Attribution Theory

simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html

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 defintion 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).

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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:

1. Choice: If a behavior is freely chosen it is believed to be due to internal (dispositional)

factors.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Hedonistic Relevance: If the other person’s behavior appears to be directly intended to
benefit or harm us.
5. 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.

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 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
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 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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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.

How to reference this article:

McLeod, S. A. (2010). Attribution theory. Retrieved from
https://www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html

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