Attribution (psychology) Wikipedia

Attribution is the endowment by one individual of another with characteristics and qualities that cannot be seen in the direct field of perception. With the help of attribution, one person analyzes and reflects on the reasons for the behavior of the other, evaluates his personality. Attribution in psychology is a mechanism for explaining personal behavior. It arises because the information coming from direct observation is not enough to adequately interact with the environment. Therefore, people often “make up” facts that they were unable to find out or could not directly perceive. One person observing the actions of another comes to his own conclusion about the potential causes of behavior. The observer bases his conclusions on situational factors (conditions, environment) and subjective ones (efforts, abilities).

Social psychologists have developed attributional theories that explain the rules people use when judging the behavior of others, thereby determining attribution styles.

Attribution is rarely objective, and it is also not always an accurate process; it is hampered by certain attributive distortions (attitudes, goals, motives). These distortions affect the way a person evaluates his own behavior and the actions of others.

They often talk about causal attribution, which means the interpretation of the interlocutor’s behavior through making certain assumptions about the possible intentions, reasons, motives of a person’s behavior, with their further assignment to the communication partner.

Causal attribution most determines the social perception of a person if there is not enough information and it needs to be learned from somewhere. Insights gained from the attribution process can contribute to the creation of social stereotypes and patterns. This allows the person himself to more easily perceive and get to know other people, and contributes to the development of prejudices regarding representatives of different social categories and groups (ethnic, age, professional).

Defensive attribution

The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term that refers to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of protecting himself from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attributions occur if a person witnessed a particular disaster. In such situations, attribution of responsibility and drawing of one's own conclusions will depend on the severity of the outcome of the failure and the levels of personal and situational similarity between the person and the victim. An example of a defensive attribution is the well-known hypothesis “good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.” Everyone believes this because they feel vulnerable in situations they cannot control. At the same time, it leads to blaming the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died as a result of a car accident, they assume that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and try to convince themselves that the accident would never happen to them. However, oddly enough, some people believe that positive events happen to them more often than to others, and negative ones, accordingly, less often. For example, a smoker believes that he is less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.

Examples

For example, you take an exam and do well, but your friend fails. You can conclude that you are smart because you completed the task, but at the same time it is easy to assume that your friend did not succeed because he spent the whole night in some club and was simply not able to pass the material. Human psychology is designed in such a way that he will attribute a certain property to you as a result of successfully passing an exam, and vice versa to your friend.

Varieties

Attribution in psychology is divided into three types. It is worth considering the types of attribution in more detail.

Personal attribution means that a person is looking for the culprit of a particular situation. More often than not, the cause is a specific person.
Comprehensive - in this case, a person is not interested in specific culprits; he is looking for the reasons for what is happening in external factors.
Stimulus - a person blames an inanimate object. This happens more often if he himself is to blame. For example: the glass broke because it was standing on the very edge of the table.

The causal attribution effect helped reveal some facts. If an individual has to explain the good fortune of a stranger or his own personal problems, then incentive attribution is used.

But if there is a need to analyze the success of the individual himself and the failure of an outsider, then personal attribution is used. This indicates a peculiarity of the psychology of any person - we treat ourselves much more loyally than others. Such examples of attribution very clearly prove this fact.

Also of interest is the fact that usually, when talking about success, a person indicates himself as the main reason. But in unsuccessful business, circumstances are always to blame. The individual believes that he has achieved everything because he is very smart and hardworking, and if any failure occurs, then the reason for this was factors beyond the control of the individual.

We recommend: Accommodation in psychology

However, if a person talks about the successes of another person, then everything is the opposite. The other one was lucky because he is a suck-up, a weasel, and is on good terms with his bosses. But he is unlucky because he is lazy and not smart enough.

Social causal attribution is very clearly visible among organizational leaders when they need to characterize subordinates. There are long-standing biases at play here, and they are often formulaic. If management is asked to tell about the reason for an ineffective result, then the causal factor will always be internal. Always and everywhere, ordinary workers will be to blame for the decline in production.

And few will point out that the reason for the decline in production was insufficient funding or improper organization of labor. In such cases, there is a tendency to underestimate situational factors and greatly overestimate the capabilities of individual ones.

It can also be noted that managers most often do not take responsibility for any failures. When asked why they are so ineffective in their place, they will point to low financial support as the reason, but not their own oversight. However, if we are talking about success, then management, as a rule, takes full credit for this achievement.

Lee Ross experiment

The subject of this study, conducted in 1977, was the perception of others' intelligence. It turned out that we tend to overestimate it under conditions of social pressure.

