in which clients become able to enter a “world of [mental] imagery” — a mental state in which images of the past emerge without being censored by the “critical faculty” of the conscious mind. Although the retrieval of repressed memories may occur in many ways, the most common method is age regression, a procedure in which a hypnotized person is brought back mentally to an earlier period of the lifespan. The repressed memories from this earlier time are thought to be encoded and stored in vivid detail; and hypnosis, it is claimed, allows clients to psychologically relive the events.

After trance induction, it is suggested that you are getting younger and younger. You are urged to continue to move backward in time until you get to an age that seems significant to you or that the therapist suggests you stop at. You then “enter” that age and talk about what is going on in your life at that time. If abuse occurred at that age, you rely on the unconscious to move toward revealing the trauma through imagery, feelings, and words. (p. 150)

The client is encouraged to generate visual images of the temporal location at which the age regression stopped. For example, the client might be told to imagine a blank screen on which images of the scenes from this earlier time are projected. These images are thought to represent fragments of the repressed memories — fragments that, over time, will be collected and pieced together to form a complete and highly detailed memory tapestry.

Sociocognitive theorists have argued, however, that the claim that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness characterized by heightened suggestibility is a questionable one. In fact, much from the past few decades has demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, hypnosis is not an altered state of consciousness. Hypnotic inductions (the procedures used to induce the altered state of consciousness) do not seem to cause people to enter a trance-like state of heightened suggestibility. Instead, sociocognitive theorists believe that hypnotic inductions do nothing more than create a social situation in which people are encouraged to pretend that they are hypnotized — to unconsciously play a role that has been suggested to them, the details of which they have learned from their culture:

“susceptible” hypnotic subjects enact the role of a “hypnotized” person as defined by cultural expectations and cues provided by the immediate situation. This role enactment is largely accomplished by the use of strategies aimed at making hypnotic suggestions come about; for example, to experience a suggestion for arm lowering..., subjects may try to imagine that their arms are heavy; when asked to “hallucinate” an object..., subjects may try to vividly imagine such an object; and to experience hypnotic “amnesia”, or analgesia [relief from pain], subjects may focus attention away from the target items or the pain. (Wagstaff, 1999, p. 189)

Spanos (1996) described his sociocognitive theory of hypnosis in the following passage:

[T]he term hypnosis refers not to a state or condition of the person but to the historically rooted conceptions [ideas] of hypnosis ... that are held by the participants in the mini-drama that is labeled the hypnotic situation. According to this perspective, hypnotic responding is context dependent [that is, it is based upon the subjects’ beliefs and expectations about hypnosis, which are derived from their immediate social situations as well as their cultural background]; it is determined by the willingness of the subjects to adopt the hypnotic role, by their understandings of what is expected of them in that role, by their understanding of how role requirements change as the situations unfolds, by how they interpret the complex and sometimes ambiguous communications that constitute hypnotic suggestions, by their willingness and ability to use their imaginal and other cognitive skills to create the subjective experience called for by suggestions, and by how feedback from the hypnotist and from their own responding influences the definitions they hold of themselves as hypnotic subjects and the interpretations they apply to hypnotic experiences. (pp. 19-20)

What is most fascinating about all this is that it appears that people can become so engaged in playing the role of “hypnotized subject” that they actually experience what seems to them to be an altered state of consciousness — a condition in which they experience what actually are voluntary actions on their part as somehow occurring involuntarily in response to the hypnotist's suggestions. They pretend that they are not controlling their actions by imagining and by focusing their attention elsewhere. For example, if the hypnotist asks them to remember the scene of a crime they have witnessed, they may imagine it with such intensity that they feel as if they are re-experiencing it.

According to Spanos' sociocognitive theory, hypnotic inductions act as suggestions that cause people to interpret their own imaginings as if they were actual events. Hypnotic inductions suggest to people that any experiences they have will be similar to those they have while dreaming — that imagined visions, sounds, and movements will seem very real and will occur without any conscious volition[∂] on their part. There is a very important difference, however, between hypnosis and dreaming: when people are dreaming, they are in an altered state of consciousness (sleep) in which their conscious experiences actually are changed whereas, during hypnosis, people are in a normal (waking) state of consciousness in which the social situation (especially the hypnotic induction) activates their hypnosis schema (learned through social and cultural influences), which causes them to develop the expectation that they will experience a trance-like state in which the hypnotists will control what they perceive, think, feel, and do. In other words, the hypnotic induction acts as a placebo that causes participants to feel as if their experience of themselves and the world around them has changed.

Many people unfamiliar with recent research on hypnosis often find such claims difficult to believe. They point to the extreme changes in emotions, thoughts, and behaviors observed in hypnotized subjects as proof that they must be in a trance-like state of consciousness. But this conclusion rests on the assumption that such changes in emotions, thoughts, and behaviors never occur in the normal waking state of consciousness. This assumption is false. We all experience significant changes in emotions, cognitions, and behaviors whenever we are in particular situations. For example, extreme changes in emotions, thoughts, and behavior occur whenever we become deeply engrossed in a movie or a book. In fact, we may start sobbing at very sad parts (the “Ol’ Yeller” effect) or yell with excitement when the hero(ine) prevails in the end. When we are in the grip of these imaginative activities, we may feel as if we are participating in the story, and may lose awareness of where we really are (in a movie theater or in a library).

