Not My Type - Chapter 16

Last Blog!! Okay, now that that's out of my system...

Attribution is blaming or explaining someones behavior on their situation or disposition. For example, Jake stole the cookie from the kitchen. But his best friend Harry tells the daycare teacher that he only did it because Karen told him she would tell everyone he slept with a doll if he didn't. In this, Harry is explaining why Jake did the bad thing - because he didn't want Karen to tell that he slept with a doll.

The fundamental attribution error is when an observant fails to recognize a person's situation and how it may impact they way they act. For example, a girl could be very quiet in school, but you may see her at night at a concert playing a trumpet solo and think, "wow, how can she be so quiet in school, but play like that in front of a bunch of people." What you fail to recognize is that she probably feels out of place a school, but at the concert she is in her element.

Stereotyping, in the book, is defined as a generalized belief about a group of people. Basically this means putting people into social groups based on what they look like, or sometimes how old they are. Illusory correlation is overestimating a link between two variables. These two things could easily be compared, because stereotyping often happens before you get to know a person, just like illusory correlation is seeing a result that is expected from data even when it doesn't exist.

Current Events #6

Last week, my sister and I went to see the movie Blindside. I don't want to give anything away if you wanted to see the movie, but there was one part in it that I thought went along with this chapter.

In the movie the kid isn't very smart, and he normally tests in the very low percentile on his standardized tests that are taken in (I think) all schools. However, it then shows up that he tests in the 98th percentile for protectiveness. Since the movie is a true story I found it interesting to think that this kid that has never done well in school, and has never been pushed to succeed, is so extremely protective of things he loves.

Now I know that they don't really have anything to do with each other - intellect and protectiveness - but that was what was in the movie and I thought the protectiveness part was a kind of cool personality trait for him to have. I'm sorry if I ruined the movie for anyone, but I really didn't give that much away.

Keirsey Temperment Sorter

I just did the Keirsey Temperament Sorter activity that we had to do for class and I found the results interesting. It told me that I was categorized as a 'Guardian'. This did not surprise me so much, but the fact that the rest of my class that had done the activity was also a 'Guardian'.

This made me wonder what other temperaments the activity could give, and if the rest of the students in my class really all think the same way as I do. I suppose we could in the respect that we are protective of other people and don't want to see others get hurt, so we do things that would least likely give those results.

Did anyone have a different result?