Attribution Theories

Rizqy Amelia Zein

Department of Personality and Social Psychology
Universitas Airlangga
slides: https://hackmd.io/@ameliazein/kogsos-4

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 Attribution
People construct explanations for both
physical phenomena (e.g. earthquakes, the
seasons) and human behaviour (e.g. anger, a
particular attitude).
In general such explanations are causal
explanations, in which specific conditions are
attributed a causal role.
Causal explanations are particularly powerful
bases for prediction and control (Hilton,
2007). 3
 Attribution
Attribution The process of assigning a
cause to our own behaviour, and that of
others.
Involving different sets of theory:
Heider’s (1958) theory of naive
psychology
Jones and Davis’s (1965) theory of
correspondent inference
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 Attribution
Kelley’s (1967) covariation model
Schachter’s (1964) theory of emotional lability
Bem’s (1967, 1972) theory of self-perception

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Naive Psychologist (Heider, 1958)
Naive psychologist model Model of
social cognition that characterises people as
using rational, scientific-like, cause–effect
analyses to understand their world.
Heider believed that people are intuitive
psychologists who construct causal theories
of human behaviour.

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Naive Psychologist (Heider, 1958)
Because we feel that our own behaviour is
motivated rather than random, we look for the
causes for other people’s behaviour in order
to discover their motives.
Remember illusory correlation
Because we construct causal theories in order
to be able to predict and control the
environment, we tend to look for stable and
enduring properties of the world around us.
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Naive Psychologist (Heider, 1958)
In attributing causality for behaviour, we
distinguish between personal factors (e.g.
personality, ability) and environmental
factors (e.g. situations, social pressure).
However, people tend to be biased in
preferring internal to external attributions
even in the face of evidence for external
causality.

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Naive Psychologist (Heider, 1958)
Internal (or dispositional) attribution
Process of assigning the cause of our own or
others’ behaviour to internal or dispositional
factors.
External (or situational) attribution
Assigning the cause of our own or others’
behaviour to external or environmental
factors.

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Correspondence inferences (Jones &
Davis, 1965)
Correspondence inference causal
attribution of behaviour to underlying
dispositions or personality trait; how we
infer, e.g. that a friendly action is due to an
underlying disposition to be friendly.

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Correspondence inferences (Jones &
Davis, 1965)
A dispositional cause is a stable cause that
makes people’s behaviour predictable and
thus increases our own sense of control over
our world.
To make a correspondent inference, we draw
on sources of information.

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 Correspondence inferences (Jones &
Davis, 1965)
Freely chosen behaviour is more indicative of
a disposition.
Behaviour with effects that are exclusive to
that behaviour (i.e. behaviour with non-common
effects) tells us more about dispositions.
Socially desirable behaviour tells us little
about a person’s disposition, because it is likely to
be controlled by societal norms.
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 Correspondence inferences (Jones &
Davis, 1965)
We make more confident correspondent
inferences about others’ behaviour that has
important consequences for ourselves: that is,
behaviour that has hedonic relevance.
We make more confident correspondent
inferences about others’ behaviour that seems to
be directly intended to benefit or harm us: that
is, behaviour that is high in personalism.
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Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
In trying to discover the causes of behaviour,
people act much like .
We identify what factor covaries most closely
with the behaviour and then assign to that
factor a causal role.
People use this covariation principle to decide
whether to attribute behaviour to internal
dispositions (e.g. personality) or external
environmental factors (e.g. social pressure).
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Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
In order to make this decision, people assess
classes of information associated with the
co-occurrence of:
A certain action (e.g. angry)
By a specific person (e.g. bu Amel)
With a potential cause (e.g. a daughter).

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 Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
Consistency information - does bu Amel
always get her daughther (high consistency) at
Ayesha, or only sometimes (low consistency)?
Distinctiveness information - does bu Amel
get angry at everyone in her household (low
distinctiveness) or only at her daughter (high
distinctiveness)?

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 Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
Consensus information - does bu Amel’s
spouse also get angry at their daughter (high
consensus), or only bu Amel who does (low
consensus)?

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 Drawbacks
If people do attribute causality on the basis of
covariance or correlation, then they certainly
are naive scientists (Hilton, 1988) –
covariation is not causation.
We may have incomplete information or
even no information from multiple
observations, then how do we now attribute
causality?
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 Drawbacks
To solve this, Kelley (1973) introduced the
notion of causal schemata.
Which is… beliefs or preconceptions,
acquired from experience, about how
certain kinds of cause interact to produce
a specific effect.
One such schema is that a particular
effect requires at least two causes (called
the ‘multiple necessary cause’ schema).
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Emotional lability (Schachter, 1964)
Causal attribution may play a role in how we
experience emotions.
Emotions have distinct components:
An undifferentiated state of physiological
arousal, and;
Cognitions that label the arousal and
determine which emotion is experienced.

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Emotional lability (Schachter, 1964)
If emotions depend on what cognitive label is
assigned, through causal attribution to
undifferentiated arousal…
…then it might be possible to transform
depression into cheerfulness simply by
reattributing arousal (the misattribution
paradigm).

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Emotional lability (Schachter, 1964)
People who feel anxious and bad about
themselves because they attribute arousal
internally are encouraged to attribute arousal
to external factors.

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 However…
Environmental cues are not readily accepted
as bases for inferring emotions from
unexplained arousal.
Because unexplained arousal is
intrinsically unpleasant, people have a
tendency to assign it a negative label.
The misattribution effect is unreliable, short-
lived and largely restricted to laboratory
studies (Parkinson, 1985).
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Self-perception theory (Bem, 1967)
One significant implication of treating
emotion as cognitively labelled arousal is the
possibility that people make more general
attributions for their own behaviour.
Self-perception theory idea that we gain
knowledge of ourselves only by making self-
attributions.
e.g. we infer our own attitudes from our
own behaviour.
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Task performance attribution
…the causes and consequences of the
attribution people make for how well they and
others perform on a task.
e.g. success or failure in an examination
(Weiner, 1986).
In making an achievement attribution, we
consider performance dimensions.
These produce different types of
explanation for task performance.
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 Task performance attribution
Locus – is the performance caused by the
actor (internal) or by the situation (external)?
Stability – is the internal or external cause a
stable or unstable one?
Controllability – to what extent is future task
performance under the actor’s control?

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