Attribution: Points to be covered in class
Main sources
Augoustinos, M., Walker,I. (1995). Social Cognition – An Integrated Introduction. London:
Sage Publications.
Fiske, S.T. and Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition. Singapore: McGraw-Hill.
Higgins, E. T. (2000). Social Cognition: Learning about what matters in the social world.
European Journal of Social psychology, 30 (1), 3 – 39.
Attribution
People attribute causes to their own as well as others’ behaviour
Understanding the antecedent conditions of behaviors and event
Finding explanations
Functional purpose
Planning; regulation
Disposition or situation
Perspectives
Naïve scientist perspective
- research on attribution
- the attribution process as a detailed
and systematic causal search
- dominant view regarding attribution
Alternate view?
– quick judgments
Why do people make causal attributions?
Need for prediction and control
Basis of regulation
Causal theories
Unintentional causal analysis vs extensive causal analysis
Attribution Theory
– How social perceiver uses information to arrive at causal explanations ?
– Theories of attribution
– General principles
– Different content domains (ex: achievement)
“The theory has developed within social psychology primarily as a means of dealing with
questions of social perception: If a person is aggressively competitive in his behavior, is he this kind
of person, or is he reacting to situational pressures? …If a person fails on a test, does he have low
ability, or is the test difficult? In all such instances, the questions concern the causes of observed
behavior and the answers of interest are those given by the man in street.” (Kelley, 1973, 107)
(Kelley, H.A. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist,
February,107 – 128)
Main theoretical formulations
– Heider’s theory of Naive Psychology
– Jones & Davis’s Correspondent inference theory
– Kelley’s Covariation model and Causal Schemas
Other Areas
– Emotional Lability (Schachter)
– Self-perception (Bem)
– Locus of control (Rotter)
Theory of Naive Psychology -Fritz Heider
Sets the foundation of Attribution theory – ‘Common sense psychology
How people understand the world?
Analysis of natural language – elements of talk (discursive)
Causal system
‘Lens’ model of perception (developed by Brunswik, 1956)
Object, context, mediation and perceiver
Object and person perception: Similar processes
Locus of causality: The why of behavior (person or situation)
Later theorists expanded and developed Heider’s ideas
Attribution of responsibility
Varying degrees
Association
Causal responsibility
Intentional behaviour
Justifiable behaviour
Later work on attribution of responsibility linked it to severity of consequences
Correspondent Inference Theory :
Jones & Davis
How people make stable attributions?
Dispositional qualities of people are important
Correspondent inference: Behaviour corresponds to internal dispositions and intentions
Perceiver’s task:
Behaviour as determined by internal dispsition
Establishing predictability/ certainty
“…Jones and Davis, like Heider before them, view the perceiver as an intuitive scientist,
systematically (though perhaps unwittingly) extracting abstract theoretical information from
observed behavioural data, testing and eliminating alternative theoretical explanations for
the data before settling on one theoretical explanation best supported by the data.”
(Augoustinos and Walker, 1995, p. 63)
The behaviour of others will be more informative when it is judged to be intentional (a
consistent underlying intention)
Ways of making judgment -
– Non-common effects (unique effects of the chosen course of action)
– The desirability factor
– Actor’s choice
– Conformity to social roles
– Fulfilment of expectations
– Judgment and motivation
Hedonic relevance
– Impact that an actor’s behaviour has on the perceiver
Personalism
– The perceiver’s perception that the actor intended to benefit or harm the perceiver
Hedonically relevant attributions and judgments of personalism are more likely to result in
correspondent inferences
Covariation model and Causal Schemas - Kelley
Naïve scientist approach
Covariation and causal connection
Inferring causality in everyday life
Two formulations of the attribution process
– Covariation model
– Causal Schemas
Kelley’s Covariation model
Multiple instances
Co-variation: Observation of co-occurrence of two events
People tend to attribute an effect to a cause with which it covaries (nature of co-variation)
The three dimensions of assessing covariation-
– Distinctiveness
– Consistency over time/modality
– Consensus
Distinctiveness, Consistency and Consensus
Distinctiveness : Does the person react/behave the same way with other stimuli?
Consistency: Is the person’s reaction/ behavior same to the stimulus at different times?
Consensus: Do other people react/ behave the same way to the stimulus?
Dichotomous judgment; different combinations
Perceivers use information from across time, persons and situations. Such information is
required to make attributions based on the three dimensions
The Discounting Principle
Discounting principle maintains that a social perceiver places less importance on one
particular cause if other potential causal factors are present.
Situational constraints are not easily discounted (more importance to internal causal factors)
Augmenting Principle
Facilitative causes & Inhibitory causes
Augmenting principle states that when both facilitative and inhibitory causes are present
then people tend to give the facilitative cause more importance
Facilitative cause is augmented
Causal Schemas
General conceptions of causal relationships in the world
The multiple necessary causes schema (Ex: extremely good performance)
The multiple sufficient causes schema
The Cause – Effect relationship depends on
– Strength of causes
– Strength of effect