Lee Ross recreated the events of his own life in an experiment. The exam he once had to take ended in failure for him: the examiners bombarded him with questions in which they themselves were obvious “experts.” Ross was in despair at his “ignorance” and in admiration at the “genius” of the examiners.

Six months later, he himself became a teacher and got the opportunity to “bring down” his students in the same way. One of them admitted that he experienced the same feelings during the exam as Ross did when he acted as the examinee.

After this, the psychologist decided to conduct a quiz experiment. The participants were divided into three groups: presenters, players and spectators. The first step was to ask the most difficult questions.

By the way, each of us can come up with such questions, based on our specialization. However, the quiz participants came to a different conclusion: they considered those asking questions to be much more erudite than those answering. Subsequent experiments showed that even very smart people are prone to similar conclusions.

A similar “halo effect” can be observed in life situations when we have to evaluate the intelligence of an interlocutor endowed with power. Usually such a person, be it a teacher, a boss or a high-ranking official, conducts a dialogue and asks “tricky” questions. We often attribute to him an outstanding intellect and feel an involuntary reverence for him.

Ross's experiments led to the following conclusions:

people tend to attribute non-existent qualities to others based on individual aspects of behavior;
It is impossible to form a correct judgment about a person based on one or more actions.

Fundamental attribution error

We usually attribute our successes to our own personal qualities, and our failures to external circumstances. When we judge others, exactly the opposite happens. If a friend achieves success, we tend to attribute this to fortunate external circumstances. And we will attribute the problems in our friend’s affairs to his personal qualities.

Only a few people think differently. Explaining a failure in a partner’s performance by circumstances, recognizing his talent, hard work, dedication, putting him on the same level with you, or even higher, is a task that is too difficult for many. Most of us overestimate ourselves and underestimate others.

This is understandable: if you don’t blame unfavorable situations, you will have to roll up your sleeves and work hard to improve yourself. And there are never too many people who want to “plow” - even for themselves. Thus, the attributional theory considers exaggeration of one’s own importance to be the main error of perception.

For clarity, let's consider a specific situation. A modest young man dares to talk to a beautiful girl on the street. However, the stranger was not delighted with either his stylish suit or his wit and sharply rejected his attempt to start a relationship.

The guy was shocked by the discrepancy between the girl’s “antics” and his expectations and cultural norms. After this failure, he will probably program himself with negative attitudes such as “all women are bitches”, “they are only interested in moneybags”. But the girl may have just been in a bad mood.

This example shows how important a correct explanation of the other person's motives is for the formation and maintenance of a relationship. Far-fetched reasons can be radically different from the true ones

Therefore, in a situation with a clear lack of information, it is better to once again clarify some details or ask again than to rely on your own imagination.

application

Attribution theory can be applied to juror decision making. Jurors use attributions to explain the reason for the intentions and actions associated with a defendant's criminal behavior. The attribution made (situational or dispositional) can influence a juror's punitiveness toward the defendant. When jurors attribute a defendant's behavior to a dispositional attribution they tend to be more punitive and more likely to find the defendant guilty and recommend the death sentence compared to life imprisonment.

How it works

There are 2 types of attribution for explaining the behavior of other people. First, we can explain the action of one person in relation to another. Secondly, behavior in relation to the situation. For example, if a student behaves quietly and modestly on the first day of school, we can conclude that shyness is the reason for this behavior of the person. This is a dispositional attribution (towards a person). Or we can assume that the cause of shyness is lack of sleep or personal problems of the student (situational). So, attribution in psychology is the conclusions that people make about the causes of events and the actions of other individuals. People make them to understand and explain certain processes. And these conclusions, in turn, influence interactions with others.

In clinical psychology

Attribution theory has had many applications in clinical psychology. Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale developed the depressive attributional style theory, arguing that people who tend to attribute their failures to internal, stable, and global factors are more vulnerable to clinical depression. The Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) was developed to assess whether individuals have a depressogenic attributional style. However, the ASQ has been criticized, with some researchers preferring to use a method called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE), in which an individual's routine work is analyzed to assess how vulnerable he/she is to a depressive attributional style.

learned helplessness

The concept of learned helplessness originated from animal studies in which psychologists Seligman and Stephen F. Mayer discovered that dogs had a classically conditioned reflex to an electric shock that they could not escape; subsequently, by not trying to escape they could avoid shock in a similar situation. They argued that learned helplessness applied to human psychopathology. In particular, people who attribute negative consequences to internal, enduring, and global factors reflect a view in which they have no control over the situation. It is suggested that this aspect of not trying to improve the situation worsens the negative mood, and can lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses.

Content

1 Prerequisites
2 Perceived locus of causation
3 types of attribution 3.1 External
3.2 Internal

4 Theories and models

4.1 Common sense psychology

4.2 Corresponding conclusion

4.3 Covariance model

4.4 3D model

5 Bias and errors

5.1 Basic attribution error

5.2 Cultural bias

5.3 Difference between actor and observer

5.4 Dispositional attribution

5.5 Self-serving bias

5.6 Defensive attribution hypothesis

6 Application

7 In marketing communications

8 In clinical psychology

8.1 Learned helplessness

9 Perceptual significance

10 Criticism

11 See also

12 Links

13 Further reading

Problems of mutual understanding

Trying to explain to ourselves the actions of people around us, to predict their behavior, we attribute our individual vision to their actions. We judge other people from the perspective of personal experience and level of culture. This is the phenomenon of causal attribution. The first word in this phrase is translated from Latin as “cause”, the second is “attribution”.

Scientifically speaking, causal attribution is the basis of interpersonal perception, which consists in interpreting the behavior and internal state of another person in the absence of real information about him. From this point of view, any dialogue is a process of mutual persuasion, a mutual imposition of opinions.

The luminary of the theory of causal attribution is considered to be the American psychologist F. Heider. A great contribution to the development of the problem of interpersonal perception was made by his colleagues - Americans F. Fiedler and G. Kelly, as well as Canadian Lee Ross.

Perception of importance[edit]

Main article: Perception of salience

When people try to make attributions for someone else's behavior, their information becomes focused on that person. Their perception of this person lacks most of the external factors that could influence him. Whitespace is typically skipped and attribution is made based on the most relevant perceptual information. The most important perceptual information dominates a person's perception of the situation. [39]

For individuals who define themselves behaviorally, the situation and external environment are of great importance, but their own body and behavior are less important. This leads to a tendency to make external attributions for one's own behavior. [40]

Attribution theory

It attempts to explain how and why ordinary people reach certain conclusions, as well as how they explain events and their causes.

1. Fritz Heider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to understand the social world, they tend to see cause-and-effect relationships even where there are none. However, nevertheless, the scientist put forward two main theories of the emergence of attribution:

when we explain the behavior of others, we try to build on internal attributions, such as personality traits, for example, we associate a person’s behavior with his naivety or reliability;
When we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to rely on external (situational) attributions.

Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people place special emphasis on intentional behavior (as opposed to random or mindless behavior). This theory explains the process of creating internal attribution

That is, in their understanding, attribution is the commission of certain actions due to the connection between the motive of a person’s behavior and the behavior itself.

3. Harold Kelly's (1967) covariance model is the most famous attribution theory. He developed a logical model for assessing a particular action, which should be attributed to one characteristic: a person - to the internal one, and the environment - to the external one. The term “covariation” means that a person has information from several sources, which he received at different times and in different situations, as a result of which he draws a conclusion about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that influence our judgments:

consensus;
distinctiveness;
subsequence.

So we see two events happening at the same time, and therefore we believe that one causes the other. This explanation of the causes of events is called nothing less than social attribution. Each of us can observe this phenomenon in everyday life.

Application

We apply all the above psychological terms and theories in real life. For example, a feeling of helplessness, “adding to” a story, an image of a person, criticism and self-criticism are all a consequence of one or another type of attribution. So, let's summarize. Attribution is the process of inferring the cause of events or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.

Background

Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is often described as the early 20th century "father of attribution theory".

In a 1920s dissertation, Heider addressed the problem of phenomenology: why do perceivers attribute properties such as color to perceived objects when these properties are mental constructs? Heider's answer is that the perceptual attribute that they "directly" sense—vibrations in the air, for example—to an object, they interpret as conditioning those sense data. "The perceiver is confronted with sensory data and thus sees the perceived object as 'there' because they attribute the sensory data to underlying causes in the world."

Heider extended this idea of attributions about people: "motives, intentions, feelings... basic processes that manifest themselves in overt behavior."

Literature

Gordon, L.M.;
Graham, S. Attribution theory // The Encyclopedia of Human Development (undefined). - Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006. - T. 1. - pp. 142-144. — ISBN 1-4129-0475-7.

