Demonstration

Attribution

Asch's research demonstrated that people can (and do) form impressions of a person from a simple, bare-bones list of that person's traits, just as they can form an impression before meeting a person on the basis of what others have said. Other researchers have found that impressions are also formed by observing a person's behaviors, and then using that information to make inferences about that person's traits or dispositions. Social psychologists use the term attribution to refer to the process of inferring personality characteristics on the basis of behaviors. We watch what people do, then we explain their behavior by attributing it either to personality characteristics (dispositional influences) or to external circumstances (situational influences).