Imagine that while driving to work one day you notice that the driver behind you seems very aggressive: She is following your car very closely, honks her horn if you delay even a few seconds when the red light turns green, and finally swerves around to pass you. How will you make sense of, or attribute, this behavior?
Attribution theory has been proposed to explain how individuals judge people differently depending on what meaning we attribute to a given behavior.
Attribution theory emphasize people’s core social motive to understand each other and to have some control. That is, people need to have some sense of prediction about other people’s actions (understanding) and about their own impact on those actions (control).
Specifically, attribution theory suggests that, when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused.
- Internally caused behavior is believed to be under the control of the individual.
- Externally caused behavior results from outside causes; that is, the person is seen as having been forced into the behavior by the situation.
For example, if an employee arrived late for work today, would we think it was internally caused (e.g. as a result of sleeping late) or externally caused (e.g. by a traffic jam)?
That determination depends on three factors. We’ll spend the remainder of this entry delving deeper into each, but for now, here they are in order.
- Distinctiveness,
- Consensus, and
- Consistency.
Attribution theory is an approach used to explain how we judge people differently, based on what meaning we attribute to a given behavior. |
1. Distinctiveness
Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays a behavior in many situations or whether it is particular to one situation.
What we want to know is whether this behavior is unusual. If it is, the observer is likely to give the behavior an external attribution. If this action is not unique, it will probably be judged as internal.
Consequently, if the employee who arrived late to work today is also the person that colleagues see as lazy, we are likely to judge the behavior (resuming work late) as internally caused.
2. Consensus
If everyone who is faced with a similar situation responds in the same way, we can say the behavior shows consensus.
Our tardy employee’s behavior would meet this criterion if all employees who took the same route to work today were also late.
If consensus is high, you would be expected to give an external attribution to the employee’s tardiness, whereas if other employees who took the same route made it to work on time, you would conclude the reason to be internal.
3. Consistency
Finally, a manager looks for consistency in an employee’s actions.
Does the individual engage in the behaviors regularly and consistently?
Does the employee respond the same way over time?
Coming in 10 minutes late for work is not perceived in the same way, if for one employee, it represents an unusual case (she hasn’t been late for several months), but for another it is part of a routine pattern (he is late for two or three times a week).
The more consistent the behavior, the more the observer is inclined to attribute it to internal causes.
The Figure below summarises the key elements in attribution theory. It tells us, for instance, that if an employee, Michael, generally performs at about the same level on other related tasks as he does on his current task (low distinctiveness), if other employees frequently perform differently—better or worse—than Michael does on this current task (low consensus) and if Michael’s performance on this current task is consistent over time (high consistency), his manager or anyone else who is judging Michael’s work is likely to hold him primarily responsible for his task performance (internal attribution).
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Distorted Attributions
Interestingly, findings drawn from attribution theory show that errors or biases can distort attributions. For instance, substantial evidence supports the hypothesis that, when we make judgments about the behavior of other people, we have a tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors.
This fundamental attribution error can explain why a sales manager may be prone to attribute the poor performance of her sales agents to laziness rather than to the innovative product line introduced by a competitor.
What's this?Individuals also tend to attribute their own successes to internal factors such as ability or effort while putting the blame for failure on external factors such as luck.
This self-serving bias suggests that feedback provided to employees in performance reviews will be predictably distorted by them, whether it is positive or negative.
Perceptual shortcuts can also distort attributions. All of us, managers included, use a number of shortcuts to judge others. Perceiving and interpreting people’s behavior is a lot of work, so we use shortcuts to make the task more manageable.
Perceptual shortcuts can be valuable as they let us make accurate perceptions quickly and provide valid data for making predictions. However, they aren’t perfect. They can and do get us into trouble.
See a summary description of the perceptual shortcuts below.
| Selectivity | People assimilate certain bits and pieces of what they observe depending on their interests, background, experience and attitudes | ‘Speed reading’ others may result in an inaccurate picture of them |
| Assumed similarity | People assume that others are like them | May fail to take into account individual differences, resulting in incorrect similarities. |
| Stereotyping | People judge others on the basis of their perception of a group to which the others belong | May result in distorted judgments because many stereotypes have no factual foundation |
| Halo effect | People form an impression of others on the basis of a single trait | Fails to take into account the total picture of what an individual has done |
Individuals can’t assimilate all they observe, so they’re selective in their perception. They absorb bits and pieces. These bits and pieces are not chosen randomly; rather, they’re selectively chosen depending on the interests, background, experience and attitudes of the observer.
Selective perception allows us to ‘speed read’ others but not without the risk of drawing an inaccurate picture.
It’s easy to judge others if we assume that they are similar to us. In assumed similarity, or the ‘like me’ effect, the observer’s perception of others is influenced more by the observer’s own characteristics than by those of the person observed.
For example, if you want challenges and responsibility in your job, you’ll assume that others want the same. People who assume that others are like them can, of course, be right, but not always.
When we judge someone on the basis of our perception of a group they are part of, we are using the shortcut called stereotyping. For instance, ‘Married people are more stable employees than single people’ or ‘Older employees are absent more often from work’ are examples of stereotyping.
To the degree that a stereotype is based on fact, it may produce accurate judgments. However, many stereotypes aren’t factual and distort our judgment.
When we form a general impression about a person on the basis of a single characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability or appearance, we’re being influenced by the halo effect.
This effect frequently occurs when students evaluate their classroom instructor. Students may isolate a single trait such as enthusiasm and allow their entire evaluation to be slanted by the perception of this one trait. An instructor may be quiet, assured, knowledgeable and highly qualified, but if his classroom teaching style lacks enthusiasm, he might be rated lower on a number of other characteristics.
