Attribution (psychology)

Fritz Heider originated Attribution theory during a time when psychologists were furthering research on personality, social psychology, and human motivation. Heider worked alone in his research, but stated that he wished for Attribution theory not to be attributed to him because many different ideas and people were involved in the process. Weiner argued that Heider was too modest, and the openness of the theory keeps its presence functional today. Attribution theory is the original parent theory with Harold Kelley's covariation model and Bernard Weiner's three-dimensional model branching from Attribution theory. Attribution theory also influenced several other theories as well such as Heider's Perceived Locus of Causality which eventually led to Deci and Ryan's Theory of Self-determination. == Key theorists ==

Fritz Heider Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is often described as the early-20th-century "father of Attribution theory". In his 1920 dissertation, Heider addressed the problem of phenomenology: why do perceivers attribute the properties such as color to perceived objects, when those properties are mental constructs? Heider's answer that perceivers attribute that which they "directly" sense – vibrations in the air for instance – to an object they construe as causing those to sense data. "Perceivers faced with sensory data thus see the perceptual object as 'out there', because they attribute the sensory data to their underlying causes in the world." Heider extended this idea to attributions about people: "motives, intentions, sentiments ... the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior". This second goal more clearly defined Heider's theory on attribution. Through Heider's research of Attribution Theory, he concerned himself with the reasons a person achieved success or failed. To organize the research, Heider broke the reasonings down into three different subjects, the first being ability, second being effort, and third being task difficulty. Heider saw both ability and effort being internal factors and task difficulty being an external factor. Bernard Weiner Bernard Weiner was not the theory's originator; however, he expanded on Attribution theory in several ways to help keep it relevant to today's society. The most influential aspect of Weiner's work consists of the motivational aspect of Attribution theory, which he introduced around the year 1968. This means that how one perceives past events and actions determines what actions a person will take in their future because the past experiences motivated them to do so. The first focus of Kelley's research was a look at external and internal attributions. Kelley looked at causal inferences and attempted to elaborate on Heider's model by explaining the effects of certain factors. ==Types==

External External attribution, also called situational attribution, refers to interpreting someone's behavior as being caused by the individual's environment. For example, if one's car tire is punctured, it may be attributed to a hole in the road; by making attributions to the poor condition of the highway, one can make sense of the event without any discomfort that it may in reality have been the result of their own bad driving. Individuals are more likely to associate unfortunate events with external factors than with internal factors. For example, consider someone who uses external attributions as a way not to use hearing aids. Examples of this are: A patient does not have the money to afford hearing aids, so they do not purchase them. A person believes using hearing aids would make them a burden to people they are around, so they do not wear them. A person does not trust the doctor that is prescribing them hearing aids. Lastly, a person believes that other health conditions, either about themselves or someone else in their life, take priority over their need for hearing aids. Fangfang Wen examined how people react when viewing situations from an external perspective, focusing on how an attribution of blame affects emotions and behavior. The study tested whether individuals who assign blame to people rather than external factors are more likely to experience anger, which can then lead to aggressive behavior or social avoidance. To investigate this, the researchers analyzed reactions to two real-life events: a private data leak involving Wuhan returnees and the refusal of workers returning from Hubei. In the third part of the study, they explained whether changing how people would recognize the blame (internal versus external) would influence their emotions and upcoming actions. The findings show that when individuals attribute blame to others (an internal attribution), they are more likely to feel anger and disrespect, resulting in either aggression or avoidance. The study shows how internal attributions can intensify negative emotional responses and shape social behaviors. Internal 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. This concept has overlap with the locus of control, in which individuals feel they are personally responsible for everything that happens to them. Consider the example of a person who uses internal attributions to justify not wearing their prescribed hearing aids. Examples of this are: A patient believes the hearing aids not to be necessary, so they choose not to wear them. A patient fears being stigmatized for having a disability and requiring hearing aids to hear correctly, so they decide not to wear them. A patient is struggling with adding hearing aids into their everyday life and believes it to be easier not to wear them. Lastly, a patient does not fully understand the benefits that hearing aids will give them, so they choose not to wear them despite the benefits hearing aids would grant them. reacted to discrimination against returning workers from Hubei, focusing on how their ability to assign blame (internal attribution) influenced their emotions and behaviors. The study found that when observers are blamed, they feel angrier, leading to either avoidance or aggressive behavior. Other emotions, such as sadness and tension, remained the same. This finding supports the cognition-emotion-action model, which shows how individuals interpretations of a situation influence their emotional responses and following actions. In contrast to external attribution, where the environmental factors are to blame, internal attribution leads to stronger negative emotions and more intense reactions. ==Other dimensions of attribution==