This page was last edited on May 22, 2022 at 10:41 am. Sources used:

https://psychology.academic.ru/200/attribution
https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/attribution
https://znachenie-slova.ru/attribution
https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/1735574
https://wiki2.org/ru/attribution_(psychology)

What is attribution

In psychology, attribution is the cognitive process of explaining the behavior of other people and one's own actions. It is mainly expressed in explaining the actions of others through one’s own judgments, since many qualities cannot be perceived directly by social perception through direct observation, but are attributed to them.

Attribution is an attempt to interpret some object, its actions, to understand the motives of behavior in the conditions of a lack of information using conjecture. Attribution is a cognitive process that occurs in the lives of millions of people and is studied by social psychology. In attributional studies, compared with studies of one person’s perception of another, there is an increase in the level of intelligence of the phenomena being mastered.

The simplest classification of attributions is divided into dispositional and situational.

There is such a psychological term as the defensive hypothesis, it refers to a system of beliefs belonging to an individual who has the function of protecting himself from external anxiety. Defensive attributions usually occur when a person witnesses a horrific scene. Attributions of responsibility in such situations, drawing personal conclusions, will relate to the level of severity of failure and the degree of internal and situational similarity between the person and the victim.

Many people know examples of defensive attribution, for example, the well-known hypothesis that says that good things happen only to good people, bad things happen to bad people. There are people who believe in this because they feel vulnerable and unable to control the situation completely. This leads to reproaches from others, even in the case of the tragic situation of the victim herself.

So, people may hear that someone was beaten by hooligans, they begin to think that if he had not walked where he shouldn’t, or given a reason, he would have been safe. Or they heard the news about a car accident, they begin to attribute all the blame to the driver (for example, he was drunk), while making them assure themselves that this will not happen to them.

People often believe that positive events happen to them more often than others, and therefore negative events happen less often.

Examples of attribution: a heavy smoker thinks that he has a much lower chance of getting cancer than other smokers.

Examples of causal attribution

Any of us feels discomfort if we cannot explain something to ourselves. A holistic picture of the world collapses if at least one event is left without interpretation:

“Well, why has he been gone for so long?” - the young lover suffers;
“What does he want from me?” — the subordinate is tormented over the solution to the boss’s remark;
“What will they do this time?” - the teacher thinks with caution when going to a lesson in a “difficult” class.

The hero of each of these situations tries to imagine what is on the other person's mind. The problem is always the same - a lack of facts. And then the imagination turns on - thinking through, completing the picture, bringing it to logical comprehension.

The main assistant in this process is personal life experience.

Research by psychologists has shown that people’s reactions to habitual and non-standard patterns of behavior are ambiguous. If, for example, students expecting a new geographer teacher are presented with him as a good specialist, they are unlikely to tune in to an interesting lesson. If the children are warned that their future teacher is a tourist, a bard and a master of sports in rowing, then the children will gather in the classroom during recess in anticipation of an unusual lesson.

Locus of control

This concept is inextricably linked with causal attribution. Within it, a person attributes his failures or successes exclusively to external or exclusively to internal factors. This results in a kind of double standard. For example, a student received a low grade on an exam. Within this situation, locus of control can manifest itself in two ways:

I didn't prepare much for the exam, didn't think much about it, and that's why I got a low grade. I will definitely improve and start learning tickets right now.
The teacher who disliked me from the very beginning is to blame for the low grade. And the ticket was the most difficult of all. I don't deserve a low rating

How can you get rid of locus of control? The only advice: take full responsibility for everything that happens to you. Even if external factors really influenced the result.

Locus of control is the characteristic ability of an individual to attribute his or her successes to

To change your locus of control, you must first get rid of the victim syndrome. Take full responsibility even if external factors really greatly influenced the result.

Attribution Types

Interpersonal relationships. When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you probably want to tell it as interesting and engaging as possible. For what? So that your friends will draw a positive conclusion about you.
Forecasting. If your car was totaled, you may be able to attribute the crime to the car being in the wrong place. As a result of this event, you will not leave your car in that same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
Attribution of cause (so-called explanatory) helps us understand the world around us. Some people tend to have an optimistic explanation of events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.

Definition

Scientifically speaking, attribution is the process by which people use certain information to make inferences about the causes of events or the behavior of other people. During the day, it is common for a person to make numerous conclusions about his own behavior, as well as the thinking of others. Simply put, attribution is all those ordinary thoughts and actions we make without awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to certain conclusions.

This is the fundamental fallacy of causal attribution. Common mistakes in the attribution process

Theoretical and empirical studies of causal attribution have identified several different tendencies in the field of this process that are characteristic of most people who make causal attributions. These tendencies have been called typical causal attribution errors.

