Attribution theory and its applications

Overview: Background, Theories, Bias and errors, Clinical Applications,

Strengths and Limitations

Background:

 In social psychology, the term attribution has two primary meanings. The
first refers to explanations of behaviour (i.e., answers to why questions);
the second refers to inferences or ascriptions (e.g., inferring traits from
behaviour, ascribing blame to a person). What the two meanings have in
common is a process of explanation; behaviour is assigned to its cause.
 Definition of Attribution: The process through which we seek to identify
the causes of other’s behaviour and so gain knowledge of their stable
traits and dispositions.

 Attribution theory basically looks at how people make sense of their

world; what cause and effect inferences they make about the behaviours
of others and of themselves.

 The purpose behind making attributions is to achieve cognitive control over

one's environment by explaining and understanding the causes behind
behaviour and environmental occurrences.

 Making attributions gives order and predictability to our lives; helps us to

cope. Imagine what it would be like if you felt that you had no control
over the world.

 When you make attributions you analyze the situation by making

inferences (going beyond the information given) about the dispositions of
others and yourself as well as inferences about the environment and how
it may be causing a person to behave.
 Theories of Attribution:

1) Heider theory of Attribution: (1958)

 Fritz Heider was among the first to analyze the process of attribution.
 In his early work, Heider reflected the logical-empirical backbone of
attribution theories by making relatively global claims about what people
do.
 Specifically, he argued that people act like naïve scientists as they attempt
to make sense—in a relatively systematic way—of their larger social
worlds.
 For Heider, people are active interpreters of the events that occur in their
lives, and they use consistent and logical modes of sense-making in their
interpretations. They do so, in large part, to both understand and control
the world around them.
 Heider distinguished between two general categories of explanation,
internal and external.
 Internal attributions implicate characteristics of the individual (such as
ability, attitudes, personality, mood, and effort) for having caused a
particular behaviour, whereas external attributions implicate external
factors (such as the task, other people, or luck) for causing an event or
outcome to occur.

2) Correspondent Inference theory by Jones and Davis (1965):

 A theory describing how we use other’s behaviour as a basis for inferring

their stable dispositions.
 This theory is concerned with how we decide, on the basis of other’s
overt actions, that they possess specific traits or dispositions likely to
remain fairly stable over time.
 This is complicated task as others’ behaviour provides us with a rich
source of information.
 So to overcome this complication, we accomplish this task by focusing
our attention on certain types of actions- those most likely to prove
informative.
  First, we consider only behaviour that seems to have been chosen freely,
while largely ignoring ones that were somehow forced on the person in
question.
 Second, we pay careful attention to actions that show non-common
effects. Non-common effects are effects produced by a particular cause
that could not be produced by any other apparent cause i.e., effects that
can be caused by one specific factors but not by others.
 Finally, we also pay greater attention to actions by others that are low in
social desirability than to actions that are high on this dimension i.e.,
actions that are not ordinary than from actions that are very much like
those of more other persons.
 To conclude, others’ behaviour reflects their stable traits (i.e., we are
likely to reach correspondent inferences about them) when that behaviour
1) Is freely chosen; (2) yields distinctive, non-common effects; and (3) is
low in social desirability.

3. Kelly’s theory of causal attributions: How we answer the question

“why?”

 Consider the following events:

I. You arrange to meet someone for lunch, but she doesn’t show up.
II. You leave several messages for a friend, but she doesn’t call back.
 In all these two situations, you would probably wonder why these events
occurred:
 Why? Didn’t your lunch date show up? Did she forget? Did she do it on
purpose? Or why has your friend failed to return your message? Is she
angry at you? Is her answering machine or cell phone is out of service?
 Obviously, the number of specific causes behind others’ behaviour is
large. To make the task more manageable, therefore, we often begin with
a preliminary question: Did other’s behaviour stem mainly from internal
causes (their own traits, motives, intentions) or mainly from external
causes (some aspects of the social or physical world), or from a
combination of the two?
 For example; your date didn’t show up because she was nervous to meet
you (an internal cause) or because she comes up with another wok (an
external cause).
 So, how do we attempt to answer this question? A theory proposed by
Kelley provides important insights into this process.
 According to Kelley, we focus on three types of information wiz :
1) Consensus, (2) Consistency, and (3) Distinctiveness.

 Consensus:
The extent to which other persons react to some stimulus or even in the
same manner as the person we are considering. The higher the proportion
of people who react in the same way, the higher is consensus.
 Consistency:
The extent to which an individual responds to a given stimulus or
situation in the same way on different occasions (i.e., across time).
 Distinctiveness:
The extent to which an individual responds in the same manner to
different stimuli or events.

