In understanding our social world we act as “intuitive scientists”. Evaluate this proposition drawing upon relevant psychological research.
People seek ‘truths’ in a logical and rational way (as cited in Buchanan et al, 2007, p.106). Social psychologists view people as intuitive scientists from the early stages of life; even as young children, people are constantly trying to investigate their social environment, eventually becoming aware of what social behaviour is acceptable and what is not. As people develop this intuition, we have preconceived ideas and assumptions about people’s behaviour and situations or environments that are encountered. This essay looks at Fritz Heider’s view on naïve psychology (1944, as cited in Buchanan et al., p.60), where people act as amateur scientists looking for reoccurring themes and behaviours, to base their own life model on. Harold Kelley's covariation method (1967, as cited in Buchanan et al., p.72) and a study carried out by Jones and Davis (1965, as cited in Buchanan et al., p.72), is looked at to discuss the attribution theories. The essay follows onto looking into optimistic bias and how this could affect how people understand their social environment based on rational reasoning. As well as people understanding their own social environment and behaviour, the essay looks at how people look for something outside their social group to blame for behaviour that could be seen from a negative point of view, in this case; smoking.
Heider believed by looking at how people made sense of their social environments was fundamental in understanding social behaviour. Using the phrase 'naive psychologists', Heider was able to develop an understanding of how people act as intuitive scientists, by building models of cause and effect to find predictability and regularity to understand their own and others behaviours. In order to test this theory Heider asked participants to view an animation of a circle, a box and a rectangle. The...