Attribution

• While interacting with people we are interested in the reasons behind other’s
behaviors. For example, if we see someone being very aggressive in public, we
are interested to know that why is he doing so? Is the person aggressive by
nature? Or is he using aggression as an instrument to achieve some hidden goal?
Is there something inherent in the environment which is stimulating the person
to be involved in aggressive behaviour?
• We are concerned to understand the reasons behind the behaviours primarily
because it helps us to predict future behaviour of people around us in order to
act effectively in the social environment.
• This process by which we try to infer the causes behind the person’s behaviors is
referred to as attribution.
• We infer causes behind other’s behaviors generally in terms of persons’
intentions, their abilities, traits, motoves and the situational factors that lead a
person to some specific behaviour.
• Three criteria used to judge behavior
• Distinctiveness: Is this how the person treats everyone or are you different?
• Consistency: Has the person always treated you this way or is this different?
• Consensus: Do other people do this same thing or is this really different?
Types of attribution
Interpersonal Attribution
• When telling a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you are likely to tell the story
in a way that places you in the best possible light.
Predictive Attribution
• We also tend to attribute things in ways that allow us to make future predictions. If your
car was vandalized, you might attribute the crime to the fact that you parked in a
particular parking garage. As a result, you may avoid that parking garage in the future.
Explanatory Attribution
• We use explanatory attributions to help us make sense of the world around us. Some
people have an optimistic explanatory style, while others tend to be more pessimistic.
• People with an optimistic style attribute positive events to stable, internal, and global
causes and negative events to unstable, external, and specific causes. Those with a
pessimistic style attribute negative events to internal, stable, and global causes and
positive events to external, unstable, and specific causes.
• Internal vs External
• In an internal, or dispositional attribution, people infer that an event
or a person’s behaviour is due to personal factors such as traits,
abilities, or feelings.
• In an external, or situational attribution the people infer that a
person’s behaviour is due to situational factors
• Stable vs unstable
• When people make stable attribution, they infer that an event or
behaviour is due to stable unchanging factors
• When making and unstable attribution, they infer that an event or
behaviour is due to unstable, temporary factors
• Controllable vs uncontrollable
• If something is controllable, we can alter it if we wish to do so.
• If something is uncontrollable, it is outside our sphere of influence
Theories
Correspondent Inference Theory
• In 1965, Edward Jones and Keith Davis suggested that people make inferences
about others in cases where actions are intentional rather than external
• When people see others acting in certain ways, they look for a correspondence
between the person's motives and their behaviors. The inferences people then
make are based on the degree of choice, the expectedness of the behavior, and
the effects of that behavior.
Heider's 'Common Sense' Theory
• In his 1958 book, "The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations," Fritz Heider
suggested that people observe others, analyze their behavior, and come up with
their own common-sense explanations for their actions.
• Heider groups these explanations into either external attributions or internal
attributions. External attributions are those that are blamed on situational forces,
while internal attributions are blamed on individual characteristics and traits.
 Influential Biases and Errors
The Actor-Observer Bias
• When something happens, we are more likely to blame external forces
than our personal characteristics. In psychology, this tendency is known as
the actor-observer bias.
• When it comes to explaining your own actions, you have more information
about yourself and the situational variables at play.
• When you're trying to explain another person's behavior, you are at a bit of
a disadvantage; you only have the information that is readily observable.
• Not surprisingly, people are less likely to fall victim to the actor-observer
discrepancy with people that they know very well. Because you know more
about the personality and behavior of people you're close to, you are
better able to take their point of view and more likely to be aware of
possible situational causes for their behaviors.
 The Fundamental Attribution Error
• The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute other people’s
behaviour to internal factors such as personality traits, abilities and feelings
• When explaining their own behaviour, othe other hand, people tend to attribute
to the situational factors.
• When it comes to other people, we tend to attribute causes to internal factors
such as personality characteristics and ignore or minimize external variables. This
phenomenon tends to be very widespread, particularly among individualistic
cultures.
• Psychologists refer to this tendency as the fundamental attribution error; even
though situational variables are very likely present, we automatically attribute the
cause to internal characteristics.
• The fundamental attribution error explains why people often blame other people
for things over which they usually have no control.
Self-Serving Bias
• The self serving bias is the tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to
situational factors
• This bias tends to increase as time passes after an event.
• Think about the last time you received a good grade on an exam. Chances are that you attributed
your success to internal factors, such as "I did well because I am smart" or "I did well because I
studied and was well-prepared."
• What happens when you receive a poor grade, though? Social psychologists have found that in
this situation, you are more likely to attribute your failure to external forces, such as "I failed
because the teacher included trick questions" or "The classroom was so hot that I couldn't
concentrate." Notice that both of these explanations lay the blame on outside forces rather than
accepting personal responsibility.
• Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the self-serving bias. So why are we more likely to
attribute our success to our personal characteristics and blame outside variables for our failures?
Researchers believe that blaming external factors for failures and disappointments helps
protect self-esteem.