 For example, imagine that you see a server in a restaurant flirt with a
customer. This behaviour raises an interesting question: Why does the
server act this way? Because of internal causes or external causes? Is he
simply someone who likes to flirt (an internal cause)? Or is the customer
extremely attractive (an external cause).
 According to Kelley’s theory, we are most likely to attribute another’s
behaviour to internal causes under conditions in which consensus and
distinctiveness are low but consistency is high.
 In contrast, we are most likely to attribute another’s behaviour to external
causes when consensus, consistency and distinctiveness are all high.
 Finally, we usually attribute another’s behaviour to a combination of
internal and external factors when consensus is low but consistency
and distinctiveness are high.
 The basic assumptions of Kelley’s theory have been confirmed in a wide
range of social situations, so it seems to provide important insights into
the nature of causal attributions. However, research on the theory also
suggests the need for certain modifications or extensions, as described
low.

4. Other Dimensions of Causal Attribution by Weiner:

 While Heider established that successes and failures are interpreted by an
individual within internal and external causes, Weiner (1971) added an
additional dimension to causal interpretation.

 Weiner developed a theoretical framework that has become very

influential in social psychology today. Attribution theory assumes that
people try to determine why people do what they do, that is, interpret
causes to an event or behaviour. A three-stage process underlies an
attribution:

1. Behaviour must be observed/perceived.

2. Behaviour must be determined to be intentional.

3. Behaviour attributed to internal or external causes.

 Weiner’s attribution theory is mainly about achievement. According to

him, the most important factors affecting attributions are ability, effort,
task difficulty, and luck. Attributions are classified along three causal
dimensions:

1. Locus of control (two poles: internal vs. external)

2. Stability (do causes change over time such as motives, heath, fatigue or
does not change such as personality traits and temperament (e.g., Miles
and Carey, 1997)

3. Controllability (causes one can control such as skills vs. causes one
cannot control such as luck, others’ actions, etc.)
 When one succeeds, one attributes successes internally (“my own skill”).
When a rival succeeds, one tends to credit external (e.g. luck). When one
fails or makes mistakes, we will more likely use external attribution,
attributing causes to situational factors rather than blaming ourselves.
When others fail or make mistakes, internal attribution is often used,
saying it is due to their internal personality factors.

 So, Achievement can be attributed to (1) effort, (2) ability, (3) level of
task difficulty, or (4) luck.

Weiner's Attribution Theory of Motivation:

 Weiner's attribution theory states that an individual's causal attributions

of achievement affect subsequent behaviours and motivation. One of the
primary assumptions of attribution theory is that people will interpret
their environment in such a way as to maintain a positive self-image.
 No one wants to be the bad guy, and assigning attribution is one of the
ways that people seek to see themselves in a more positive light. By
blaming other people and avoiding personal recrimination, individuals
strive to keep a positive self-image. If people believe they are responsible
for bad outcomes, they are less motivated to repeat their behaviours. By
shifting blame, people avoid accountability and therefore feel able to
repeat the same behaviours.
 For example, A robber keeps doing robbery and becomes motivated by
blaming society as a reason for it.
 At last it is evident that kelley’s informational perspective is compatible
with Weiner’s dimensional approach (Martinko 1998). The consensus,
consistency, and distinctiveness information of Kelley’s model provides a
basis for external/internal, stable/unstable, and global/specific attributions
within Weiner’s performance explanation model (Martinko 1998). The
sound predictions of this synthesized theory of attribution provide
evidence that Weiner and Kelley were describing two compatible aspects
of a common underlying process of attribution which is employed
universally (Martinko 1998).
5. Augmenting and Discounting: How we handle multiple potential
causes?

 Discounting Principle: The tendency to attach less importance to one

potential cause of some behaviour when other potential causes are also
present. Many studies indicate that discounting is a common occurrence
and exert a strong effect on our attributions in many situations. However,
discounting is far from universal. Only some possible causes of behaviour
can be used to discount other possible causes.

For example; your boss praises your work in front of other employees.
Response by the boss may be genuine or he or she wants to set you up for
another extra work.

 Augmenting Principle: The tendency to attach greater importance to a

potential cause of behaviour, if the behaviour occurs despite the presence
of other, inhibitory causes.

For example; your boss has strong policy against giving feedback in front
of other persons. Despite your boss praises your work in front of other
employees.

