Illusory Causation: Why It Occurs

The Social Psychology of Aggression

“…Whereas neutral third parties can make accurate causal inferences regarding violence between two parties, the parties themselves frequently cannot. Because people tend to explain the causes of others' behaviors as due to dispositions and their own behavior as due to situational factors (Anderson, Krull, & Weiner, 1996;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Ploutz-Snyder, & Breitenbecher, 2002;Swann, Pelham, & Roberts, 1987), people become caught in a web in which members perceive the other party as acting out of malice or evil and perceive their own behavior as appropriate responses to the situation at hand. Similarly, out-group homogeneity effects may also prevent members of both parties from making accurate attributions.…”

Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events

“…More generally, when attention is drawn to any social entity-self, other, or group-that entity becomes likely to draw attributions of causation and responsibility (Arkin & Duval, 1975;Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Ploutz-Snyder, & Breitenbecher, 2002;McArthur & Post, 1977;Storms, 1972;Taylor & Fiske, 1978;Wegner & Giuliano, 1982). This view of attribution suggests why actors more often view their behavior as caused by situations, whereas observers of those actors view the same behavior as caused by the actors' dispositions-the diVerence may occur in part because actors are attending to situations and observers are attending to the actor (Jones & Nisbett, 1972).…”

The relationship between networking behavior and promotability: The moderating effect of political skill

“…Career networking has ‘pure’ competence characteristics, which lead supervisors to use high-promotion-potential explanations. In contrast, community networking – when exhibited by politically skillful employees – has ‘mixed’ warmth and competence characteristics, which lead supervisors to make similar inferences about employees’ traits and motives because supervisors tend to attribute salient behavior to disposition rather than to situation (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Ploutz-Snyder, & Breitenbecher, 2002). The results show the value of networking based on the ELM (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986): supervisors used career and community networking as central and peripheral informational cues to make upward-advancement evaluations.…”