These shortcuts can be particularly critical with diverse workforces.
By Dr. Saul McLeod, published 2012
Attribution theory is concerned with how ordinary people explain the causes of behavior and events. For example, is someone angry because they are bad-tempered or because something bad happened?
A formal definition is provided by Fiske and Taylor (1991, p. 23):
“Attribution theory deals with how the social perceiver uses information to arrive at causal explanations for events. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal judgment”.
Heider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to make sense of the social world. People tend to see cause and effect relationships, even where there is none!
Heider didn’t so much develop a theory himself as emphasize certain themes that others took up. There were two main ideas that he put forward that became influential: dispositional (internal cause) vs situational (external cause) attributions.
Dispositional vs Situational Attribution
1. Dispositional Attribution
Dispositional attribution assigns the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic of a person, rather than to outside forces.
When we explain the behavior of others we look for enduring internal attributions, such as personality traits. This is known as the fundamental attribution error.
For example, we attribute the behavior of a person to their personality, motives or beliefs.
2. Situational Attribution
The process of assigning the cause of behavior to some situation or event outside a person's control rather than to some internal characteristic.
When we try to explain our own behavior we tend to make external attributions, such as situational or environment features.
Jones & Davis Correspondent Inference Theory
Jones and Davis (1965) thought that people pay particular attention to intentional behavior (as opposed to accidental or unthinking behavior).
Jones and Davis’ theory helps us understand the process of making an internal attribution. They say that we tend to do this when we see a correspondence between motive and behavior. For example, when we see a correspondence between someone behaving in a friendly way and being a friendly person.
Dispositional (i.e., internal) attributions provide us with information from which we can make predictions about a person’s future behavior. The correspondent inference theory describes the conditions under which we make dispositional attributes to the behavior we perceive as intentional.
Davis used the term correspondent inference to refer to an occasion when an observer infers that a person’s behavior matches or corresponds with their personality. It is an alternative term to dispositional attribution.
So what leads us to make a correspondent inference? Jones and Davis say we draw on five sources of information:
- Choice: If a behavior is freely chosen it is believed to be due to internal (dispositional) factors.
- Accidental vs. Intentional Behavior: Behavior that is intentional is likely to be attributed to the person’s personality, and behavior which is accidental is likely to be attributed to situation / external causes.
- Social Desirability: Behaviors low in sociable desirability (non conforming) lead us to make (internal) dispositional inferences more than socially undesirable behaviors. For example, if you observe a person getting on a bus and sitting on the floor instead of one of the seats. This behavior has low social desirability (non conforming) and is likely to correspond with the personality of the individual.
- Hedonistic Relevance: If the other person’s behavior appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm us.
- Personalism: If the other person’s behavior appears to be intended to have an impact on us, we assume that it is “personal”, and not just a by-product of the situation we are both in.
Kelley's Covariation Model
Kelley’s (1967) covariation model is the best-known attribution theory. He developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristic (dispositional) of the person or the environment (situational).
The term covariation simply means that a person has information from multiple observations, at different times and situations, and can perceive the covariation of an observed effect and its causes.
He argues that in trying to discover the causes of behavior people act like scientists. More specifically they take into account three kinds of evidence.
- Consensus: the extent to which other people behave in the same way in a similar situation. E.g., Alison smokes a cigarette when she goes out for a meal with her friend. If her friend smokes, her behavior is high in consensus. If only Alison smokes, it is low.
- Distinctiveness: the extent to which the person behaves in the same way in similar situations. If Alison only smokes when she is out with friends, her behavior is high in distinctiveness. If she smokes at any time or place, distinctiveness is low.
- Consistency: the extent to which the person behaves like this every time the situation occurs. If Alison only smokes when she is out with friends, consistency is high. If she only smokes on one special occasion, consistency is low.
Let’s look at an example to help understand his particular attribution theory. Our subject is called Tom. His behavior is laughter. Tom is laughing at a comedian.
1. Consensus
If everybody in the audience is laughing, the consensus is high. If only Tom is laughing consensus is low.
2. Distinctiveness
If Tom only laughs at this comedian, the distinctiveness is high. If Tom laughs at everything, then distinctiveness is low.
3. Consistency
If Tom always laughs at this comedian the consistency is high. If Tom rarely laughs at this comedian, then consistency is low.
Now, if everybody laughs at this comedian, if they don’t laugh at the comedian who follows and if this comedian always raises a laugh, then we would make an external attribution, i.e., we assume that Tom is laughing because the comedian is very funny.
On the other hand, if Tom is the only person who laughs at this comedian, if Tom laughs at all comedians and if Tom always laughs at the comedian then we would make an internal attribution, i.e., we assume that Tom is laughing because he is the kind of person who laughs a lot.
So what we’ve got here is people attributing causality on the basis of correlation. That is to say,; we see that two things go together and we, therefore, assume that one causes the other.
One problem, however, is that we may not have enough information to make that kind of judgment. For example, if we don’t know Tom that well, we wouldn’t necessarily have the information to know if his behavior is consistent over time. So what do we do then?
According to Kelley we fall back on past experience and look for either
1) Multiple necessary causes. For example, we see an athlete win a marathon, and we reason that she must be very fit, highly motivated, have trained hard etc., and that she must have all of these to win
2) Multiple sufficient causes. For example, we see an athlete fail a drug test, and we reason that she may be trying to cheat, or have taken a banned substance by accident or been tricked into taking it by her coach. Any one reason would be sufficient.
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How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2012). Attribution theory. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html
APA Style References
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley.
Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965) From acts to dispositions: the attribution proces in social psychology, in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Volume 2, pp. 219-266), New York: Academic Press
Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Volume 15, pp. 192-238). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
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How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2012). Attribution theory. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html
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