Attribution: Some Basic Sources of Error

Our efforts to understand other persons and ourselves are subject to

several types of errors that can lead us to false conclusions about why
others have acted as they have and how they will behave in the future.
Let’s take a look at several of these errors now.

1) The correspondence Bias: Overestimating the Role of

Dispositional Causes: (Jones & Harris 1967)

 The tendency to explain others actions as stemming from dispositions,

even in the presence of clear situation causes.
 For example, a man arrives at a meeting one hour late. On entering, he
drops his notes on the floor. While trying to pick them up, his classes fall
 off and break. Later, he spills coffee all over his tie. How would you
explain these events?
 The chances are good that you would reach a conclusion such as “This
person is disorganized and clumsy.” Is such an attribution accurate?
Perhaps; but it is also possible that man was late because of unavoidable
delays at the airport, that he dropped his notes because they were printed
on slick paper, and that he spilled his coffee because the cup was too hot
to hold.
 This bias seems to be so general in scope that many social psychologists
refer to it as the fundamental attribution error.
 In short, we tend to perceive others as acting as they do because they are
“that kind of person,” rather than because of the many external factors
that may influence their behaviour.
 Social psychologists have conducted many studies to find out why this
bias occurs. One possibility is that when we observe another person’s
behaviour, we tend to focus on his or her actions, the context in which
person behaves; hence potential situational causes of his or her behaviour
often fade into the background. As a result, dispositional causes are easier
to notice (they are more salient) than situational ones.
 Still another explanation is when we focus on others’ behaviour; we tend
to begin by assuming that their actions reflect their underlying
characteristics.

I. Cultural factors in the Fundamental Attribution Error:

 Fundamental Attribution Error appears to be more common or stronger in
cultures that emphasize individual freedom- individualistic cultures such
as those in Western Europe or the United States and Canada- than in
collectivistic cultures that emphasize group membership, conformity, and
interdependence (e.g., Triandis, 1990)
 Study by (Morris, et.al., 1994) suggests English-language newspapers
were more dispositional and Chinese-language newspapers were more
situational in explanations of the same crimes. Study also found that
Chinese survey respondents differed in weightings of personal
dispositions and situational factors as causes of recent murders and in
counterfactual judgments about how murders might have been averted by
changed situations.
 Therefore cultural differences indeed matter where the correspondence
bias is concerned.
 2) The Actor-Observer Effect: “You fell; I was pushed.”
 The tendency to attribute our own behaviour mainly to situational causes
but the behaviour of others mainly to internal (dispositional) causes.
 For example, when we see another person trip and fall, we tend to
attribute this event to his or her clumsiness. If we trip, however, we are
more likely to attribute this event to situational causes, such as ice on the
sidewalk.
 Why these occur? In part because we are quite aware of many external
factors affecting our own actions but less aware of such factors when we
turn our attention to the actions of other persons. Thus, we tend to
perceive our own behaviour as arising largely from situational causes but
that of others as deriving mainly from their traits or dispositions.

3) The Self-Serving Bias: “I’m Good; You Are Lucky.”

 The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal causes (e.g., one’s
own traits or characteristics) but negative outcomes or events to external
causes (e.g., chance, task difficulty).
 For example, you achieved excellent marks in paper, in such case you are
likely to attribute this positive outcome to internal cause i.e., your high
level of talent, the effort you invested in writing papers.
 Suppose you get horrible marks in the paper, in such case you are likely
to attribute this negative outcome to external cause i.e., the difficulty of
the paper or your professor’s unfairly harsh grading standards.
 Why these occur? It can be explained by two categories wiz, 1) cognitive
and 2) Motivational explanation.
 Cognitive explanation suggests that we attribute self serving bias because
we expect to succeed.
 Motivational explanation suggests that we attribute self serving bias
because to need to protect and enhance our self-esteem or related desire
to look to others.
 Applications of Attribution Theory

Attribution has been applied to many practical problems, often with great
success.

1. Attribution and Depression:

 Depressed persons often show a pattern of attributions opposite to those
of self serving bias: they attribute positive events to external causes such
as good luck or special favors from others and negative ones to internal
causes such as their own traits or lack of ability.
 We can help depressed patients to change their attribution by telling them
to take personal credit for successful outcome and stop blaming
themselves for negative outcome. This type of training is called as
reattribution training.
 The term reattribution therapy broadly use, including any procedure that
attempts to change behaviours or symptoms by modifying the causal
attributions people make for their behaviour or for events in their life.