The distinction between internal and external attributions was supplemented by other dimensions of attribution once attribution theory was applied to understanding clinical depression. These are whether a cause is perceived as being stable or unstable, i.e. whether it lasts over time or is short-term, and whether a cause is perceived as being global (i.e. affecting all situations in a person's life) or situation-specific. ==Theories and models==

Common sense psychology From the book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958), Fritz Heider tried to explore the nature of interpersonal relationship, and espoused the concept of what he called "common sense" or "naïve psychology". In his theory, he believed that people observe, analyze, and explain behaviors with explanations. Although people have different kinds of explanations for the events of human behaviors, Heider found it is very useful to group explanation into two categories; Internal (personal) and external (situational) attributions. When an internal attribution is made, the cause of the given behavior is assigned to the individual's characteristics such as ability, personality, mood, efforts, attitudes, or disposition. When an external attribution is made, the cause of the given behavior is assigned to the situation in which the behavior was seen such as the task, other people, or luck (that the individual producing the behavior did so because of the surrounding environment or the social situation). These two types lead to very different perceptions of the individual engaging in a behavior. Perceived locus of causality Heider first introduced the concept of perceived locus of causality using it to define interpersonal perception of one's environment. Understanding an individual's perception of causality also opens doors to a better understanding of how to better motivate an individual in specific tasks by increasing levels of autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Research has shown that spectators at an athletic event often attribute their team's victory to internal causes and their team's losses to external causes. This is an example of self-serving attribution error or fundamental attribution error and is more common than one might think. Covariation model The covariation model states that people attribute behavior to the factors that are present when a behavior occurs and absent when it does not. Thus, the theory assumes that people make causal attributions in a rational, logical fashion, and that they assign the cause of an action to the factor that co-varies most closely with that action. Harold Kelley's covariation model of attribution looks to three main types of information from which to make an attribution decision about an individual's behavior. The first is consensus information, or information on how other people in the same situation and with the same stimulus behave. The second is distinctive information, or how the individual responds to different stimuli. The third is consistency information, or how frequent the individual's behavior can be observed with similar stimulus but varied situations. From these three sources of affirmation observers make attribution decisions on the individual's behavior as either internal or external. There have been claims that people under-utilise consensus information, although there has been some dispute over this. There are several levels in the covariation model: high and low. Each of these levels influences the three covariation model criteria. High consensus is when many people can agree on an event or area of interest. Low consensus is when very few people can agree. High distinctiveness is when the event or area of interest is very unusual, whereas low distinctness is when the event or area of interest is fairly common. High consistency is when the event or area of interest continues for a length of time and low consistency is when the event or area of interest goes away quickly. That is, a person's own perceptions or attributions as to why they succeeded or failed at an activity determine the amount of effort the person will engage in activities in the future. Weiner suggests that individuals exert their attribution search and cognitively evaluate casual properties on the behaviors they experience. When attributions lead to positive affect and high expectancy of future success, such attributions should result in greater willingness to approach to similar achievement tasks in the future than those attributions that produce negative affect and low expectancy of future success. Eventually, such affective and cognitive assessment influences future behavior when individuals encounter similar situations. Weiner's achievement attribution has three categories: • stability (stable and unstable) • locus of causality (internal and external) • controllability (controllable or uncontrollable) Stability influences individuals' expectancy about their future; control is related with individuals' persistence on mission; causality influences emotional responses to the outcome of task. ==Bias and errors==

While people strive to find reasons for behaviors, they fall into many traps of biases and errors. As Fritz Heider says, "our perceptions of causality are often distorted by our needs and certain cognitive biases". The following are examples of attributional biases. Fundamental attribution error The fundamental attribution error describes the habit to misunderstand dispositional or personality-based explanations for behavior, rather than considering external factors. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain and assume the behavior of others. For example, if a person is overweight, a person's first assumption might be that they have a problem with overeating or are lazy, and not that they might have a medical reason for being heavier set. When evaluating others' behaviors, the situational context is often ignored in favor of assuming the disposition of the actor to be the cause of an observed behavior. This is because, when a behavior occurs, attention is most often focused on the person performing the behavior. Thus the individual is more salient than the environment, and dispositional attributions are made more often than situational attributions to explain the behavior of others. Sociocultural disparities are a main source for the propensity of the fundamental attribution error caused by an augment of inferring dispositional attribution while ignoring situational attribution. Culture bias Culture bias is when someone makes an assumption about the behavior of a person based on their own cultural practices and beliefs. An example of culture bias is the dichotomy of "individualistic" and "collectivistic cultures". People in individualist cultures, generally Anglo-America and Anglo-Saxon European, are characterized as societies which value individualism, personal goals, and independence. People in collectivist cultures are thought to regard individuals as members of groups such as families, tribes, work units, and nations, and tend to value conformity and interdependence. In other words, working together and being involved as a group is more common in certain cultures that view each person as a part of the community. This cultural trait is common in Asia, traditional Native American societies, and Africa. Research shows that culture, either individualist or collectivist, affects how people make attributions. People from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental-attribution error than people from collectivist cultures. Individualist cultures tend to attribute a person's behavior due to their internal factors whereas collectivist cultures tend to attribute a person's behavior to his external factors. Research suggests that individualist cultures engage in self-serving bias more than do collectivist cultures, i.e. individualist cultures tend to attribute success to internal factors and to attribute failure to external factors. In contrast, collectivist cultures engage in the opposite of self-serving bias i.e. self-effacing bias, which is: attributing success to external factors and blaming failure on internal factors (the individual). Further research suggests that in the United States in particular, culture bias implies a hyperbolized function of culture within the social environments dominated by minorities. These research findings are further supported by aggravation of the perception that there is less of a role in the presence of psychological development of minorities as opposed to their Caucasian counterparts. Actor/observer difference People tend to attribute other people's behaviors to their dispositional factors while attributing their own actions to situational factors. In the same situation, people's attribution can differ depending on their role as actor or observer. Actors express their behavior differently from an observer. For example, when a person scores a low grade on a test, they find situational factors to justify the negative event such as saying that the teacher asked a question that he/she never went over in class. However, if another person scores poorly on a test, the person will attribute the results to internal factors such as laziness and inattentiveness in classes. The theory of the actor-observer bias was first developed by E. Jones and R. Nisbett in 1971, whose explanation for the effect was that when we observe other people, we tend to focus on the person, whereas when we are actors, our attention is focused towards situational factors. The actor/observer bias is used less frequently with people one knows well such as friends and family since one knows how his/her close friends and family will behave in certain situation, leading him/her to think more about the external factors rather than internal factors. Dispositional attributions Dispositional attribution is a tendency to attribute people's behaviors to their dispositions; that is, to their personality, character, and ability. For example, when a normally pleasant waiter is being rude to his/her customer, the customer may assume he/she has a bad character. The customer, looking at the attitude that the waiter is giving him/her, instantly decides that the waiter is a bad person. The customer oversimplifies the situation by not taking into account all the unfortunate events that might have happened to the waiter which made him/her become rude at that moment. Therefore, the customer made dispositional attribution by attributing the waiter's behavior directly to his/her personality rather than considering situational factors that might have caused the whole "rudeness". The degree of dispositional attribution varies greatly within people. As seen within culture bias, dispositional attribution is impacted by personal beliefs and individual perspectives. Research has shown that dispositional attribution can be influenced by explicit inferences (i.e. instructions or information provided to an individual) that can essentially "guide" a person's judgement. Self-serving bias Self-serving bias is attributing dispositional and internal factors for success, while external and uncontrollable factors are used to explain the reason for failure. For example, if a person gets promoted, it is because of his/her ability and competence whereas if he/she does not get promoted, it is because his/her manager does not like him/her (external, uncontrollable factor). Originally, researchers assumed that self-serving bias is strongly related to the fact that people want to protect their self-esteem. However, an alternative information processing explanation is that when the outcomes match people's expectations, they make attributions to internal factors; for example, someone who passes a test might believe it was because of their intelligence. Whereas when the outcome does not match their expectations, they make external attributions or excuses; the same person might excuse failing a test by saying that they did not have enough time to study. An alternative version of the theory of self-serving bias states that the bias does not arise because people wish to protect their private self-esteem, but to protect their self-image (a self-presentational bias). This version of the theory, which is in line with social desirability bias, would predict that people attribute their successes to situational factors, for fear that others will disapprove of them looking overly vain if they should attribute successes to themselves. For example, there is a hypothesis that coming to believe that "good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people" will reduce feelings of vulnerability. However, this just-world bias has a critical drawback, which is having a tendency to blame victims, even in tragic situations. Defensive attribution hypothesis The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term referring to 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. Commonly, defensive attributions are made when individuals witness or learn of a mishap happening to another person. In these situations, attributions of responsibility to the victim or harm-doer for the mishap will depend upon the severity of the outcomes of the mishap and the level of personal and situational similarity between the individual and victim. More responsibility will be attributed to the harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe, and as personal or situational similarity decreases. The arousal often produces a feeling of mental or even physical discomfort either leading the individual to alter their own attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors or attributions of the situation. It is much harder for a person to change their behaviors or beliefs than it is to change how they perceive a situation. For example, if someone perceives themselves as being very capable in a sport but perform poorly during a game, they are more likely to attribute or blame the poor performance on an external factor than on internal factors such as their skill and ability. This is done in an effort to preserve their current held beliefs and perceptions about themselves; otherwise, they are left to face the thought that they are not as good at the sport as they originally thought, causing a feeling of dissonance and arousal. == Application ==

In court and law Attribution theory can be applied to juror decision making. Jurors use attributions to explain the cause of the defendant's intent and actions related to the criminal behavior. The attribution made (situational or dispositional) might affect a juror's punitiveness towards the defendant. When jurors attribute a defendant's behavior to dispositional attributions they tend to be more punitive and are more likely find a defendant guilty Black youth are 1.4x more likely to be given secure confinement, the most severe sanction for a juvenile, when compared to white youth. In marketing communication The Attribution theories have been used as a tool to analyze causal attributions made by consumers and its effectiveness in marketing communication. Attribution theory has also been utilized to examine external and internal factors of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the affects the different social movements corporations endorsed have on consumers and their emotions. Companies have moved to illustrate their different CSR efforts in their marketing and advertisements. However, people are beginning to question the companies real motivations and involvement in the different social movements that certain companies market. Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale developed a theory of the depressive attributional style, claiming that individuals who tend to attribute their failures to internal, stable and global factors are more vulnerable to clinical depression. This style is correlated with self-reported rates of depression, as well as posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and higher risks of developing depression. The Depressive attributional style is defined by high levels of pessimism, rumination, hopelessness, self-criticism, poorer academic performance, and a tendency to believe negative outcomes and events are one's own fault. People with this attributional style may place high levels of importance on their own reputation and social status. They may be sensitive to rejection by peers and may often interpret actions as more hostile than they really are. This explanatory style may be caused by depressive symptoms in the patient's parents. Some research has suggested that this attributional style might not result in increased levels of depression amongst certain cultures. A study conducted by researchers at Tsinghua University found that this style was common amongst Buddhists due to cultural beliefs in ideas such as Karma yet they did not demonstrate increased levels of depression. The Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) was developed back in 1996 to assess whether individuals have the depressogenic attributional style. However, the ASQ has been criticized, with some researchers preferring to use a technique called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE) in which an individual's ordinary writings are analyzed to assess whether s/he is vulnerable to the depressive attributional style. The key advantage of using content analysis is its non-invasive nature, in contrast to collecting survey answers or simulating social experiences. In sports and health Attribution theory has been applied to a variety of sports and exercise contexts, such as children's motivation for physical activity and African soccer, where attributions are placed toward magic and rituals, such as what magicians are consulted before the game begins, rather than the technical and mechanical aspects of playing football. Using Heider's classifications for causal attribution, being the locus of causality, stability, and controllability is another way to explain Attribution theory's role in health. Attributional retraining allowed these women to reconsider external factors as controllable, which decreased their feelings of helplessness by 50% and increased their perceived control over their health. Still, it's important because it helps us figure out why athletes think certain things about their performance. Heider started it all by showing how people try to explain why things happen, like why someone does well or badly in a game. This idea is super important in sports because athletes are always trying to understand why they did well or not so well. Other researchers like Jones, Davis, and Kelley built on Heider's work. They came up with ideas about how we figure out what other people are like based on what they do. work on how what we expect to happen affects how we behave. This is important for understanding why some athletes feel like they can improve while others don't. One big idea in attribution theory is about how we think about problems. Weiner talks about how we see problems as either something we can change or something we can't. Weiner's model of attributions offers a framework, highlighting dimensions such as locus, stability, and controllability. Combat sport athletes tend to attribute successes more internally and stably, while their attributions for failures are less internalized. The research also uncovers attribution biases like the self-serving bias, where successes are attributed internally and failures externally. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses, the study emphasizes situational factors and individual differences in attributions. Similarly, the current study employs visual stimuli to evaluate perceptual skills, with a focus on dynamic elements in videos. Factors like viewing time and distance are considered, with accuracy being the primary measure of success. This approach sheds light on how the visual system processes information in different contexts. Time is crucial in measuring perceptual success, highlighting the importance of accuracy over speed. The way in which teachers attribute behavior can impact their response to problematic children. Laurent Brun, Benoit Dompnier, and Pascal Pansu conducted a study examining interpersonal relationships in Attribution theory. Using Weiner's three dimensions of stability theory, locus of causality, and controllability, they were able to reasonably infer what behaviors teachers attribute toward their students' success. They assigned five profiles to teachers after the study, and they determined that these profiles were "greatly determined by the student's outcome valence." Teachers are more often to blame students' failures on internal reasons, such as an inability or disregarding of lessons, rather than potentially accepting external factors, like poor teaching strategies, that are leading a student toward "failing" Moreover, Japanese EFL stunts attributed oral task struggles to historically negative attitudes toward Japanese speakers of English, low pay of translators, and emphasis on grammar translation in schools, which are all external factors. However, both studies found that teachers affect causal attributions of students, and teacher feedback can positively or negatively influence learning motivation." Attribution theory looks at how people explain the reasons behind successes and failures, and it's being used a lot to study motivation in education. Most of the research has been more about theories than real-life evidence. More recently, the plans to focus on college students by using a big survey to see how different ways of thinking about success and failure affect their confidence in school. Confidence is important because when students blame themselves for failing, it can hurt their motivation. while giving credit for success to things like good teaching might make them feel less confident. Teachers also play a role since they often blame students' failures on personal issues (like not trying hard enough) but giving credit for success to outside factors (like suitable teaching methods). Understanding how teachers and students think about success and failure can help create better ways to keep students motivated and confident. In the deaf community Many people with hearing loss reject hearing aids as a result of internal and external motivations. The framework of attribution theory provides insight into experiences and perspectives of individual reasoning of hearing aid non-use and contributes to better effectiveness in the field of hearing healthcare. A study conducted by Caitlyn Ritter of the mega journal 'PLOS ONE' answers the question: What reasons do adults with hearing loss, who are prescribed hearing aids, provide for not using them? Results of the data were collected from 20 participants, highlighting nine themes that influenced hearing aid non-use. Among the internal motivations of non-use include non-necessity, stigmatization, lack of integration, and lack of knowledge about hearing aids. Moreover, external motivations for non-use include uncomfortableness, cost burden, professional distrust, and priority-setting. Support and counseling are just as significant as expensive modern technology when referring to the increase in hearing aid usage.". Ritter's study features Doug, an interviewee, as he explains his use of hearing aids except when he goes on vacation because he tends to forget them. His example is a small but clear barrier to successful integration. Although virtual reality can be utilized to experience and travel the world, it comes with an empty feeling from not actually being there. Avatar-focused virtual experiences encourage attribution shifts central to attribution theory by leading people to interpret actions based more on online social appearance as opposed to actual impact. This is a flexibility that’s harder to achieve in physical interactions. In test scores Attribution theory can be applied with students and test scores. Weiner states that “After the students perceive reasons for their successes or failures, they then ascribe the reasons in three main dimensions: locus, stability, and control." Attribution theory studies have three commonalities. In education research, attribution has been widely cited as one of the key factors in students’ learning motivation and achievement. The attribution theory model begins with the precursors by remembering their past successes or failures; these past experience justifications may help understand why they could be successful or fail in their language learning. Attribution theory suggests students are more likely to stay motivated and keep working toward their goals when they are able to explain outcomes in terms of internal, changeable, and controllable factors like effort. In museums Attribution theory can be applied in museums to help their efforts in improving the research willingness of their employees. A study was administered across various museums in China. Using attribution theory allows researchers to elucidate the underlying causes and inferences behind the behaviors and expressions exhibited by individuals or groups. The findings explain what motivates young museum staff in mainland China to do research. Using the CEAM framework and ideas from attribution theory, they showed how different factors connect. First, they grouped 14 factors into internal vs. external, then broke them down further based on whether they’re stable or controllable, using insights from interviews. == Learned helplessness ==

The concept of learned helplessness emerged from animal research in which psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier discovered that dogs classically conditioned to an electrical shock which they could not escape, subsequently failed to attempt to escape an avoidable shock in a similar situation. They argued that learned helplessness applied to human psychopathology. In particular, individuals who attribute negative outcomes to external, stable and global factors reflect a view in which they have no control over their situation. It is suggested that this aspect of not attempting to better a situation exacerbates negative mood, and may lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses. ==Perceptual salience==

When people try to make attributions about another's behavior, their information focuses on the individual. Their perception of that individual is lacking most of the external factors which might affect the individual. The gaps tend to be skipped over and the attribution is made based on the perception information most salient. The most salient perceptual information dominates a person's perception of the situation. For individuals making behavioral attributions about themselves, the situation and external environment are entirely salient, but their own body and behavior are less so. This leads to the tendency to make an external attribution in regard to their own behavior. == COVID-19 pandemic ==

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic furthered studies relating to Attribution theory. A study conducted by Elvin Yao and Jason Siegel looked further into Weiner's definition of Attribution theory and how people express emotions when the intentional spreading of COVID occurs. This study shows when the intentions of a person are perceived to be negative to society, then people respond negatively. ==Criticism==

Attribution theory has been criticized as being mechanistic and reductionist for assuming that people are rational, logical, and systematic thinkers. The fundamental attribution error, however, demonstrates that they are cognitive misers and motivated tacticians. It also fails to address the social, cultural, and historical factors that shape attributions of cause. This has been addressed extensively by discourse analysis, a branch of psychology that prefers to use qualitative methods including the use of language to understand psychological phenomena. The linguistic categorization theory for example demonstrates how language influences our attribution style. == See also ==