Attributions as Behavior Explanations: Toward a New Theory (original) (raw)
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1 Attributions as Behaviour Explanations : Towards a New Theory
2006
Attribution theory is a hallmark of social-psychological thinking. Thousands of articles have been published in over forty years of research, and textbooks and handbooks of social psychology typically devote a chapter or a large section to attribution phenomena. This body of research can be usefully divided into a general attributional approach to social-psychological phenomena and theories of specific attribution phenomena, such as Kelley’s (1967) theory of explanation or Jones and Davis’s (1965) theory of dispositional inference. The general attributional approach recognizes that humans try to make sense of themselves and their surroundings and that this sensemaking activity (explanations, finding meaning, creating stories) is an integral part of the social phenomena under investigation. This approach has made countless contributions to the literature, shedding light on achievement motivation, responsibility judgements, helplessness, sleep disturbance, obesity, depression, emotion...
Attribution theories: How people make sense of behavior (2011)
In social psychology, the term attribution has two primary meanings. The first refers to explanations of behavior (i.e., answers to why questions); the second refers to inferences or ascriptions (e.g., inferring traits from behavior, ascribing blame to a person). What the two meanings have in common is a process of assigning: in attribution as explanation, a behavior is assigned to its cause; in attribution as inference, a quality or attribute is assigned to the agent on the basis of an observed behavior. Despite the connection between these phenomena, they have distinct psychological characteristics. This chapter focuses on attribution as behavior explanation because it is a far-reaching cognitive and social phenomenon that is embedded in the larger human search for meaning. The discussion begin with the work of undisputed founder of attribution, Fritz Heider, then briefly visit Jones and Davis’s contribution, and move on to Harold Kelley’s theoretical model. I then highlight historical misunderstandings and shortcomings of these theories that have not been adequately addressed. In the second half of the chapter I introduce an alternative theory of behavior explanations that overcomes these shortcomings.
Time to give up the dogmas of attribution: An alternative theory of behavior explanation. (2011)
Attribution research has held a prominent place in social psychology for 50 years, and the dominant theory of attribution has been the same for all this time. Unfortunately, this theory (a version of attribution as covariation detection) cannot account for people’s ordinary explanations of behavior. The goal here is to present a theory that can. The theory is grounded in the framework of folk concepts children and adults use to make sense of human behavior, a framework that was already anticipated by Fritz Heider. To introduce the theory, I first map out this folk-conceptual framework, provide evidence for its core elements, and develop the cognitive and social features of behavior explanations, with a focus on the unique properties of intentional action explanation. I then apply the theory to a core attributional phenomenon—actor– observer asymmetries in explanation—and chart two additional applications. In light of these results, I summarize the theoretical and empirical reasons to give up these three dogmas of attribution theory: that behaviors are like all other events, that explaining behavior is choosing between person and situation causes, and that such choices are driven by covariation detection.
Attribution Theories: How People Make Sense of Behavior
2011
In social psychology, the term attribution has two primary meanings. The first refers to explanations of behavior (i.e., answers to why questions); the second refers to inferences or ascriptions (e.g., inferring traits from behavior, ascribing blame to a person). What the two meanings have in common is a process of assigning: in attribution as explanation, a behavior is assigned to its cause; in attribution as inference, a quality or attribute is assigned to the agent on the basis of an observed behavior. Despite the connection between these phenomena, they have distinct psychological characteristics (Hamilton, 1998; Hilton, Smith, & Kin, 1995; Malle, in press). This chapter will focus on attribution as behavior explanation because it is a far-reaching cognitive and social phenomenon that is embedded in the larger human search for meaning (Malle, 2004). 1 The discussion will begin with the undisputed founder of attribution work, Fritz Heider, then briefly visit Jones and Davis's contribution, and move on to Harold Kelley's theoretical model. Because many excellent reviews of the standard views on these theories are available (see note 1), I will spend relatively little time recounting them. My goal is rather to point out aspects of classic attribution theories that are not generally emphasized, highlight historical misunderstandings, and bring to light theoretical difficulties that have not been adequately addressed. In the second half of the chapter I then introduce an alternative theory of behavior explanations that builds on previous theories but tries to overcome their major difficulties. Heider's Theory of Attribution Fritz Heider developed models of attribution for both object perception and person perception. His theory of object perception (first described in Heider, 1920, his dissertation) is rarely cited today, but it serves as the foundation for his later theory of person perception.
Attribution Theory: Finding Good Cause in the Search for Theory
Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives
H umans are an inquisitive species: We wonder why and how things occur, and we develop religions, philosophies, and sciences as ways of answering our questions. Such curiosity influences our cultural, societal, interpersonal, and personal lives in intricate ways. We can easily see many everyday examples of this in our own minds and in our conversations with friends: We ask ourselves why another person looks so lonely, we think about why we did not get a job, and we talk to others to try to figure out why the person we went out with on Saturday has not called us since then. After all, it's Tuesday! So fundamental is the process of asking and answering "why" questionstrying to figure out what caused something else-that it has been characterized as a basic human activity (Heider, 1958), and a family of theories has developed to illumine how and why things happen as they do. This set of theories, collectively called Attribution Theory, attempts to describe and explain the mental and communicative processes involved in everyday explanations, most typically explanations of individual and social events. In this chapter, we describe select parts of these theories and their related scholarship, and we offer critiques of its usefulness for understanding interpersonal communication processes. Purpose and Meta-theoretical Assumptions Even though attributions are talked about in everyday life and studied by people in many academic disciplines, most attribution theories arose in-and 37
Measurement and interpretation of situational and dispositional attributions
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1981
Four problems with the measurement of situational and dispositional causality are reviewed. These are: the assumption that dispositional and situational causality are inversely linked: the diversity of the causes considered within the situational and dispositional categories; the difficulties of differentiating between causes internal and external to the actor; and the low convergent validity of various closed-ended attribution measures. A study reaffirms the lack of convergence among closed-ended measures and between closed and open-ended measures as well. In a second study, subjects' ratings of closed-ended attributions are taken as indicators that a freely chosen to not freely chosen dimension may better represent subjects' attributional thought than the internal/external dimension does. Open-ended data from the convergence study are recoded using this scheme and achieve significantly better convergence with closed-ended data. The implications of this redefinition for solving the various measurement problems are discussed. Fritz Heider's (19%) description of the naive analysis of action distinguishes personal forces from environmental forces, a distinction that has We wish to thank Nancy Greenberg and Jill Salberg of New York University for their assistance in coding open-ended materials as well as Shelley E. Taylor and Kay Deaux. Richard J. Harris. and Edward E. Jones for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Correspondence regarding this paper should be sent to Frederick D. Miller. IC-329C Bell Telephone Laboratories. Whippany. NJ 07981.