1.    Cues to Deception (click here for a page of cues)

        If someone was lying to you, then how confident are you that you would be able to detect the
        lie? Most people believe they are pretty good at detecting liars, but research indicates that
        they have about a 50% chance of accurately detecting deception. Is good lie detection skills
        a function of the job a person holds? Sort of...as can be seen in the table below, only Secret
        Service agents were able to detect liars at a rate that statistically exceeded chance.

2.     Fletcher and colleagues (1986) developed the Attributional Complexity Scale to measure the
        complexity of the attributional schemata that people use to explain human behavior. The
        scale measures seven attributional constructs: (1) a motivational component, (2) preference
        for complex rather than simple explanations, (3) metacognition concerning explanations, (4)
        awareness of the extent to which people's behavior is a function of interaction with others,
        (5) a tendency to infer abstract or causally complex internal attributions, (6) a tendency to
        infer abstract, contemporary, external causal attributions, and (7) a tendency to infer external
        causes operating from the past.

        To score the scale, you simply sum your responses to each of the 28 items. Reverse score
        items 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 26, and 28. The items measuring each of the
        seven attributional constructs are:

            motivational component:    1,   8, 15, 22
            complex vs. simple:           2,   9, 16, 23
            metacognition:                   3, 10, 17, 24
            interaction w/others:          4, 11, 18, 25
            abstract vs. casual:            5, 12, 19, 26
            external causes:                 6, 13, 20, 27
            past causes:                      7, 14, 21, 28

                Reference:           Fletcher, G. J. O., Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson, D., & Reeder, G. D. (1986).
                                     Attributional complexity: An individual differences measure.  Journal of Personality and
                                    Social Psychology, 51, 875-884.

3.    Social Thinking

        How do we explain the behavior of others and ourselves? Answer the Attribution Scale
        twice, once for yourself and once for some prominent figure (e.g., Ross Perot, Willard
        Scott, Barbara Walters, etc.).

        After you have completed this assignment, then click here for more information.

4.    Kelley's Cube Model of Attribution is another way of understanding how we determine if a
       person's behavior is due to internal or external causes. This model is based on the analysis
       of variance and is an interesting way of thinking about how people make attributions. An
       illustration of his model can be found here.

5.    Some people have a difficult time getting a grasp on the concept of attributional ambiguity.
       Recall that the theory of correspondent inference states that when a person is behaving
       in a manner that could be due to several different reasons, people have a difficult time
       determining if the behavior is due to something about the person (dispositional attribution)
       or the situation. In such situations, attributional ambiguity exists, because the information
       we have about the person is ambiguous concerning which attribution is correct or more
       likely.

       Attributional ambiguity is an important concept in many phenomena in social psychology.
       For example, recall that self-handicapping refers to a person's engagement in behavior(s) that
       hinder performance in an effort to provide an excuse if they fail. In essence, self-handicappers
       create attributional ambiguity to insulate or protect themselves from a negative attribution about
       them. If a student self-handicaps for an upcoming exam by not studying very much, going to
       a movie, or hanging out with friends, then the student has protected his or her self-esteem in
       case he or she fails the exam. In this example, the failure the student is like to experience is
       attributionally ambiguous. The failure could reflect something about the student's intelligence OR
       it could reflect the student did not have time to study or was not able to study very much,
       because the student watching a movie, or hanging out with friends. If the student had not self-
       handicapped, then the reason the student failed the exam would be less ambiguous.

6.    What are some examples of the fundamental attribution error found in the Rosenhan article?
 
7.     What are other areas where the self-fulfilling prophecy can be found?