In addition to the principles of amplification and devaluation highlighted by G. Kelly (see paragraph 3.2.), the following typical errors of causal attribution are distinguished:

The fundamental error of causal attribution is the dependence of causal attribution on the position of the observer: when explaining someone else’s behavior, the reasons for the behavior are more often attributed to circumstances (situational causation), when explaining one’s own behavior, the reasons are more often attributed to personal characteristics (personal causation). The reasons for the fundamental errors of causal attribution include the following factors: The use of personal causation makes the behavior of others more understandable and predictable, which corresponds to the motives of causal attribution; The reason for the behavior is attributed to the object of perception and attention: “For the observer, the external environment is constant and stable, but the actions of the author are changeable and incomprehensible, which is why he pays attention to them first of all. For the author, his actions are planned and constructed, and the environment is unstable, therefore it concentrates his attention on itself.” Those

the fundamental error of causal attribution is associated with the characteristics of mental processes (perception and attention), namely with the psychological characteristics of the perception of “figure” and “ground”; “The illusion of control” is a person’s exaggeration of his own role in the situation in which he finds himself involved, due to the fact that the very fact of participation in some event makes us feel (often without reason) our ability to influence its course and results.

Egocentric, or projective attribution error, or error of false agreement - when explaining the behavior of others, a person often proceeds from his own needs and motives: projecting the behavior of another onto himself, he is guided by how he himself would act in such a situation. “The error of false consent also manifests itself in cases where one’s own meanings are invested in the actions of another person: if I acted this way, it would only be for the reason...” The egocentric attribution error is associated with the phenomenon of projection, if we use the terms of the psychoanalytic school, or generalization, if follow the terminology of behaviorism. In paragraph 4.3. the identification mechanism will be described, which is a consequence of projection (generalization) and serves as the basis for the egocentric error of causal attribution. Defensive causal attribution error. This typical mistake manifests itself in situations of explaining the reasons for obtaining the results of any activity. A person interprets unsuccessful results of his activities as external and unstable factors, and successful ones as stable and internal ones. When explaining the achievements of others, on the contrary, the reasons for positive performance results are attributed to circumstances, and the reasons for other people’s failures are attributed to personality characteristics. “If we are talking about me personally, then success is the result of my personal titanic efforts and abilities, and failure (happens to everyone!) is a consequence of unfortunate circumstances. If we are talking about something else, then minor success can be attributed to him personally - he deserved it, and great success - a coincidence of circumstances, luck... Only if it is known how much effort a person spent to achieve the result, the trend can change slightly.” The counter-defensive causal attribution error is a phenomenon that is essentially the opposite of the defensive attribution error. Counter-defensive attribution manifests itself in conditions of publicity: the reasons for one’s own achievements and other people’s failures are attributed to circumstances, and one’s own failures and other people’s achievements are explained by the influence of personal factors.

Defensive and counter-defensive errors of causal attribution are associated with psychological defense of the individual and the need for self-esteem. Defensive attribution allows you to maintain a positive self-esteem as such, and counter-defensive attribution prevents criticism from the outside, and thereby also serves to maintain a positive attitude towards yourself.

Links[edit]

