Attribution Theory

  • Attribution theory: study of how we make decisions concerning the events we experience and factors that cause people’s behaviour
  • People attribute behaviour to dispositions: consistent personality characteristics or social situation of persons involved
  • Attributions alter future behaviour, like motivational variables – Attribution theory has 3 assumptions:
  1. We do attempt to determine the causes of our own behaviour and that of others o b/c it is evolutionary adaptive: helps us understand and thus control our environment – understanding the motive behind other people’s actions gives us cues as to how to respond
  2. There are rules to explain how we come to the conclusion we do about the causes of behaviour – not random o There is similarity between expectancy and attributions: expectancy is a cognition (belief) that one thing will follow form another and an attribution is a belief that one thing has followed as the result of another

– opposites in that the time we consider the linked events is diff

  1. Causes attributed to particular behaviours will influence subsequent emotional and non-emotional behaviour

Heider’s Naïve Psychology

  • Naïve psychology: how the average person, who is presumably naïve about how behaviours are objectively determined, decides what are the causes of a behaviour o Fundamental attribution error: tend to attribute behaviour to disposition (vs. situational) factors
  • Dispositions are divided into: abilities and motivation o Motivations are subdivided into intention (cognitive plan to behave in particular way) and exertion (amount of effort one is willing to put into behaviour)
  • Situational attributions include task difficulty and luck
  • On behalf of Heider, Dawson made an argument about Heider’s balance and attribution theory, saying that attributions that maintain balance can be both cause and consequence of motivation o Our desire for balance motivates us more likely to make certain attributions i.e. to maintain positive relationship w/friend, when being cut off by someone in traffic, you replace your dispositional attribution w/a situational one when you find out it is your friend (vs. stranger)
    • Attributions can motivate behaviours that maintain balance i.e. if you consider yourself a good soccer player and you played bad in a game, you

may (1) attribute this to lack of effort (vs. ability) or (2) use this experience to motivate you to practice much harder next time to maintain balance w/belief in your abilities

  • Problem w/this approach: too general – no specific hypotheses to be tested in the lab

The Jones and David Correspondent Inference Theory

  • Correspondent inference theory: in making an attribution, we look for a correspondence between the observed behaviour, the inferred intent of that behaviour and a person’s dispositions
  • Person’s behaviour reflects some degree of choice: in engaging in behaviour vs. doing nothing and a choice between multiple behaviours that could have been informed o If a person has little or no choice, we are likely to attribute behaviour to situation and VV
  • Study that shows that freely chosen behaviours lead to dispositional attributions:
    • Research participants had to read an either pro- or anti- Castro essay that critiqued Castro’s role as PM, who happened to be unpopular
    • Second variable manipulated: whether instructions to essay required fictious student to take pro- or anti- Castro (no-choice condition) or if students were allowed to take whichever position they want (choice condition)
    • Result: participants would be more likely to assume that essay reflected students’ true attitude when the student could chose the position, and thus make a dispositional attribution in the choice donitions
  • 2 factors considered when we make attributions about behaviours (assuming some degree of choice in an actor’s behaviour):
  1. Social desirability behaviour: one that is approved of and performed by most people o Since these behaviours are common, they do not tell us as much about a person’s dispositions as do less socially desirable behaviours

o i.e. helping is socially desirable, so Seth’s choice to push the car tells us less about him than if he stopped the car and threw snowballs at the car

  1. Non-common effects: unique part of observed info that allow us to make attributions as they tell us more about the actor’s intention, which allows us to make an inference about their disposition o e. it would be non-common if Seth found the girl attractive and asked for her # vs. simply driving around her car
  • Theory criticisms: (1) did not produce much research activity, making it hard to empirically validate and (2) did not say much about attributions we make to our own behaviour

Kelley’s Covariation Theory

  • Our attributions are attempts to know how events are casually related to each other, b/c we cant control over environment = we want to gather info
  • We choose explanations that best fit observations
  • Attribution process can be compared to the way a scientist tests an experimental Q: both are based on logical elimination of alternatives
  • Covariation/correlation: way of making judgment about causality; major principle used in attribution process
  • Not all correlating events are casual relationships but all casual relationships are correlational
  • In assessing covariation, we look for patterns of past behaviour to help us make attributions
  • 3 dimensions of past behaviour that help us decide what type of attribution to make:
  1. Distinctiveness: degree to which behaviour is unique o Behaviours low in distinctiveness  dispositional attributions
  2. Consensus: we examine other people’s behaviour in the same situation o High consensus  situational attribution (everyone is doing it)
  3. Consistency: frequency that actor engages in the specific behaviour o Behaviours high in consistency can lead to both situational or dispositional attributions depending on info we have i.e. if Martin has been investing for long time meanwhile no one else has (low consensus), then dispositional attribution is likely vs. if many people have been investing (high consensus), then situational attribution is more likely

