theories explaining (Attribution Theories)

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ATTRIBUTION APPROACHES

PSY333

Chapter 10_pg. 235-267

Attribution Theory

The theories that try to determine why people do what they do in

order to uncover the feelings and traits that are behind their

actions.

“Why” was the first word out of many attempting to make sense of the Sandy

Hook tragedy

The action of regarding something

as being caused by a person or thing.

What is an Attribution?

Attribution Theories

■ We make three assumptions in order to understand attribution theory:

1. We do attempt to determine the causes of both our own and

other’s behavior.

2. Assignment of causes to behavior is not random, rules exist that

can explain why (there are rules that explain behavior).

3. The causes attributed to behaviors will influence subsequent

emotions and new behaviors.

Theory 1: Naïve Psychology

Attribution Choice Point

Disposition Attributions

Situation Attributions

Abilities

Personality

Intentions/ motives

Task difficulty

Luck

Random

Heider (1958)

■ “Naive” or “commonsense”

psychology

■ Posits that people are like

amateur scientists, trying to

understand other people’s

behavior by piecing together

information until they arrive at a

reasonable explanation or cause

Fritz Heider

(1896-1988)

When Trying to decide what causes people’s behavior, we can

make one of two attributions:

■ An internal dispositional attribution

■ An external situational attribution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWPCE2tTLZQ

Internal Attribution

The inference that a person is behaving in a

certain way because of something about the

person, such as attitude, character, or

personality.

External Attribution

The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in.

The assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation.

Satisfied spouses tend to show a particular attributional pattern:

■ Internal attributions for their partners’ positive behaviors (e.g., “She helped me because she’s such a generous person”)

■ External attributions for their partners’ negative behaviors (e.g., “He said something mean because he’s so stressed at work this week”)

In contrast, spouses in distressed marriages tend to display the opposite pattern:

■ Their partners’ positive behaviors are chalked up to external causes (e.g., “She helped me because she wanted to impress our friends”)

■ Negative behaviors are attributed to internal causes (e.g., “He said something mean because he’s a totally self-centered jerk”)

Theory 2: Covariation

Over time we use Covariation (correlations) to make a judgment

about a person’s behavior

■ What are the patterns of past behavior?

■ Is the behavior distinctive (stands out)?

■ Is there consensus (other people’s behavior in same situation)?

■ Is there consistency (how often does the person do this)?

Kelley (1967)

• Harold Kelley’s major contribution to attribution theory was the idea that we notice and think about more than

one piece of information when we form an impression

of another person.

Theory 3: Prediction of the Outcome of an achievement-related event

How can we predict what achievement a person will attain?

■ Ability

■ Effort

■ Task-difficulty

■ External impact (luck)

How do you make predictions?

When you have to decide on a specific action you have to predict what is going to

happen.

Remember expectancy – value theory?

To know what people will do and how they will do it you need to predict…

Causal Dimensions

What causes the person to put in effort or complete a task?

■ Locus

– Internal ability, focus, patience

– External task difficulty, situational factors outside of

personal control

■ Stability

– Ability is stable

– Effort is unstable

■ Controllability

– Impact of others on performance

Theory 4: Biases in Attributions

Why are we biased when we make attributions?

■ Self-serving bias = to take credit form work and avoid failure (innate)

■ False Consensus

– The belief that people feel the same as we do about something

Theory 5: Fundamental Attribution Error

■ Our tendency to attribute behavior to stable internal characteristics.

– In other words, she did that because she is clever, or he did that because he in

not so clever…

■ FAE happens because:

– We may not be aware of the situational factors

– We fail to fully understand the impact of the situational factors

– Personal experience influence the way we see the behavior

– We are unable or unwilling to fully think about the impact

Theory 6: Mastery Orientation

■ Helpless people need performance goals

– Take life events personally

– Blame others

– Look at disposition and external factors

■ Mastery –oriented people need learning/outcomes-based goals

– See life events as general and not personal

– Adjust effort to improve