How we explain behavior: attribution theory

In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors.. Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider, father of attribution theory, defined it as a method for evaluating how people explain the origin of their own behavior and that of others.

Theories aside, in our daily lives, attribution is something we all do constantly, without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences. The tasks we make every day are not something minor.

In this sensewe are prone to make internal or external attributions, depending on our personality or the influence that different factors have on us. Cognitive biases, for example, play an important role in this aspect and in our decision making.

Heider’s attribution theory

in his book The psychology of interpersonal relationships (1958), Heider suggested that people observe others to analyze their behavior. Furthermore, he postulated that they reach their own conclusions to explain the meaning of the actions they observe.

Heider’s attribution theory tries to analyze how we explain people’s behavior and life events.. In social psychology this is called the attributional process. For Heider, we tend to attribute the behavior of others to one of two possible causes: an internal cause or an external cause.

Internal causes or internal attributions refer to individual characteristics and traits, such as personality traits, intelligence, motivation, etc. External causes or external attributions are those given to situational forces, such as luck.to the weather or to the actions of third parties.

Jones and Davis corresponding interference theory

In 1965, Edward Jones and Keith Davis suggested that people make inferences about others when actions are intentional, and not accidental, in his theory of corresponding interference. The goal of this theory is to explain why people make internal or external attributions.

According to this theory, When people see others acting in certain ways, they look for a match between their motives and their behaviors.. In this way, the inferences we make would be based on the degree of choice, the probability of the behavior appearing, and the effects of that behavior.

Davis used the term corresponding inference to refer to an occasion in which one person infers that another person’s behavior matches his or her personality. It is an alternative term to dispositional attribution. So what leads us to make a corresponding inference? Jones and Davis say that we turn to five sources of information:

Choice: If a behavior is freely chosen, it is believed to be due to internal (dispositional) factors.Accidental versus intentional behavior: Intentional behavior is likely attributed to the person’s personality, and accidental behavior is likely attributed to the situation/external causes.Social desirability: Behaviors low in social desirability lead us to make dispositional (internal) inferences more than socially undesirable behaviors. For example, if you watch a person get on a bus and sit on the floor instead of one of the seats. This behavior has low social desirability and is likely to correspond with the individual’s personality.Hedonistic relevance: whether the other person’s behavior appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm us.Personalism: If the other person’s behavior seems intended to have an impact on us, we assume that it is “personal,” and not just a byproduct of the situation we are both in.

Weiner’s motivational model

Weiner’s theory was derived from the work of Heider, It is an integrative model of causal ascriptions and cognitive effectsaffective and behavioral that attributions may have.

Weiner developed attribution theory to explain the association between causal inference and academic success and failure. For it focused on identifying differences in people’s needs and performance when they think about their successes or failures.

Weiner’s (1986) motivational model explains achievement behavior through people’s perceived causal attributions for past achievement outcomes. In simpler terms, success would be related to how people have explained their previous successes.

This theory relates expectations for the future to the stability of the attributions made. Thus, the most stable attributions sustain expectations of obtaining the same result in the future, while the most unstable attributions produce changes in expectations about the future result.

So, If we think that our success was due to a moment of inspiration, we will assume that the probability of repeating it is lower What if we assume that it occurred because we are intelligent people. Inspiration comes and goes, intelligence is “always with us.”

Kelley covariation model

Harol Kelley addresses the study of attributional validity to explain how people decide that their impressions about an object are correct. According to Kelley’s variation model, people make causal inferences to explain why other people behave in a certain way.

This way of making attributions has to do with social perception and self-perception.. According to this model, the causes of an outcome can be attributed to the person (internal), the stimulus (external), the circumstance, or some combination of these factors.

Criteria and attributions

So, Attributions are made on the basis of three criteria: consensus, distinctiveness and consistency.

Consensus: “consensus” exists when all or most people respond to the stimulus or situation, in the same way as the person observed.Distinctive character: when the person observed responds differently to other stimuli or similar situations.Consistency: when the person always responds in the same or similar way to the stimulus or situation considered.

Thus, based on these three parameters, established three types of powers.

«High consensus/high distinctiveness/high consistency»: it is the very purpose of the behavior that makes the person act like this.«Low consensus/low distinctiveness/high consistency»: it is the personal characteristics that make the person act like this.«Low consensus/high distinctiveness/low consistency»: it is the circumstances surrounding the decision that make the subject act this way.

Attributional biases

We often make erroneous causal attributions, even if they seem logical to us. This is largely due to the presence of attributional biases. Let’s look at some of these biases.

Fundamental attribution error: es the tendency to attribute behaviors to internal factors of the person who carries them out, ignoring or minimizing the influence of situational factors.Differences between actor and observer: While we tend to attribute our own behaviors to circumstances, we interpret the same behaviors in others as a consequence of their personal characteristics.False consensus: It occurs when we think that others have opinions and attitudes more similar to ours than they really are.False quirk: We tend to believe that our positive qualities are unique or rare, even though this is not the case.Egocentric attribution: refers to the fact that we overestimate our contributions in group tasks. We also remember our own contributions more than those of others.Pro-self bias: refers to our natural tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external causes.

To conclude, whether following one model or another, The truth is that no person deprives themselves of the “pleasure” of trying to explain their behavior and that of others. This is because doing this task well gives us a great advantage when operating in the world, since we understand that a correct attribution will make us more skilled when it comes to predicting results and actions.

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