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Attribution Theory: Understanding the Causes of Behavior and Events

Attribution theory deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experiences as either external or internal, with models to explain this process called Attribution theory.
Psychologists use these attributions to better understand an individual's motivation and competence, with the theory of particular interest to employers who use it to increase worker motivation, goal orientation, and productivity.
Fritz Heider is often described as the early-20th-century "father of Attribution theory" and first introduced the concept of perceived 'locus of causality' to define the perception of one's environment.
Bernard Weiner expanded on Attribution theory in several ways to help keep it relevant to today's society, including introducing the motivational aspect of Attribution theory, which means how one perceives past events and actions determines what actions a person will take in their future.
Harold Kelley expanded upon Heider’s Attribution theory and created the covariation model which looks at three main types of information from which to make an attribution decision about an individual's behavior: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency information.
External attribution, or situational attribution, refers to interpreting someone's behavior as being caused by the individual's environment, while internal attribution, or dispositional attribution, refers to the process of assigning the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic, likeability and motivation, rather than to outside forces.
Correspondent inferences state that people make inferences about a person when their actions are freely chosen, are unexpected, and result in a small number of desirable effects.
The covariation model states that people attribute behavior to the factors that are present when a behavior occurs and absent when it does not, with Harold Kelley's covariation model of attribution looking to three main types of information from which to make an attribution decision about an individual's behavior.
Bernard Weiner proposed that individuals have initial affective responses to the potential consequences of the intrinsic or extrinsic motives of the actor, which in turn influence future behavior.
The fundamental attribution error describes the habit of misunderstanding dispositional or personality-based explanations for behavior, rather than considering external factors.
Psychologists have identified various biases in the way people attribute causation, including the fundamental attribution error and culture bias.
Attribution theory has been criticized for being mechanistic and reductionist for assuming that people are rational, logical, and systematic thinkers, and for failing to address the social, cultural, and historical factors that shape attributions of cause.
Attribution theory is still relevant today, and is used in the workplace to increase productivity and motivation, and in social psychology to understand how people perceive and react to the causes of behavior.Attribution Theory Summary
People often ignore situational context and assume disposition of an actor to be the cause of observed behavior, leading to fundamental attribution error.
Situational factors are exaggerated when there is a negative outcome, while dispositional factors are exaggerated when there is a positive outcome when evaluating one's own behavior.
Culture bias influences how people make attributions; people from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental attribution error than people from collectivist cultures.
People tend to attribute other people's behaviors to their dispositional factors while attributing their own actions to situational factors; this is known as the actor-observer difference.
Dispositional attribution is a tendency to attribute people's behaviors to their dispositions; that is, to their personality, character, and ability.
Self-serving bias is attributing dispositional and internal factors for success, while external and uncontrollable factors are used to explain the reason for failure.
The defensive attribution hypothesis is a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of defending themselves from concern that they will be the cause or victim of a mishap.
Cognitive dissonance theory refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that cause arousal within the individual.
Attribution theory can be applied to juror decision making, marketing communication, clinical psychology, sports, and health.
In clinical psychology, individuals who tend to attribute their failures to internal, stable, and global factors are more vulnerable to clinical depression.
The ASQ was developed to assess whether individuals have the depressogenic attributional style, but some researchers prefer to use the Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE) technique.
Attribution theory has been used to examine external and internal factors of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the effects of different social movements corporations endorse on consumers and their emotions.Applications and Criticisms of Attribution Theory
Attribution theory has been applied to various sports and exercise contexts, including African soccer where attributions are placed on magic and rituals rather than technical aspects of playing football.
Attribution theory has been used to explain low motivation in older women, which leads to health problems. Internal factors like old age, combined with stable and uncontrollable responses, cause low motivation. Attributional retraining can reduce helplessness by 50% and increase perceived control over health.
Attribution theory has been used to research motivation in educational contexts like mathematics. Teachers’ attribution of behavior can impact their response to problematic children.
The concept of learned helplessness emerged from animal research and suggests that individuals who attribute negative outcomes to internal, stable, and global factors reflect a view in which they have no control over their situation. This may lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses.
Perceptual salience is when people make attributions about another's behavior based on the perception information most salient, which dominates their perception of the situation. For individuals making behavioral attributions about themselves, the situation and external environment are entirely salient, leading to external attribution in regard to their own behavior.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic furthered studies relating to Attribution theory. A study showed high levels of anger and frustration among people who sensed that someone was intentionally spreading COVID-19. The controllability factor played a part in the perceived intentionality.
Attribution theory has been criticized for being mechanistic, reductionist, and failing to address social, cultural, and historical factors that shape attributions of cause. The linguistic categorization theory demonstrates how language influences our attribution style.