Attribution

Attribution
⚫ Attribution refers to the tendency one develops to explain the
ways in which a person judges another person’s behaviour.
⚫ Attribution is the complex process in which we observe others’
behaviour and try to infer causes behind it from various areas.

⚫ Fritz Heider and Harold Kelley developed attribution theory

during 1958. They stated that our understanding of social world
is based on our continual attempts at causal analysis based on
how we interpret our experience.
 Types of attribution
With reference to social perception there are two types of
attributions which people generally tend to make. These are:
⚫ Dispositional attribution
✔ ascribes a person’s behaviour to internal factors such as
personality traits, motivation or ability.
✔ In general, people use these attributions to explain their
successes or others’ failures.
⚫ Situational attributions
✔ ascribes a person’s behaviour to external factors such as
equipment, social influence from others.
✔ In general, people use these attributions to explain their
failures or others’ success.
 Attribution Theory
Jones & Davis Correspondent Inference Theory
⚫ Jones and Davis (1965) thought that people pay particular
attention to intentional behavior.
⚫ Jones and Davis’ theory helps us understand the process of
making an internal attribution. They say that we tend to do this
when we see a correspondence between motive and behavior.
⚫ Dispositional attributions provide us with information from
which we can make predictions about a person’s future
behavior. The correspondent inference theory describes the
conditions under which we make dispositional attributes to the
behavior we perceive as intentional.
Jones and Davis say we draw on five sources of information:
1. Choice: If a behavior is freely chosen it is believed to be due to
internal (dispositional) factors.
2. Accidental vs. Intentional Behavior: Behavior that is intentional
is likely to be attributed to the person’s personality and behavior
which is accidental is likely to be attributed to situation / external
causes.
3. Social Desirability: Behaviors low in sociable desirability lead us
to make (internal) dispositional inferences more than socially
undesirable behaviors.
4. Hedonistic Relevance: If the other person’s behavior appears to be
directly intended to benefit or harm us.
5. Personalism: If the other person’s behavior appears to be intended
to have an impact on us, we assume that it is “personal”, and not just a
by-product of the situation we are both in.
Kelley's Co-variation Model
Kelley’s (1967) co-variation model is the best-known
attribution theory. He developed a logical model for judging
whether a particular action should be attributed to some
characteristic (dispositional) of the person or the environment
(situational).
The term co-variation simply means that a person has
information from multiple observations, at different times and
situations, and can perceive the co-variation of an observed
effect and its causes.
 According to the co-variation principle, an observer can use
one of three specific types of causes to explain an effect:
⚫ The actor: the individual who is demonstrating the behaviour.
⚫ The entity: the target person or thing at which the behaviour is
directed.
⚫ The circumstances- the setting under which the behavior
accurse.
 He argues that in trying to discover the causes of behavior
people act like scientists. More specifically they take into
account three kinds of evidence.
⚫ Consensus: the extent to which other people behave in the
same way in a similar situation.
⚫ Distinctiveness: is the degree to which the actor behaves the
same way in other situations..
⚫ Consistency: the extent to which the person behaves like this
every time the situation occurs.
 Attribution errors
Fundamental Attribution Error
⚫ According to this error, when we make attributions about
another person’s actions, we are likely to over emphasize the
role of dispositional factors, rather than situational causes
⚫ For example, if we see a coworker met accident on his way to a
meeting, we are more likely to explain this behavior in terms of
our coworker’s carelessness rather than considering that he was
running late to a meeting.
Actor-observer Bias
⚫ According to the actor-observer bias, in addition to
over-valuing dispositional explanations of others’ behaviors,
we tend to under-value dispositional explanations and
over-value situational explanations of our own behavior.
⚫ For example, a student who studied may explain her behavior
by referencing situational factors such ‘I have an exam next
week’, whereas others will explain her studying by referencing
dispositional factors such ‘She’s ambitious and hard-working
Self-serving Attribution Bias
⚫ A self-serving bias refers to people’s tendency to attribute their
successes to internal factors but attribute their failures to
external.
⚫ For example, a tennis player who wins his match might say, “I
won because I am a good athlete,” whereas the loser might say,
“I lost because the referee was unfair.”
Hostile Attribution Bias
⚫ Hostile attribution bias has been defined as an interpretive bias
wherein individuals exhibit a tendency to interpret other’s
ambiguous as hostile, rather than benign.
⚫ For example, if a child witnesses two other children whispering
and assumes they are talking about him, that child makes an
attribution of hostile intent, even though the other children’s
behavior was potentially benign.
 Attribution Theory and its Applicability in
Education
⚫ According to attribution theory, the explanations that people
tend to make to explain success or failure can be analysed in
terms of three sets of characteristics:
⚫ First, the cause of the success or failure may be internal or
external. That is, we may succeed or fail because of factors
that we believe have their origin within us or because of factors
that originate in our environment.
⚫ Second, the cause of the success or failure may be either
stable or unstable. If the we believe cause is stable, then the
outcome is likely to be the same if we perform the same
behaviour on another occasion. If it is unstable, the outcome is
likely to be different on another occasion.
⚫ Third, the cause of the success or failure may be either
controllable or uncontrollable. A controllable factor is one
which we believe we ourselves can alter if we wish to do so.
An uncontrollable factor is one that we do not believe we can
easily alter.
⚫ An important assumption of attribution theory is that people
will interpret their environment in such a way as to maintain a
positive self-image.
⚫ The basic principle of attribution theory as it applies to
motivation is that a person’s own perceptions or attributions for
success or failure determine the amount of effort the person
will expend on that activity in the future.