2. Attribution and Insomnia:

 There is also another therapy called as Misattribution therapy that
attempts to alter a person’s causal attributions about his or her own
internal physiological states.
 Storms and Nisbett (1970) used a drug-inducing arousal manipulation in
which they attempted to treat insomniacs with a placebo and mis-
attribution therapy. Subjects’ attribution of arousal was manipulated by
being told either that the pills had an arousing effect or that they had a
relaxing effect. Insomniacs fell asleep more quickly in the arousal
condition than in the relaxation condition. Thus, insomniacs were able to
fall asleep more quickly if they were provided with environmental cues
that allowed them to explain their insomnia as being caused by an
external neutral stimulus.

3. Attribution and Phobia:

 Ross et al. (1969) suggested providing phobic clients with a neutral
explanation for physical symptoms when they encountered the phobic
stimulus (e.g., convincing an acrophobic that his or her symptoms had
actually resulted from an optical effect associated with heights).
 This is the result of misattribute physiological arousal to a salient neutral
source that is not associated with arousal-causing factors.
 This study is yielded by Schachter and Singer’s (1962) two-factor model
of emotion which explains the person’s attribution of his or her arousal to
the situational source is what gives rise to emotions, motives, and
concomitant behaviours.

4. Sexual Harassment: Insights from Attributional Theory

 One key issue relating to sexual harassment is that it is perceived
differently by different social groups.
 For instance, men are less likely to define various actions as involving
sexual harassment than are women (e.g., Runtz and O’Donnell, 2003)
 There is also called defensive attribution which occurs when we notice
that we are similar to someone who has experienced negative outcomes
(e.g., a victim of sexual harassment).
 Because women are more often the victims of sexual harassment than are
men, women would be expected to perceive greater similarity to the
victim (regardless of this person’s gender) and so blame the victim less
for the negative events that occurred.
 Sexual harassment is a serious problem in many settings. Therefore,
attribution theory can help explain why men and women differ in their
perceptions of this problem, and also suggest potential ways of reducing
its occurrence.
 5. Attribution and Marriage:

 In a thorough review of the literature, Bradbury and Fincham (1990)

concluded that negative attributions by one spouse regarding his or her
spouse’s behaviour were cross-sectionally (e.g., Baucom, Sayers, &
Duhe, 1989) and prospectively (e.g., Fincham & Bradbury, 1987)
associated with marital dissatisfaction.

 Shultz and Schleifer (1983a, 1983b; see also Fincham & Jaspars, 1980)
proposed an entailment model of attribution in marriage, wherein
attributions of cause lead to attributions of responsibility, which, in turn,
lead to attributions of blame.

 Taken together with the attributional dimensions of internality (stability,

globality, and controllability), the differing types of attributions (i.e., for
cause, responsibility, and blame) reveal numerous points of intervention
for marital therapy.

 Determination of which attributional dimension is most salient will direct

the focus of reattribution techniques. For example, attributing a negative
spouse behaviour to an internal, stable, global characteristic about the
spouse (e.g., he or she is selfish) calls for reattribution to less spouse-
centered dispositional causes.

 Similarly, attributions for negative spouse behaviour to uncontrollable

factors (e-g., he or she has an extremely bad temper and therefore cannot
stop yelling) would be reattributed to controllable causes or to causes that
the couple is learning to control through their therapy (e.g., he or she can
control his or her verbal attacks).

6. Attribution and Career Development:

 An interesting example of attribution theory applied to career

development is provided by Daly (1996) who examined the attributions
that employees held as to why they failed to receive promotions.

 Attribution theory has been used to explain the difference in motivation

between high and low achievers. According to attribution theory, high
achievers will approach rather than avoid tasks related to succeeding
 because they believe success is due to high ability and effort which they
are confident of. Failure is thought to be caused by bad luck or a poor
exam, i.e. not their fault. Thus, failure doesn't affect their self-esteem but
success builds pride and confidence.

 On the other hand, low achievers avoid success-related chores because

they tend to (a) doubt their ability and/or (b) assume success is related to
luck or to "who you know" or to other factors beyond their control. Thus,
even when successful, it isn't as rewarding to the low achiever because
he/she doesn't feel responsible, i.e., it doesn't increase his/her pride and
confidence.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

 Can be applied to individual of any age, or environment.

 Can give the individual a sense of control in an environment.

 Explains how cultural or societal norms affect perception.

 Helps therapist understand reasoning for patient’s perception of

attribution.

Weaknesses:

 Perception of events is different for individual and observer.

 Biases can change our perception.