WHAT IS ATTRIBUTION THEORY?
Attribution is the process of assigning causes for the behaviour of others and ourselves. It is a theory within social psychology of how we explain the behaviour of others. According to Heider’s (1958) attribution theory, when we offer explanations about why things happened, we attribute them to either situational factors causes (situation and circumstance) or dispositional factors (thinking, personality, attitude, motivation, effort etc).
Weiner further developed Heider’s theory and claimed that attribution is a three step process through which we perceive others as causal agents.
Attribution theory assumes that people try to determine why other people do what they do – that is, attribute a cause to their behaviour. A person trying to understand why a person did something may attribute their behaviour to one or more causes.
There is therefore, a three stage process underlying the attribution.
For example, you are walking along and someone throws some litter on the floor. Three thoughts may cross our minds –
“I saw that” (perception of the action) – step 1
“You meant to do that” (judgement of intention) – step 2
“You are a litter lout” (attribution of disposition) – step 3
We must first observe or perceive the behaviour (step 1). We must then believe that the person did the behaviour intentionally (step 2) and finally determine if the person was forced to perform that behaviour – if they were forced to do it, the cause would be attributed to the situation, if they were not forced, the cause would be attributed to the person.
So using the example above –
Person throws the litter
Step 1 – I saw that
Step 2 – You meant to do that.
Step 3 – The piece of litter was on fire – the person was forced to do it, so the cause is environmental. (external attribution)
Or
Step 3 – You are a litter lout – the person was not forced to do it, so the cause was their own personality (internal attribution).
Kelley (1967) used the terms external and internal to describe these attributions. An external attribution assigns causality to an outside agent or environmental factor, and claims that something or someone motivated the event, or caused the results.
In contrast, an internal attribution assigns causality to factors within the person, and claims that the person was directly responsible for the event. The behaviour is due to their personality, attitude, character or disposition. For example, if you think Fred failed his psychology exam because he had a late night, his cat died or his girlfriend left him that would be an external attribution.
If you thought he failed because he was not clever enough to pass, that would be an internal attribution. These two types of attribution lead to different perceptions of the person engaging in the behaviour.
For example, if we thought Fred failed his psychology exam because he was lazy and didn’t study (internal attribution), would we be less sympathetic than if we though he failed his exam because his girlfriend left him the night before (external attribution)?
We tend to form schemata about behaviour that lead us to expect people to act in certain ways in certain situations. For instance, we expect people to cry and grieve at a funeral, but do not expect laughter (though there are some societies in which that would be acceptable).
We also form schemata about individuals, which can include expectations we have formed of their behaviour, and attribute what we believe a fairly characteristic behaviour to their personality or other internal factors.
When someone acts out of character, however, we might attribute the behaviour to external factors, wondering “What happened to him? What has made him act this way?” and looking for perhaps work or marriage problems, or other external influences on the person’s behaviour.
When a stranger or someone we don’t know well – or don’t like – acts in a way that is unexpected and considered out of the norm, we are inclined to attribute it to internal causes, such as unpleasant personality, aggressiveness, ignorance, or jealousy.
Attribution has a direct influence on our behaviour, and can either encourage us or discourage us from taking action in a situation. For example, when Asian students began out-performing Western students in western schools, many people attributed their superior performance to “being smarter”.
Most research into this matter, however, suggests that the key factor is that many Asian students tend to attribute both their successes and their failures to their own efforts, and therefore, put much more effort into achieving successes and avoiding failures.
Many western students, on the other hand, are more likely to attribute their failures to external factors, such as teacher incompetence, unfair questions, time pressures, or luck, and therefore tend not to exert the same effort to achieve results.
Stable and Unstable Attributions
Attributions may be internal or external as already discussed, but they can be stable or unstable. A stable attribution is when a person believes that an event or behaviour is due to stable, unchanging factors.
When they make an unstable attribution, they may infer that an event or behaviour is due to temporary, unstable factors. For example, Fred fails his psychology exam, but thinks it is because he always has bad luck (stable attribution), but if he thinks it is because he didn’t have time to study for this particular exam, he is making an unstable attribution.
