Theories Of Attribution

Social psychologists have identified patterns in the ways people make attributions about their own and others' behaviour. Hypotheses about these patterns include Fritz Heider's "naive psychology"; the theory of correspondent inferences; and Harold Kelley's "common-sense analysis" of behaviour.

Internal Versus External Attributions
Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider criticized "depth psychologies" like psychoanalysis for assuming that so much of everyday life has obscure unconscious motivation. Instead, Heider argued for a "naive psychology of everday life". Most of the time, he argued, the explanations for behaviour are either obvious or easy to hypothesize.

In trying to explain someone's (the "actor's") behaviour, we generally consider two categories of reasons: internal factors such as the actor's disposition or personality, and external factors, such as the immediate demands of the actor's situation. Although behaviour is usually a product of both sets of influences, people tend to make either internal attributions or external attributions about a given actions.

For example, why did the car in front of you veer into your lane of traffic, forcing you to brake suddenly and almost causing a collision? An internal attribution about the driver's action might be, "That driver is unskilled and not paying attention, and began to change lanes without noticing my presence." Such an attribution would be grounds for anger and blame toward the "bad driver". Alternatively, an external attribution might be,"Traffic up ahead is very congested, and the weather is bad. The driver is having difficulty being careful because conditions are poor." This kind of attribution would provide grounds for caution but probably not anger at the driver ahead.

Correspondent Inferences
Another theory about how people assign attributions suggests that we are simplistic in understanding causality. We assume that the outcomes of people's behaviours are intended, and that their motives must be deliberate. In this view, called the theory of correspondent inferences, we first observe others' behaviour and its effects; we then infer corresponding motives.

For example, if you see a couple you know talking quietly at a party and notice that the man is speaking in a sharp tone while the woman is crying, you may infer that he is "angry" and is deliberately "making her cry" by frightening or threatening her.

This pattern of making correspondent inferences is simplistic because it ignores alternative explanations, such as the influence of external factors. It unfairly conceptualizes all behaviour as intentional and planned. When we consider how many of our own actions are in fact unintentional or have consequences we ourselves would like to prevent, we recognize the limitations of our own correspondent inferences of others' behaviour.

Common-Sense Analysis
Social psychologist Harold Kelley has proposed that, in making careful attributions about others' behaviour, we analyze that behaviour, separately considering its possible causes and forms. According to Kelley, we should specifically consider three qualities in analyzing behaviour: its consistency across situations, the distinctiveness of its occurrence, and the consensus of others about its conditions.

For example, consider an attibutional analysis about why your professor has criticized you for arriving five minutes late to class. Is the professor's behaviour consistent: Does she usually criticize you for arriving late? Is the professor's criticism distinctive: Does she criticize other latecomers, or only you? Finally, what is the consensus about the professor's criticisms: Do other professors criticize you for being late?

Depending on the answers to these questions, we make common-sense attributions about the specific reasons for another's actions. This can be important, for example, in deciding wheter a professor is being fair or unfair, whether one's own lateness must be corrected, and so on. The results of our causal analyses have implications for our future behaviour.

Attribution Theory

We all have a need to explain the world, both to ourselves and to other people, attributing cause to the events around us. This gives us a greater sense of control. When explaining behavior, it can affect the standing of people within a group (especially ourselves).

When another person has erred, we will often use internal attribution, saying it is due to internal personality factors. When we have erred, we will more likely use external attribution, attributing causes to situational factors rather than blaming ourselves. And vice versa. We will attribute our successes internally and the successes of our rivals to external ‘luck’.

When a football team wins, supporters say ‘we won’. But when the team loses, the supporters say ‘they lost’.

Our attributions are also significantly driven by our emotional and motivational drives. Blaming other people and avoiding personal recrimination are very real self-serving attributions. We will also make attributions to defend what we perceive as attacks. We will point to injustice in an unfair world.

We will even tend to blame victims (of us and of others) for their fate as we seek to distance ourselves from thoughts of suffering the same plight.

We will also tend to ascribe less variability to other people than ourselves, seeing ourselves as more multifaceted and less predictable than others. This may well because we can see more of what is inside ourselves (and spend more time doing this).

In practice, we often tend to go through a two-step process, starting with an automatic internal attribution, followed by a slower consideration of whether an external attribution is more appropriate. As with Automatic Believing, if we are hurrying or are distracted, we may not get to this second step. This makes internal attribution more likely than external attribution.

Research
Roesch and Amirkham (1997) found that more experienced athletes made less self-serving external attributions, leading them to find and address real causes and hence were better able to improve their performance.

Application
Beware of losing trust by blaming others (i.e. making internal attributions about them). Also beware of making excuses (external attributions) that lead you to repeat mistakes and leads to Cognitive Dissonance in others when they are making internal attributions about you.

Watch out for people making untrue attributions.