Heider's Attribution Theory (1958) is a theory based on the assumption that people tend to try finding explanations for other people's behavior. This happens because they are aware of the reasons and causes behind their own behavior and base their own theories of human behavior in this manner. Another reason for attribution is that people are motivated to better predict and understand the environment around them and having personal theories of human behavior facilitates this.There are two types of attributions: dispositional and situational. Dispositional attributions deal with causes within the person, such as personality, intelligence or attitude. Situational attributions deal with the causes outside the person, which means that a certain behavior is caused by the environment around a person (the situation), such as social context or events outside of one’s control.Simmel (1944) showed a tendency of overestimating dispositional attribution in humans observing others. In this experiment, moving geometric figures were shown to participants that then were asked to describe what they saw. Results showed that participants tended to describe the figures’ motions as intentional actions. In other words, they found a causal explanation for what they saw even if conscious intentional motions do not apply to shapes. Evans-Pritchard (1976) showed cultural differences in attribution in Azande people. They believed that witchcraft (a situational factor) was responsible for killing people when a doorway collapsed. While the door had been eaten through by termites, the Azande participants still believed that an external force was responsible for the death of those people. Show
Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and 'booked'. When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, deloused, had all their personal possessions removed and locked away, They were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only. This effectively dehumanised them as with real prisoners. Guards were issued a khaki uniform, together with whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible-thus they had the power
Attribution TheoryBy 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):
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 Attribution1. Dispositional AttributionDispositional 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 AttributionThe 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 TheoryJones 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:
Kelley's Covariation ModelKelley’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.
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. ConsensusIf everybody in the audience is laughing, the consensus is high. If only Tom is laughing consensus is low. 2. DistinctivenessIf Tom only laughs at this comedian, the distinctiveness is high. If Tom laughs at everything, then distinctiveness is low. 3. ConsistencyIf 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. How to reference this article:How to reference this article:McLeod, S. A. (2012). Attribution theory. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html APA Style ReferencesFiske, 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:How to reference this article:McLeod, S. A. (2012). Attribution theory. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html Home | About Us | Privacy Policy | Advertise | Contact Us Simply Psychology's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. © Simply Scholar Ltd - All rights reserved
What are dispositional and situational factors?Dispositional attribution is the assumption that a person's behavior reflects his internal dispositions like his personality, beliefs, attitude etc. Situational attribution is the assumption that a person's behavior is influenced by an external influence from the environment or culture.
What does it mean to describe a person's behavior to dispositional factors?Dispositional attribution identifies internal characteristics as the cause of a person's behavior. Common examples of dispositional attribution include assigning causes to personality traits, as seen in the five-factor model, and abilities, motives, and beliefs.
What is situational behavior?Under the controversy of person–situation debate, situationism is the theory that changes in human behavior are factors of the situation rather than the traits a person possesses. Behavior is believed to be influenced by external, situational factors rather than internal traits or motivations.
What is a tendency to explain other's actions or behaviors from disposition ie personality traits regardless of obvious situational factors?The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for others' behavior while under-emphasizing situational explanations (Ross, 1977).
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