Use and Activation of Social Knowledge in Commonsense Attribution,Evidence for a Schema-Based Attribution Model

Abstract

Starting from the principal objections against Kelly's 1973 analysis of variance model an overview of several experiments Ss presented supporting a schema-based attribution model of social knowledge. Empirical evidence obtained so far shows that people classify social situations they are going to explain in terms of 9 basic categories for actions and events, that the information preferred and actively searched preceding an attribution is highly specific to the type of situation in question and is guided by an attribution hypothesis central to the knowledge schema, that information search is confirmatory and truncated, that the attributions made are specific to the type of social situation to be explained, and that explanations central to an attribution schema are cognitively more easily available and may be activated by a priming procedure.