Weiner’s Attributional Analysis of Achievement Behaviour

–       4 elements are important in our interpretation of an achievement-related event:

  1. Ability: inferences about our abilities result from earlier experiences; past success = we believe we have abilities in that area and VV o Inferences about our ability also depend on social comparison: our inferences about our abilities are judged in relation to others

o Internal, stable, uncontrollable

  1. Effort: measured by time spent, muscular effort, etc.; we tend to feel we put more effort when we are successful at a test b/c of past experiences in which we have associated effort and success o Internal, unstable controllable
  2. Task difficulty: judged mostly via social comparison, but also through objective characteristics of the task o External, stable and controllable
  3. Luck: present when we have no control over outcome of task (success does not depend on our behaviour) o External, unstable, uncontrollable o Thus, if we fail at a task that seems unrelated to anything we have done, we tend to explain it by bad luck

–     These 4 elements differ along 3 casual dimensions:

  1. Locus: whether cause is internal or external to individual o e. ability and effort are internal (dispositional) vs. difficulty of task and luck are external (situational)
  2. Stability: likelihood that the cause can be altered in the future; If cause is believed to not change = stable and VV o Ability and difficulty of task = stable vs. luck and effort = unstable
  3. Controllability: causes are controllable or uncontrollable by one’s self or others o Ability and luck = uncontrollable vs. task difficulty (i.e. if teacher made test easier) and effort = controllable
  • Affect plays multi-faceted role in motivation and attribution o 1st, achievement-related results make what Weiner called attribution independent affect: outcome itself triggers happiness or sadness, depending on if person succeeded or not
    • Once attribution forms, diff set of emotions is possible depending on casual dimensions that are activated i.e. if someone concludes they succeeded due to ability (internal, stable, controllable), emotion = pride vs. they will feel guilty if they attribute failure to effort
  • Study that provides empirical evidence for this relationship between affect, outcomes and attribution:
    • Participants were resented w/story of success of failure of person w/reasons for it and asked to indicate emotions of individual
    • Result: success usually leads to attribution of emotion of happiness no matter why that person succeeded
    • However, failure does not always lead to shame: failure resulting from lack of effort does elicit guilt sometimes, but failure as a result of others’ efforts leads to aggressiveness
  • Attribution and associated attribution-dependent affect will influence our expectancies of future success and subsequent motivation: failure attributed to lack = guilt + increased motivation due to expectation that greater effort will lead to future success vs. failure due to lack of ability = shame, hopelessness + lack of motivation
  • Incorporated elements, casual dimensions, emotions and expectancies into his broader attribution theory of achievement motivation: achievement-related outcome  change in attribution-independent emotion (success = happiness vs. failure = sadness)  look for cause (especially if outcome is unexpected or important to us)  look at past successes and failures and compare performance to that of others
  • 2 people w/same outcome can experience diff affective and motivational consequences depending on what they attribute their failure to (luck, ability, effort, difficulty of task)

Biases in Attribution

The Self-Serving Bias

  • Self-serving bias: taking credit for success and avoiding responsibility for failure
  • Study: participants were instructed to teach math to confederates o Teachers whose students performed well attributed it to their teaching ability (disposition) vs. those whose students performed poorly attributed it to shortcomings of student (situation)
  • Happens in all cultures, but less in non-Western cultures
  • Exists in all ages, but mostly from childhood to late adult hood
  • People w/psychopathologies has less of the bias; thus, self-enhancement may be adaptive
  • Reasons for its occurrence:
  1. Self-enhancement/self-assessment: we are motivated to maintain positive selfimage
  2. Cognitive information processing errors: (1) expectations play role in attributions as we usually engage in behaviours that we expect to succeed in and (2) anticipated events have been found to produce dispositional attributes
  • Since bias exists even when cognitive factors are controlled, there is motivational component in self-serving bias
  • Automatic process
  • Disadvantage: chronically denying responsibility for failures can protect selfimage, but can also lead to sense of unrealistic optimism
  • Advantage: absence of self-enhancement may lead to depression if one overattributes failures internally and success externally
  • Study: asked college students if they would be willing to walk around campus w/large ad and then predict response of other students w/same request o Result: overestimated amount of people who would respond same way as themselves
  • Occurs especially when individual’s attitude or behaviour is unpopular or deviant form majority i.e. people doing weed overestimated people who also do weed vs. people not doing weed made less of an overestimate
  • Reasons for its occurrence

