Describe and evaluate any three phenomena within social cognition (Kelleys covariation model, the fundamental attribution error, actor-observer differences,) and evaluate their explanations In social cognition causal attribution is one the most important models. In causal attribution we attempt to find cause-effect relationships between human behavior and possible causes which made it happen. There are seven different theories of causal attribution, and I shall talk about the Kelleys covariation model and then talk about some biases in attribution.Kelleys covariation modelKelleys covariation model is a form of attribution model, possibly the best known of them all. According to his model, an observer attributes the behavior of people either to their person, the behavior is due the individual characteristics of the person performing the act, entity, the behavior is caused by the target, or circumstance, the behavior is caused by the circumstances of the event. When doing this, the observer uses three types of information, although not all of this information is always available. These are: Consistency, whether the behavior is consistent across different situations, Distinctiveness, whether the persons reaction is the same in all cases or not, and Consensus, do other people react the way to similar stimuli. For example , A pushes B: Interpretation of Information CausalInformation availableConsensusDistinctivenessConsistencyAttributionNobody else pushes BHighPersonA also pushes other peopleLowA has previously pushed BHighOthers push BLowEntityA pushes only BHighA has previously pushed BHighNobody else pushes BLowCircumstanceA pushes only BHighA has not previously pushed BLowFrom our example, we can, by way of causal attribution deduce that A does not like B, because A only pushes B and nobody else, and nobody else pushes B. If however the consistency is low, people look for other alternative causes for the ...
