Attribution

Attribution: Understanding The Causes of

other’s behaviour
• Attribution is the process through
which we seek to identify the causes
of other’s behaviour and so gain
knowledge of their stable traits and
disposition

• It is about how people make causal

explanations; about how they answer
questions beginning with ‘why’
Heider’s theory
• Heider’s belief that people act
on the basis of their belief’s.

• Therefore beliefs must be taken

into account if psychologists
were to account human
behaviour
Kelley’s theory: Covariation Model
• It is not limited to interpersonal
perception

• His theory concerns the subjective

experience of attributional validity

• From gathered information the

behaviour of a person’s is determine
across time, place, different actors and
different targets of behaviour
 CONT’D
• Kelly’s theory states that in order
to form an attribution about what
caused a person’s behaviour,
we systematically note the
pattern between the presence of
possible causal factors,and
• whether or not the behaviour
occurs
 CONT’D
 1. Consensus: the extent to which
other persons react to some
stimulus/situation or even in the same
manner as the person we are
considering

 2. Distinctiveness: the extent to

which an individual responds in the
SAME Manner to DIFFERENT stimulus

 3. Consistency: the extent to which

an individual responds to a given
stimulus in the SAME WAY in
DIFFERENT OCCASION( across time)
 Example
• Observation of situation: your boss
yells at your friend A, calling her an
idiot.

• Attributional question: Why is the

boss yelling at A and being so
inconsiderate? Is it something about
the boss or is it something about the
situation that surrounds and affects
him?
 Centre of attribution is the BOSS.
INTERNAL LOW IN LOW LOW IN
ATTRIBUTION: CONSENSUS: DISTINCTIVENESS CONSISTENCY:
it was the boss is the : The boss yells at The boss yells
something only person ALL the employees at A only when
about the boss working in the he/she sees
store who yells him/her
at A wearing red
scarf/shirt
EXTERNAL HIGH IN HIGH IN HIGH IN
ATTRIBUTION: CONSENSUS: DISTINCTIVENESS CONSISTENCY:
It was All of the : the boss doesn’t The boss yells
something employees yell at yell at any of the at A almost
about A A too other employees every time he
sees him/ her
Correspondent Inference Theory:
From Acts to Disposition
 JONES & DAVIS described how an alert
perceiver might infer another’s intentions and
personal dispositions(personality traits,
attitudes) from his behaviour.
 A theory describing how we use other’s
behaviour as a basis to infer their stable
disposition
 But often, individual acts in some ways not
because doing so reflects their own
preferences, but external factors leave them
little choice
 Example
• a woman rushing through an airport,
pushing people out of the way in her
haste.

• Does this mean that she is impatient

and rude?

• Not necessarily; she may simply be

responding to the fact that her plane is
about to leave without her.
 Attributional Errors

1. CORRESPONDENCE BIAS

2. ACTOR-OBSERVER EFFECT

3. SELF-SERVING BIAS
CORRESPONDENCE BIAS

TENDENCY:
OVERESTIMATE THE
IMPACT OF INTERNAL SUGGESTIONS: ALWAYS
CAUSES ON OTHER’S TRY TO PUT YOURSELF IN
BEHAVIOUR THE SHOES OF THE
PERSON YOU ARE
ESTIMATING.
 CONT’D

• Correspondence bias focus on:

a person is behaving in such a
way becoause they are born
with it, less focusing on the
external factor that might
influence such act.
THE AC TOR-OBS E R VE R E F F E C T
Tendency: to attribute our own behaviour mainly
to s ituational caus es , but the behaviour of
others mainly to internal caus es

Thus when we s ee another pers on trip and fall,

we tend to attribute this event to his clums ines s .
(Mata letak ke mata ntah! Loplap betui!)

However if we our s elves trip, we are more likely

to attribute this event to s ituational caus es . (Apa
hal la batu kat tengah-tengah koridor ni? !..)
“It is always better to think positive towards
others to prevent attributional errors which
lead to stereotyping”