False Consensus Effect

  • False consensus effect: believe that most other people think and act same way you do
  • Study: asked college students if they would be willing to walk around campus w/large ad and then predict response of other students w/same request o Result: overestimated amount of people who would respond same way as themselves
  • Occurs especially when individual’s attitude or behaviour is unpopular or deviant form majority i.e. people doing weed overestimated people who also do weed vs. people not doing weed made less of an overestimate
  • Reasons for its occurrence
  1. Motivational factor: to increase self esteem since it makes us feel better to believe that there are others who think and behave the way we do, especially when we are diff from the norm
  2. Cognitive factor: selective exposure: tend to associate w/people similar to us

The Actor-Observer Bias

  • Actor-observer bias: infer dispositional attributions of others’ behaviour but situational attributions of our own behaviour
  • Study: participants attributed their own behaviour to the situation (i.e. positive characteristics of their gf or college major when asked why they picked them), but their friend’s behaviour to his enduring dispositions (i.e. his likes and dislikes)
  • Study: college students assumed that participants who volunteered to help in one situation would be more likely to do so in the future, unrelated situations (inferred actors’ behaviours would be consistent across situations) vs. the volunteers’ ratings did not correspond w/this o Conclusions: volunteers were more sensitive to situational cues; thus salience of situational factors is one possible explanation for this bias – Reasons for its occurrence:
  1. Actor is aware of his/her own background and past experiences vs. observer judges simply from what is observed (major point)
  2. Diff in what observer (disposition- b/c they usually cannot directly see disposition) and actors (environment) pays attention to
  • No big disadvantage or advantage unless certain moderator variables are present o e. actors are less likely to make dispositional attributions for negative events than are observers valence  which is why it is thought to just be a type of self-serving bias
  • Bias helps explain workplace interactions between supervisors and subordinates:
    • Subordinates (actors) have more knowledge about their past behaviour than their supervisors; thus they have more info on dimension of consistency; thus, they are more likely to make situational attributions about their workplace behaviour, especially if consistency is low
    • However, supervisors (observers) are more likely to know how other individuals behave in similar situations, so they have knowledge on dimension of consensus; thus, they are more likely to make a dispositional attribution about a worker’s behaviour, especially when consensus is low

The Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)

  • Fundamental attribution error (FAE)/correspondence bias: attribute behaviours of others to stable, internal characteristics, thereby underestimating the influence of situational factors
  • Clearest demonstration of this bias:
    1. 1st study: questioners rated themselves and contestants as relatively average vs. contestant viewed questioner as having more knowledge than them b/c they failed to take situational variable into account, which was that they were randomly assigned role of contestant who had to answer Qs of questioner, which were biased to towards questioner’s choices
    2. 2nd study: observers, like contestants failed to consider situational, thus making a dispositional attribution about the contestants
  • Individualistic countries are more likely to attribute behaviours to dispositions of actor b/c of value place don individual as casual agent of behaviour vs. in collectivist cultures, individual is seen as a part of the larger social group where one’s individual identity can be subsumed by group identity o Thus, diffs in cultures are due to diffs in socialization
  • However another study concluded that the bias is actually equally strong in both cultures; thus bias is universal
  • Causes was proposed to be due to observer’s tend to focus on actor’s behaviour vs. the situation b/c the situation is less salient and thus given less attention when attributions are being made
  • Gilbert and Malone thought above cause was oversimplified and thus invented factors that if not all met, causes us to make FAE:
    1. Situation perception: may not be aware of situational factors
    2. Behavioral expectation: may be aware of situational factors but not understanding of its influence
    3. Behaviour perception: our experiences may affect our perception of the actor’s behaviour
    4. Attribution, with or without correction: unable or unwilling to fully consider impact of the situation]
  • We can change our FAE to make situational attribution, but since it takes more cognitive effort than situational factors, which are automatic, we do not do it often
  • Studies to support above:
    • Participants who saw anxious woman discussing (subtitles – no audio) an ordinary topic made a dispositional attribution (she is anxious person) vs. participants who thought she was discussing anxiety-producing topic were able to take the situation into consideration and less likely to make dispositional attribution (she is anxious b/c she is being taped while discussing sensitive topics)
    • When participants were distracted while watching tape (cognitively interfered), they were more likely to rate woman as being anxious person

(dispositional) b/c they were to less able to make situational attribution

What is the Real Fundamental Error?

  • Critics argue that distinction between dispositional and situational attribution is flawed; they believe all behaviour is interaction of the 2
  • We chose dispositional factors more b/c we underestimate the power of certain important motives: channel factors: motive to “save face” or avoid embarrassment of ourselves and others ***

Application of Research on Attributions

Achievement

  • Mastery orientation: set challenging goals for selves in order to increase competence
  • Helpless orientation: avoid challenging goals and tend to give up easily
  • Study by Dweck that shows that attributions influence our future expectancies of success and the emotions we experience as a result of success and failure: o Prior to doing task that MO and HO children failed, there was no diff between the attributions between the 2 groups of children
    • After failure: HO attributed their failure to uncontrollable factors and MO did not define themselves as failing at all, but tried to find solutions for failure
    • Emotionality -attitudes: MO = positive  believed they can do well in future vs. HO = negative  wanted to escape from situation – 2nd similar study by Dweck; HO:
    • Remembered success less and rated it less than MO b/c they underestimated # of problems they did correctly and b/c they compare themselves to top students vs. average students
    • Do not assume present success is predictive of future success o More likely to attribute success to easiness
    • View success diff from MO: give more weight to failure when making attributions
  • HO seek performance goals: gaining of favourable judgment; sought by helpless individuals and MO seek learning goals: increasing one’s competence; sought by mastery-oriented individuals o Due to diff view in abilities
  • Entity theorists: viewing self and others as acting on the basis of fixed traits o Tend to make more global inferences and tend to rely more on dispositional characteristics
    • Results when children are praised for intelligence b/c intelligence is uncontrollable
    • More likely to seek revenge after negative social interaction i.e. bullying
  • Incremental theorists: view self and others as acting on basis of flexible traits o Make inferences more contextual in nature and tend to rely more on situational factors

o Results when children are praised for effort b/c effort is controllable o More likely to trust after apology after negative social interaction

  • Study shows incremental and entity is subject to change, at least temporarily: researchers were able to reduce desire for revenge by inducing incremental view by reading essay that had this view

Learned Helplessness

  • Attribution of personal helplessness: if we believe we lack characteristics possessed by others that allow them to control their situation, self-esteem will be lowered o Relies on person’s attribution about their lack of control being either: (1) external: out of control; universal – no one has control over them or (2) internal: not in control; personally helpless = low self-esteem
  • Depressed individuals tend to make global attributions and believe nothing they do can change their environment (no control)
  • Helplessness that is perceived as the result of stable factors (i.e. intelligence) will greatly extend time course of helplessness – Controversy w/this model:
    • Initial reaction to loss of control is not helplessness but is: reactance:

resistance to loss of control with subsequent increased effort

  • If control is not regained fro reactance, then helplessness occurs o Study showed: decline in performance on cognitive tasks as length of stay in the hospital (situation w/little control) increased, but no evidence of reactance; thus loss of control = learned helplessness but not reactance – 2 other models that could explain the deficits in hospitalized patients:
  1. Operant learning: hospitalization situation presents situation where reinforcement contingencies are such that independent, active and controltaking behaviours are discouraged, while passive, dependent behaviours are encouraged o If rewards are always tied to passiveness and punishments to active control taking, then length of hospitalization becomes greater and helplessness behaviour increases
  2. Role theory: expectations in the form of rules regarding appropriate behaviour can lead to behaviours appropriate for the role being played o Thus, when people play “patient”, their expectations of appropriate patient behaviour lead them to act in a passive and dependent way

o Thus, participants in hospital study may have behaved passively b/c that is what they though was expected of them

  • Hopelessness theory of depression: revised model of learned helpless; plays down the role of attributions in the understanding of this depression subtype; 2 basic expectations:
  1. Highly valued outcomes are unobtainable or highly aversive outcomes cannot be avoided
  2. The individual is helpless to change these situations; thus helplessness becomes component of hopefulness o Deemphasizes role of attributions in in development of depression, but does not eliminate them: views attributions as one of many factors that could lead to hopelessness and then depression