Moskowitz, G. B. (2005). Social Cognition: Understanding Self and Others
.
New York, NY: Guilford Press.[ page required
]
^ a b Cassin; Fein; Marcus (2010). Social psychology
(Eighth International ed.).
Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-8400-3172-3.[ page required
]
Sanderson, Catherine (2010). Social Psychology . John Wiley and Sons. paragraph 112. ISBN 978-0-471-25026-5.
^ ab Malle, Bertram F. (2004). How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social Interaction. MIT Press. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-262-13445-3.
^ abcd Ryan, Richard M.; Connell, James P. (1989). "Perceived locus of causation and internalization: Exploring causes of action in two domains". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
.
57
(5):749–761. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.57.5.749. ISSN 1939-1315.
Kelly, Harold H. (1973). "Processes of Causal Attribution". American psychologist
.
28
(2): 107–128. DOI: 10.1037/h0034225. ISSN 0003-066X.
^ abc Haider. F (1958). Psychology of Interpersonal Relations
. New York: Wiley. ISBN 9780898592825.
Myers, David G. (2010). Social psychology (10th ed.). New York, New York. paragraph 104. ISBN 978-0-07-337066-8. OCLC 667213323.
Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Lynn, Stephen Jay; Namy, Laura L.; Wolf, Nancy J. (2010). "Social Psychology". Psychology: Foundations of Everyday Thinking
. Pearson Education. p. 380. ISBN 978-0-205-65048-4.
Aronson. Social Psychology
.
pp. 106–108. [ full citation required
]
Lipe, Marlys G. Counterfactual Reasoning as a Basis for Attribution Theories. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
Kelly, Harold H. (1967). "Attribution Theory in Social Psychology." In Levin, David (ed.). Nebraska Symposium on Motivation
.
15
. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 192–238.
^ a b McLeod, Sol. "Attribution Theory". Just psychology
. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
Weiner, B. (1992). Human Motivation: Metaphors, Theories, and Research
.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-0-7619-0491-5.[ page required
]
Manton; Sylvester; Stratton; Hanks (1999). Attributions in action
.
John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-98216-6.[ page required
]
^ abcd Forsythe, Donelson (1987). Social Psychology
. Brooks/Cole. ISBN 978-0-534-06744-1.
Sanderson, Catherine (2010). Social Psychology . John Wiley and Sons. paragraph 118. ISBN 978-0-471-25026-5.
Schwartz, N. (2006). "An Attitude Study: Between Occam's Razor and the Fundamental Attribution Error." Journal of Consumer Research
.
33
(1): 19–21. DOI: 10.1086/504124. S2CID 143682392.
Hong Yin Wang (1993). 跨文化心理学导论 [ Introduction to Cross-Cultural Psychology
]. Shanxi Normal University Press. ISBN 978-7-5613-0864-6.
Perrius, Chris (2011-03-11). "Individualism, collectivism and attribution". Retrieved April 27, 2022.
"6.3 Individual and cultural differences in personality perceptions". Individual and cultural differences in personality perception
. University of Minnesota Libraries Press, 2015. This edition is adapted from a work originally published in 2010 by the publisher, who requested that attribution not be given. 2015-10-27.
Jones; Nisbett (1971). Actor and observer: different ideas about the causes of behavior
.
New York: General Learning Press. ISBN 978-0-382-25026-2.[ page required
]
Pettigrew (1979). "The Absolute Attribution Error: An Extension of Allport's Cognitive Analysis of Prejudice, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
.
5
(4): 461–476. DOI: 10.1177/014616727900500407.
Graham; Folkes (1990). Attribution theory: Applications to achievement, mental health, and interpersonal conflict
. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 978-0-8058-0531-4.
^ab Shaver, Kelly G. (1970). "Defensive Attribution: The Effects of Severity and Relevance on Responsibility Assigned for an Accident." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
.
14
(2): 101–113. DOI: 10.1037/h0028777.
^ ab Roesch; Amirham (1997). "Boundary conditions for selfish attribution: Another look at sports pages". Journal of Applied Social Psychology
.
27
(3): 245–261. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00631.x.
Moskowitz, G. B. (2005). Social Cognition: Understanding Self and Others
. New York, NY: Guilford Press. ISBN 9781593850852.
^ ab Sommers, S. R. & Ellsworth, P. C. (2000). "Race in the Courtroom: Perceptions of Guilt and Dispositional Attributions" (PDF). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
.
26
(11): 1367–1379. DOI: 10.1177/0146167200263005.
Cochran, JK; Boots, D. P., & Heide, K. M. (2003). "Attribution Styles and Attitudes toward the Death Penalty for Juveniles, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Mentally Retarded." Justice Quarterly
.
20
(1): 65–93. DOI: 10.1080/07418820300095461.
Swinyard, W. R., & Ray, M. L. (1977). The interaction of advertising and sales: An experiment in attribution theory. Journal of Marketing Research, 14(4), 509-516.; Lachniak, R.N., DeCarlo, T.E. and Ramaswamy, S.N. (2001).
Sparkman Jr, R. M., & Locander, W. B. (1980). Attribution theory and advertising effectiveness. Journal of Consumer Research, 7(3), 219-224.
Laczniak, R. N., DeCarlo, T. E., & Ramaswami, S. N. (2001). Consumer responses to negative word of mouth: Attribution theory. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 11(1), 57-73.
Antaki, C. & Brevin, S., eds. (1982). Attributions and psychological change: Applications of attribution theories to clinical and educational practice
.
London: Academic Press.[ page required
]
Abramson, Lyn Y.; Seligman, Martin E.; Teasdale, John D. (1978). "Learned Helplessness in Humans: A Critique and Reformulation." Journal of Anomalous Psychology
.
87
(1):49–74. DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.87.1.49. PMID 649856. S2CID 2845204.
Peterson, Christopher; Semmel, Amy; von Bayer, Carl; Abramson, Lyn Y.; Metalsky, Gerald I.; Seligman, Martin EP (September 1982). "Attributive style questionnaire." Cognitive Therapy and Research
.
6
(3):287–299. DOI: 10.1007/BF01173577.
Shulman, Peter; Castellon, Camilo; Seligman, Martin E. P. (1989). "Assessing Explanatory Style: Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations and the Attributional Style Questionnaire." Behavioral Research and Therapy
.
27
(5):505–509. DOI: 10.1016/0005-7967 (89) 90084-3. PMID 2818415.
Mayer; Seligman (1976). "Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
.
105
(1):3–46. DOI: 10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3. S2CID 29069740.
Seligman, Martin (1975). Helplessness: Depression, Development and Death. Freeman / Times Books / Henry Holt and Company ISBN 978-0-7167-0752-3.[ page required
]
Aronson. Social Psychology
.
pp. 113–114. [ full citation required
]
Huffman. Psychology in Action
.
paragraph 622. [ full link required
]
"Attribution Theory". Destination
. 2016-04-23. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
Aarts, Bas (July 2006). "Concepts of categorization in the history of linguistics." Language Sciences
.
28
(4): 361–385. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2005.10.001.

