Preview

Attribution Theory Definition

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1057 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Attribution Theory Definition
Attribution Theory Definition

Attribution theory is concerned with how people interpret events and relate them to their thinking and behavior. It's a cognitive perception which affects their motivation. This theory was first proposed in a book called, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations by Fritz Heider in 1958. According to Heider, men behave as amateur scientists in social situations. He also said that, we generally explain behavior in two ways; either we attribute the behavior to a person or a situation. Attribution literally means a grant of responsibility. Albeit, the theory was first proposed by Heider (1958), later Edward E. Jones (1972) and Harold Kelley (1967) developed a theoretical structure, which is now seen as an epitome of social psychology.

The theory divides the behavior attributes into two parts, external or internal factors.

Internal attribution: When an internal attribution is made, the cause of the given behavior is within the person, i.e. the variables which make a person responsible like attitude, aptitude, character and personality.

External attribution: When an external attribution is made, the cause of the given behavior is assigned to the situation in which the behavior was seen. The person responsible for the behavior may assign the causality to the environment or weather.

In 1967, Kelley tried to explain the way people perceive internal and external attribution. He tried this, postulating the principle of co-variation. This model was known as Covariation Model. The basic principle of the covariation model states that the effect is attributed to one of the causes which co-varies over time. It also means that the behavior at various occasions varies. The covariation model considers three major types of information to make an attribution decision and to observe a person's behavior. The three types of information are:

Consensus information: This responds to the fact, how people with similar stimuli behave in similar

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking and behaviour. Attribution theory assumes that people try to determine why people do what they do. When we (the observer) try to understand why another person (the actor) did something, we can either attribute one or more causes to that behaviour, internal/dispositional -the inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character or personality. Or; external/situational - the inference that a person is…

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking and behaviour. Heider (1958) was the first to propose a psychological theory of attribution, but Weiner and colleagues (e.g., Jones et al, 1972; Weiner, 1974, 1986) developed a theoretical framework that has become a major research paradigm of social psychology…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fundamental attribution error is when a person overestimates the influence of another person’s personality over a remark or behavior rather than giving credit to the influence the situation may have on the person. A famous experiment demonstrating this “error” was conducted by David Napolitan and George Goethals. In this experiment, they instructed a woman to act either rude and critical, or warm and friendly to each person individually. Half of the group was told that the woman would be acting spontaneously, and the other half was let in on the experiment. The result was that the assumptions about her personality did not change even though half the group had known that she was an actor. Each group assumed that because the woman behaved coldly, her personality was so. Even the group who was told that her behavior was situational had still believed that she was warm and friendly because of the way she was acting in the situation.…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Attribution in social behavior is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. For example, in real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to…

    • 548 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Attributions are the causal judgments about why the event or behavior occurred. These attributions can be either internal (made about a person’s characteristics, e.g. personality) or external (made about a person’s situation e.g. weather). One type of the attribution theory that helps us to determine the “why” in behavior is the Kelley’s Covariation Model of Attribution (Kelley, 1967). In this model, behaviour is analyzed to see how well it is correlated either internal or external factors or a combination of both. When making attributions using the Kelley’s covariation there are three criteria in which the attributions are based on: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. Consensus criterion is whether the behavior is correlated with the situation or in other terms whether different people do this behavior in the same situation. Distinctiveness refers to the correlation between behaviour and the individual specifically how unique the behavior is to that particular situation. Last out of the three is consistency which looks at how behavior is correlated with both the person and the situation that is, is the behavior is the same towards the…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    personal or work related. In every event there is always cause and effect. Many times in misattributions, the cause of a person's behavior is underestimated.…

    • 509 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The fundamental attribution error plays a role in this because, the error is made by people in which they attribute someone else 's behavior more to their personality and characteristic then to the situation in which they have been placed. In reality, someone 's behavior is actually more likely to be caused by the environment and situation that they have been placed in as opposed to their…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Heider (1958) was the first to propose a theory on attribution known as the naïve psychologist (Culatta, 2013). Here he proposed that people try to make sense of our own and others’ behaviour by using their common sense (Cardwell, 1996). Heider initially discussed the distinction between situational and dispositional attribution (12Manage, 2014).…

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Motivational Plan

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Attribution theory wants to know why things happen. It might lead to negative feelings. It could cause someone to give up or try harder depending on the feeling. “Attribution (explanatory) thinking involves an appraisal of factors contributing to success and failure outcomes and is regarded as instrumental to motivation and goal striving in…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Attribution Essay

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Attribution theory analyses how causes of behavior are evaluated; including own and others behaviors. The theory of attribution was introduced in a book called “The psychology of interpersonal relations” by Heider (1958), and soon after investigated by various others. Weiner (1974) proposed a theory of achievement motivation. This essay will therefore evaluate how well Weiner’s (1974) theory of attribution explains how humans assign cause to behavior.…

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The co-variation model of attribution uses the idea that all people analyse behaviour and search for causes of it in a similar way to a scientist. The model introduces the theory that when observing behaviour, people will process a cause by identifying the factor with the highest co-variance to the behaviour. This is achieved by collecting three sets of information, these being consistency, distinctiveness and consensus. When consistency is low (the behaviour is happening occasionally and is not constant) people search for an internal or external alternative cause by using the remaining two sets of information. This essay will evaluate the co-variation model of attribution. It will firstly discuss the validity of the model, followed by its reductionism and finally its usefulness. Then a conclusion will be drawn of the overall effectiveness of the model in explaining how people attribute causes to other people’s behaviour.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Both situation and dispositional factors play a significant role in people explaining behavior. (in that they guide the judgment on both our actions and people’s actions.) Attribution theory, known as how people interpret and explain behavior in the social world, is closely related to these two factors. People tend to attribute behavior depending on their roles as actors or observers, known as the actor-observer effect.…

    • 301 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    people to explain behavior in terms of individual personality traits, even when significant situational factors in the larger society are at work.…

    • 4386 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to Ormrod (2016) attributes are people’s explanations for their own success and failures (p. 475). For example, if one gets an A on their science exam, they might attribute studying hard for this exam as the reason to which they scored so well. Whereas, if one did not study at all and bombed the exam, the attribute for failing it, is due to the lack of studying. Ormrod (2016) explains that there are several different factors of attribution. Often times one might attribute the cause of an event to something internal, which means that is it within oneself (Ormrod, 2016 p. 475). Back to the grade on a test example, thinking that you received a good grade due to your hard work and study habits is an internal attribute. An external…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Locus of Control

    • 4438 Words
    • 18 Pages

    People vary in the way they attribute events, circumstances and certain happenings. It is somewhat puzzling to know why people differ in the way they view certain causes of events. Could this be something that is influenced by their different personalities? Some people may attribute a certain happening to their lives as consequences of their actions, but there are also some people who point towards external factors or situations to be the primary cause of the occurrence of certain events. The way people perceive or blame causes of certain happenings is called Attribution. In social psychology, attribution is referred as the way people perceive and interpret the causes of events and how this relates to their thinking and behavior. Attributions could range from dispositional to something which is uncontrollable and external. However, this paper does not intend to focus on attribution but on certain factors that influence attribution which is called Locus of Control.…

    • 4438 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics