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Attribution theory, Assignments of Psychology

Psychology

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Typology: Assignments

2019/2020

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Attribution theory

In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. In

real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the

underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences.

Attribution theory is a topic within the field of social psychology which seeks to explain the

cognitive process whereby individuals make explanatory inferences regarding the causes of

events.

Fritz Heider (1958) was among the first to analyze the process of attribution. 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 behavior, whereas external attributions

implicate external factors (such as the task, other people, or luck) for causing an event or

outcome to occur. While Heider established that successes and failures are interpreted by an

individual within this causal framework,

Heider's "Common Sense" Theory:

In his 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, Fritz Heider suggested that

people observe others, analyze their behavior, and come up with their own commons sense

explanations for such actions. Heider group these explanations into either external

attributions or internal attributions. External attributions are those that are blamed on

situational forces, while internal attributions are blamed on individual characteristics and

traits.

Weiner’s theory:

Weiner (1971) added an additional dimension to causal interpretation when he proposed

that the stability of the cause is also included in individual’s explanations of outcomes. The

distinction between stable, non-variable causes (such as innate ability for internal attributions

and inherent task difficulty for external attributions) and unstable, variable causes (such as effort

and luck respectively) was combined with Heider’s internal/external dimension to form a basis

for classifying the performance attributions made by individuals (Martinko 1998).

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Attribution theory In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. In real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences. Attribution theory is a topic within the field of social psychology which seeks to explain the cognitive process whereby individuals make explanatory inferences regarding the causes of events. Fritz Heider (1958) was among the first to analyze the process of attribution. 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 behavior, whereas external attributions implicate external factors ( such as the task, other people, or luck ) for causing an event or outcome to occur. While Heider established that successes and failures are interpreted by an individual within this causal framework, Heider's "Common Sense" Theory: In his 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations , Fritz Heider suggested that people observe others, analyze their behavior, and come up with their own commons sense explanations for such actions. Heider group these explanations into either external attributions or internal attributions. External attributions are those that are blamed on situational forces, while internal attributions are blamed on individual characteristics and traits. Weiner’s theory: Weiner (1971) added an additional dimension to causal interpretation when he proposed that the stability of the cause is also included in individual’s explanations of outcomes. The distinction between stable, non-variable causes (such as innate ability for internal attributions and inherent task difficulty for external attributions) and unstable, variable causes (such as effort and luck respectively) was combined with Heider’s internal/external dimension to form a basis for classifying the performance attributions made by individuals (Martinko 1998).

Following the emergence of two-dimensional attribution theory, many studies have been conducted which observed patterns governing the type of attribution which individuals tend to make in given situations. Weiner (1979, as cited in Weiner, 1985) later added a third dimension, controllability , to account for factors that are under volition or optional control of the individual. [3] These three dimensions (internal versus external, stable versus unstable, and controllable versus uncontrollable), together with the possibility of success or failure of an action, result in sixteen possible attributions. Principles

Attribution is a three stage process: (1) behavior is observed, (2) behavior is determined to be deliberate, and (3) behavior is attributed to internal or external causes.
Achievement can be attributed to (1) effort, (2) ability, (3) level of task difficulty, or (4) luck.
Causal dimensions of behavior are (1) locus of causality (external-internal), (2) stability, and (3) controllability. Example 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

external explanations with his tripartite attribution cube. Kelley first postulated that attributions arise through the use of the principle of co-variation. This principle of inferential logic holds that the cause of an event must be present when the event occurs and absent when the event fails to occur. Kelley proposed that individuals observe three types of covariant data when assessing the causal origin of behavioral events. Consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are all considered when interpreting the cause of a behavior. Consensus refers to whether others behave identically in the given situation. Consistency refers to whether the individual behaves identically from case to case in the given situation. Distinctiveness refers to whether the individual behaves identically or uniquely when the given situation is changed. In other words, distinctiveness describes whether the behavior is unique to the particular circumstance or manifests across a wide variety of circumstances. Kelley proposed that the levels of these three behavioral co-variables provide the informational basis or assessing the behavior of a person. Kelley’s attribution cube predicts that if consensus is perceived as high (everybody behaves this way in this scenario), consistency is perceived as high (the individual always behaves this way in this given scenario), and distinctiveness is perceived as high (the behavior is unique and distinct to the given scenario), then the circumstances of an event will be attributed as having caused the action. On the other hand, the cube predicts that if consistency is high (the individual always behaves this way in this scenario) while both consensus and distinctiveness are low (nobody else acts this way in this scenario, and he always acts like this regardless of the scenario), then the traits of the individual will be implicated as having caused an event.

 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.

Other combinations of behaviorally covariant information result in ambiguity as to the locus of causation in the mind of the observer who is attempting to interpret whether external social circumstances or internal traits caused a particular behavior to occur. Weiner’s theory is generally used to interpret achievement-related attributions while Kelley’s cube is used to interpret the informational basis of social attributions ; however, these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. 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). Three phenomena which are commonly observed when studying attributions are the actor- observer bias, the fundamental attribution error, and the self-serving bias.

The actor-observer bias is the phenomenon where the perceived cause of an event follows from the particular perspective of the explainer. An observer of an individual’s behavior displays a tendency to attribute the causes of that behavior to internal characteristics of the actor whereas the person carrying out the act in question explains their own behavior as having resulted from external circumstances (Jones & Nisbett 1971).

When it comes to other people, we tend to attribute causes to internal factors such as personality characteristics and ignore or minimize external variables. This phenomenon tends to be very widespread, particularly among individualistic cultures. Psychologists refer to this tendency as the fundamental attribution error ; even though situational variables are very likely present, we automatically attribute the cause to internal characteristics. The fundamental attribution error explains why people often blame other people for things over which they usually have no control. The term blaming the victim is often used by social psychologists to describe a phenomenon in which people blame innocent victims of crimes for their misfortune.
Interestingly, when it comes to explaining our own behavior, we tend to have the opposite bias of the fundamental attribution error. When something happens, we are more likely to blame external forces than our personal characteristics. In psychology, this tendency is known as the actor-observer bias.
Finally, self-serving bias is a common pattern of explanation for personal success or failure and refers to the tendency for individuals to explain success as internally derived and failure as resulting from external, situational factors (Zuckerman 1971). These three patterns of attribution type exhibit fallacious and biased reasoning in action. Implicit perception: Perception without awareness; unconscious perception According to the implicit perception view, the meaning of a visual stimulus can be processed without awareness and that this information can influence higher cognitive functions. Conclusive evidence of implicit perception would have far-reaching practical and theoretical implications. Models of attention typically posit some filtering of sensory input before conscious perception but there is some disagreement about the amount of processing that occurs before this filtering. Early-selection models indicate that processing of unattended information is limited to the earliest stages of perceptual analysis — semantic content is available only after the item has been selected for attention and so would necessarily be associated with awareness. The existence of implicit perception of meaning or object identity would provide strong support for a late- selection model, indicating that far more of our visual world is processed than conscious

choosing between two locations or directions or whether what was flashed was an ‘X’ or an ‘O’.) Subliminal perception: Subliminal perception James Vicary (1957): American marketing expert.......Hungry? Eat popcorn..drink coca cola Sales increased upto 18 %!! Vicary claimed... Subliminal priming: Priming done (prime presented) below the sensory threshold, level of conscious awareness. Boy with cake............2 pics presented for a v brief period Neutral picture...... (Perception according to the priming done) (Refer to Solso, chapter 5 Page 150). Neutral words paired with shock…. Later……..GSR increased Inattentional blindness: Daniel Simons (1999): Eye movement shows that they fixated on that point but could report seeing it (using eye tracker). Change blindness: