|
Attribution theory is a social psychology theory developed by Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. The scope of social psychological research. ...
Fritz Heider (1896-1988) was a German social psychologist, responsible for developing the so-called P-O-X theory and the attribution theory in 1958. ...
Harold Kelley (1921-2003) was an American social psychologist. ...
See also: statistician Edward Jones Edward E. Jones (1927-1993) was an influential social psychologist who worked at Duke University for most of his career, then moving to Princeton University in 1977. ...
Lee D. Ross is a professor of social psychology at Stanford University, who has studied attribution theory, attributional biases, decision making and conflict resolution. ...
The theory is concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behavior of others, or themselves (self-attribution), with something else. It explores how individuals "attribute" causes to events and how this cognitive perception affects their motivation. It has been suggested that Base motive be merged into this article or section. ...
The theory divides the way people attribute causes to events into two types.
- "External" or "situational" attribution assigns causality to an outside factor, such as the weather,
- whereas "internal" or "dispositional" attribution assigns causality to factors within the person, such as their own level of intelligence or other variables that make the individual responsible for the event.
People often make self serving attributions. So, if something good happens to themselves or someone they like, they tend to see it as a result of their own, stable dispositions. ("I managed the test because I'm so intelligent"), and when bad things happen to themselves or people they like they are more likely to make external unstable attributions ("I did badly on the test because it was so hard, and I had a headache"). Similarly, they will attribute good things happening to a person that they do not like to a situational factor (they got lucky) and something bad happening to a dispositional factor (they are stupid). This is also known as Fundamental Attribution Error. In copyright law, attribution is the requirement to acknowledge or credit the author of a work which is used or appears in another work. ...
Weather is a term that encompasses phenomena in the atmosphere of a planet. ...
Intelligence is the mental capacity to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ...
A self-serving bias occurs when people are more likely to claim responsibility for successes than failures. ...
In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect and frequently confused with the actor-observer bias) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational...
An example of this, in politics, could be the collapse of the Soviet Union. U.S. leaders attributed it to something dispositional about themselves (we were strong and steadfast, democracy persevered). Also, failing Third World economies are often attributed to corrupt leaders and other dispositional attributions rather than a situation attribution, such as the international system. Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic - President George Walker Bush (R) - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from...
For the Jamaican reggae band, see Third World (band). ...
There seem to be features that people look for when making attributions, such as universality ("does everyone do this, or just the person I'm watching?") and uniqueness ("do they do it this way every time, or was this just an aberration?").
There is evidence from people like Srull and Wyer and John Bargh that when people see an act, they automatically make personality attributions, and start mentally cataloging that person by that label. Dan Gilbert has a theory of attribution which says that, when you see people do something, you make an automatic fast attribution to their personality, and that, if circumstances warrant, you can then slowly "discount" the attribution to a feature of the environment ("whoa, he's not a coward, even I would run away if a bear started gnawing on my arm like that"). John A. Bargh is a professor of social psychology at Yale University. ...
Daniel Todd Gilbert is the bald author of the New York Times bestseller Stumbling on Happiness and the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. ...
Attributions for events can change a person's behavior, and many theories such as cognitive dissonance rely on it. So, for example, in a classic dissonance paradigm, if a person believes that they did something counterattitudinal (say, a student writing an essay in favour of raising tuition prices), because they chose to do it (i.e. they make an internal attribution), then they tend to change their mind and believe that they really do support higher tuition. If, however, they write that same counterattitudinal essay but they believe they were forced to write it (i.e. they make an external attribution for their behaviour), then they are unlikely to change their attitude. Similarly, if someone is paid for a job, they attribute the fact they are doing the job to the fact they are making money for it, rather than to intrinsic factors, such as enjoyment, and subsequently they will actually think that they enjoy the task less, and will be less likely to spontaneously choose to do it again in the future. Studies have shown that adding an external reward to a task previously rewarded only internally makes people less intrinsically motivated to perform that task. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term which describes the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with ones beliefs. ...
This article is about an emotion. ...
It has been suggested that Base motive be merged into this article or section. ...
However, in some circumstances, extrinsic factors can cause positive changes in behaviour. If an individual believes that they have earned the reward or punishment for intrinsic reasons, then that might effect a positive change in behaviour. It is when the reason for the reward is attributed to external factors that the behaviour change might not be in the desired direction.
See also
Attributional biases are cognitive biases which affect attribution -- the way we determine who or what was responsible for an event or action. ...
It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ...
Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
The Locus of control is a concept in psychology, originally developed by Julian Rotter in the 1950s. ...
Reference - Heider, Fritz. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-36833-4
External links - Essay on Attribution by Steve Booth-Butterfield of West Virginia University (1996)
- "From Attributions to Folk Explanations: An Argument in 10 (or so) Steps" (Bertram Malle, University of Oregon, 2002).
|
Feeds |
Contact