Causal attribution theories

There are only two of them.

Jones and Davis Correspondence Theory

In 1965, scientists Jones and Davis proposed that intentional behavior plays an important role in people. At the same time, thoughtless or spontaneous behavior is of practically no value. This theory helps to understand how the internal type of causal attribution arises.

Internal attributes provide information that allows one to make predictions about how a person will behave. Scientists call this phenomenon “correspondent inference.” This is a state in which an individual thinks that the behavior of others is determined by the properties of their personality.

Why do people make “correspondent conclusions”? Jones and Davis identified several reasons:

Choice. It is traditionally believed that actions depend on internal factors.
Spontaneous or intentional behavior. The first is related to external factors and circumstances. And the second is with personality.
Social desirability. Example: you saw a man sitting on the floor. There are many free chairs in the room. Inconsistency, isn't it? But such behavior is a manifestation of individuality.
Hedonic relevance. A condition in which a person purposefully either harms you or benefits you.

Another reason is personalism. The individual believes that the behavior of another person should somehow affect him. At the same time, he believes that it is dictated by the personal characteristics of the opponent, and not by external factors.

Kelly covariance model

People started talking about Kelly covariance in the 60s of the last century. It is considered to be the most popular theory of causal attribution. The scientist tried to figure out whether actions should be determined by internal motives or external factors.

The word “covariation” itself means that a person has information from several sources at once. He obtained observations at different time periods and in different situations. This helps to see both the effect itself and its causes.

According to Kelly, in the process of searching for the reasons for the behavior of people around him, a person uses 3 types of evidence:

Consensus. It is a measure of the extent to which people act similarly in similar circumstances. Imagine two friends. The first, going to lunch with the second, always smokes. If the second one also does this, there is a high consensus in his behavior. Otherwise, consensus is low.
Distinctiveness. It is also a measure of the extent to which a person's behavior does not change in similar situations. Let's go back to the friends example. If the first man smokes only in the company of friends, he has high distinctiveness. If always, then low.
Consistency. A degree that shows that a person behaves the same way every time he finds himself in a certain situation. If the man in the example smokes only in the presence of friends, consistency is high. Under special circumstances - low.

Let's give an example. Imagine a group of young people who have gathered to watch a comedy show. The hero's name is Andrey. He laughs at the participants' jokes. Consensus will be high if the rest of the company laughs too. Highly distinctive - Andrey likes the jokes of an individual speaker. High consistency - the hero constantly laughs at the stories of his favorite comedian.

If everyone in the company laughs at the same participant in the show as Andrey, this is external attribution. People are having fun because the comedian is performing really well. Internal attribution occurs when:

the hero is the only one who likes the comedian;
laughs at the jokes of all the speakers;
constantly laughs at a certain comedian's jokes.

It turns out that Andrey just likes to have fun.

There is one caveat. It is not always possible to draw such conclusions. You may not have all the information you need to understand the root cause of a person's behavior.

Let’s say that you practically don’t know Andrey described above, but you find yourself in the same company with him. You cannot be sure of the consistency of his behavior. And in this situation, a person behaves in 2 ways. The first is that the number of reasons needed to explain someone's behavior increases. Second, the number of sufficient reasons increases.

Imagine that an athlete fails a drug test. There may be 2 reasons for this: either he accidentally took a prohibited drug, or he wanted to deceive. But we can add one more reason for what happened: the athlete himself was deceived.