It isn't too difficult to take this one step further: if an authority suggested that reading a book or watching a movie placed us in an altered state of consciousness — a state in which we actually experience first-hand the events in the story, this suggestion might cause us to reinterpret our experiences. We might have the experience, while watching a movie or reading a book, that the events actually were occurring in front of us (as we do during the altered state of dream sleep). This is what is happening when people imagine events after receiving a hypnotic induction: they interpret their imaginings as actual occurrences because their culturally derived beliefs about hypnosis and the suggestions of the hypnotist together cause them to think that they are in a special altered state of consciousness:

hypnotic suggestions are communications that invite subjects to construct imaginary or “as-if” situations..., to define those as-if situations as real, and to enact behaviors that are congruent with the definition of the imaginary situation as real.... Subjects are implicitly instructed to convince themselves as well as the hypnotist that they are unable to bend their arm, that a cat is in their lap, that they are unable to recall well-known facts, that they have reverted to childhood, that they possess previously hidden selves or personalities, and so on. In effect, hypnotic subjects are asked to temporarily set aside the rules and assumptions usually used to differentiate imagined (as-if) situations from real events and, in so doing, to define the ongoing situation in terms of the as-if events described in the suggestions. (Spanos, 1996, pp. 21-22)

Thus, hypnotized people typically are not just acting (that is, they are not lying). Instead, they have become so involved in their roles and have been so influenced by their beliefs about hypnosis that they actually believe that they no longer are simply imagining or pretending.

The experimental tests of the sociocognitive theory of hypnosis is voluminous and goes back several decades. One illustrative example is presented here (see Spanos, 1996, and Wagstaff, 1999, for more information). One claim made for hypnosis as an altered state is that, when given “posthypnotic suggestions,” people will automatically respond to certain cues after they have been “awakened” from their trance. Fisher (1954) (described in Spanos, 1996, pp. 46-47) tested this claim and showed that participants’ beliefs about posthypnotic responding determined whether or not they responded automatically to the cue after being "awakened." Participants were given an hypnotic induction and then told that, after the hypnotic session was ended, they would feel forced to scratch their ear whenever they heard the word “psychology.” The session was ended and the participants then engaged in a formal conversation with the experimenter and his assistant that clearly was part of the experiment. During this conversation, all participants scratched their ears whenever the word “psychology” was mentioned.

Following this, the experimenter and assistant acted in a manner designed to give participants the impression that the experiment was now over. In an informal conversation, the word “psychology” again was mentioned several times. About 70% of the subjects (9 out of 13) didn't respond to the cue. When the participants were reminded that the experiment was still in progress, only 15% of the subjects (2 out of 13) now failed to scratch their ear. Spanos (1996) concluded that the results of studies such as this one show that:

posthypnotic responding does not occur automatically. Instead, its occurrence is determined by subjects’ beliefs about what is expected from them. As long as they believe that the experiment is ongoing and that they are still in the role of hypnotic subjects, they behave accordingly and scratch their ear when cued. However, when they interpret the behavior of the experimenter to mean that their role as hypnotic subjects is terminated, they stop emitting posthypnotic responses. (p. 46)

The lesson should be clear: participants' beliefs about hypnosis along with the cues communicated during the hypnotic situation that indicate to the participants what behaviors are expected determine how they will act. Participants become so absorbed the role of hypnotic subject that they act according to the expectations arising from their hypnosis schemas and the hypnotist's suggestions, without being aware that they are portraying a character that has been scripted for them by their culture and the hypnotist's instructions.

As for the retrieval of implicit (repressed) memories, there is little or no evidence demonstrating that hypnosis improves retrievals. By suggesting to hypnotized people that they can remember something that they report that they cannot remember, the hypnotist actually encourages them to fabricate false memories: if their schemas contain the belief that forgotten memories can be retrieved, they will interpret what they are only imagining as the retrieval of fragments of repressed memories, especially if the hypnotherapist suggests this to them. The hypnotherapist's insistence that the client will remember a repressed memory only if he or she will try harder causes the client to construct a memory perhaps made up of small fragments of actual memories that are completed with what the client has only imagined. In 1985, the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that research had clearly demonstrated that, when people are encouraged to recall memories under hypnosis, there are three possible outcomes:

(1) no increase occurs in the number of accurate memories recalled;
(2) an increase occurs in the number of inaccurate memories recalled;
(3) an increase occurs in the number of memories recalled, but they are reconstructions that combine both fact and fiction.

According to the report, the last was the most frequent outcome. In general, there is no evidence that hypnosis increases the number of accurate memories recalled. In fact, the available evidence indicates that memories recalled while hypnotized are more unreliable than memories recalled without hypnosis.

Study Questions

37. What is suggestion and how does it determine our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors according to the model outlined in Figure 3?
38. What do psychodynamically oriented therapists tend to assume about hypnosis and the retrieval of implicit memories?
39. What is age regression and how do hypnotherapists use it to retrieve repressed memories of traumatic events?
40. Which theoretical approach claims that hypnosis involves an altered state of consciousness?
41. According to sociocognitive theorists, why do hypnotic inductions cause people to respond as if they are in a trance-like state of consciousness?
42. According to sociocognitive theorists, what teaches people how to become hypnotized?
43. How would you summarize in your own words Spanos' sociocognitive theory of hypnosis? (Note: See the passage from his 1996 book quoted above.)
44. What does it mean to say that hypnotic inductions act as suggestions?
45. What evidence is there that we are capable of experiencing significant changes in our experience of ourselves and the world around us even while in a normal waking state of consciousness?
46. What did Fisher (1954) conclude with respect to the claim that posthypnotic suggestions cause people to respond involuntarily to certain cues?
47. What does research demonstrate about the effectiveness of hypnosis in helping people to consciously retrieve forgotten implicit memories?

Past-Life Regression Therapy

Sociocognitive Theory of MPD
FOR FALL, 2006