Goals and results of causal attribution research

The goal of research into the mechanisms of causal attribution is to increase the effectiveness of interaction between people and the effectiveness of personal growth. The first presupposes the most accurate determination of the motives of certain actions. And the second shows options for influencing motivation, activity, emotions, etc. What most fully helps to understand the study of this phenomenon is the indication of the moment of assigning or accepting responsibility for specific actions. And a comprehensive consideration of the current result. That is, the goal of research is to find an accurate definition of the actual motives of behavior.

Errors of perception

It is known that a person treats himself more softly when assessing than other strangers. A person attributes someone’s successes and his own failures to situational attribution. But, describing other people's failures and his own successes, he turns to personal attribution. In these cases, a person tends to consider the cause of what happened to be either the prevailing circumstances or the person himself, according to the final result.

Usually a person explains success by his hard work, willpower, and his uniqueness. But failure is always associated with the situation. And if you analyze the actions of another person, then all of the above applies in reverse order. If a person achieves success, it is because the circumstances have developed that way. And if he failed, then it was his own fault. And few people think differently

Few will pay attention to the situation and focus on it. After all, if you explain the result of a person’s activity in a different way, then this means recognizing it at your level, or even better

This means comparing him to yourself.

Therefore, people tend to protect their self-esteem in this way. It is easier to blame the circumstances, the object of the action, than to force yourself to work, to improve yourself. Causal attribution is applicable everywhere: in everyday life, at work, in relationships. And this principle of opposites operates everywhere.

Causal attribution and locus of control

It should be said that causal attribution is closely related to locus of control.

Locus of control is the characteristic ability of an individual to attribute his successes or failures only to internal or only to external factors.

In the case of causal attribution, there is a double standard. Whereas locus of control shows that a person chooses his own reaction. Having received a bad mark on an exam, he can manifest this locus in two different ways:

It's my own fault that I got a bad grade. I didn’t prepare much, I walked around, I thought about absolutely the wrong things. I'll fix it and start right now.
The ticket, the difficult subject, or the teacher are to blame. If it weren't for this, I would get what I deserve.

The difference between causal attribution and locus of control is the presence of willpower in the second case.

To change your locus of control, you must first get rid of the victim syndrome. Take full responsibility even if external factors really greatly influenced the result.

Causal attribution and learned helplessness

Causal attribution, interestingly enough, is often used to understand the phenomenon of learned helplessness.

Learned/acquired helplessness is a state of a person in which he does not make attempts to improve his condition (does not try to receive positive stimuli or avoid negative ones), although he has such an opportunity. This happens when he has tried several times to change the situation but failed. And now I’m used to my helplessness.

The father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, demonstrated in his experiments that people put less effort into solving a “solvable” problem after they had suffered a series of failures at “unsolvable” problems.

Seligman believes that people, having received unsatisfactory results, begin to think that further attempts will also not lead to anything good. But the theory of causal attribution says that people do not try to redouble their efforts in order not to lower their self-esteem, because otherwise they will attribute failure to their internal personal characteristics. If you don’t try, it’s much easier to blame external factors for everything.

Criticism [edit]

Attribution theory has been criticized as mechanistic and reductionist for its assumption that people think rationally, logically, and systematically. [41] The fundamental attribution error, however, shows that they are mentally stingy and motivated tacticians. It also does not take into account the social, cultural and historical factors that shape the explanation of causes. This issue has been widely addressed through discourse analysis, a branch of psychology that favors the use of qualitative methods, including the use of language, to understand psychological phenomena. Linguistic categorization theory, for example, demonstrates how language influences our attribution style. [42]

Is it so important to understand each other?

Explaining the reasons for one’s own and others’ behavior is the key to the most important questions of social existence: who am I? who's near me? Can I trust others? What determines actions: personal properties or situations?

Knowing the correct answers to these questions allows you to:

get rid of unnecessary negativity: anxiety, suspicion, panic;
protect yourself from betrayal, meanness, manipulation;
manage different situations;
make rational decisions;
predict behavioral patterns of others.

Comprehension of another person's experience, as he himself understands it, is the main goal of interpersonal interaction. This is an indispensable guideline when choosing:

qualified specialists;
candidates for political office;
business partners;
life partners.

It is not surprising that the study of attribution has long gone beyond the scope of social psychology. Today, the art of understanding is relevant for teachers, athletes, managers, for each of us. It allows us to adequately evaluate each other, interact effectively, get along with a variety of people, count on leniency and sympathy.