Attribution theory is concerned with how ordinary people explain the causes of behavior and events

3. INTRODUCTION
• In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events
or behaviors.
• It refers to our efforts to understand the causes behind others’ behavior and, on
some occasions and the causes behind our behavior, too.
• In real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any
awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences.
• It is concerned with how ordinary people explain the causes of behavior and events. For
example, if someone angry, is it because they are bad-tempered or because something
bad happened?

4. • Heider (1958) was the first to propose a psychological theory of attribution. Weiner and colleagues
(e.g., Jones et al, 1972; Weiner, 1974, 1986) developed a theoretical framework that has become a
major research paradigm of social psychology.
• Attribution theory assumes that people try to determine why people do what they do, i.e., attribute
causes to behavior.
• A person seeking to understand why another person did something may attribute one or more
causes to that behavior.
• A three-stage process underlies an attribution:
• the person must perceive or observe the behavior.
• then the person must believe that the behavior was intentionally performed
• then the person must determine if they believe the other person was forced to perform the behavior
(in which case the cause is attributed to the situation) or not
(in which case the cause is attributed to the other person).

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13. • Situation 1:You arrange to meet someone at a restaurant, but she doesn’t show up, so after
waiting 20 minutes, you leave.
• Situation 2:You leave several text messages for a friend, but he doesn't respond them.
• Situation 3:You expect a promotion in your job, but didn’t receive it.
• In all these situations, you would probably wonder why these events occurred: Why didn’t
your acquaintance show up at the restaurant—did she forget? Did this person do it on
purpose? Why has your friend failed to return your messages—is he angry with you or is his
cell phone not working? Why didn’t you get the promotion—is your boss disappointed in
your performance? Were you the victim of some kind of discrimination?
KELLEY’S COVARIATION MODEL (1967)

14. CONSENSUS
DISTINCTIVENSS
CONSISTENCY
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15. CONSENSUS
• Consensus—the extent to which other people react to a given stimulus or event
in the same manner as the person we are considering.
• You may order what everyone is ordering- so if everyone else is ordering
expensive drinks then consensus is high.
• If everyone is taking cheap drink then consensus is low.

16. CONSISTENCY
• The extent to which an individual responds to a given stimulus or situation in the
same way on different occasions (i.e., across time).
• May be your friend always buys expensive drinks when you are with this
particular friends, group or may be this specific restaurant, if it is so then
Consistency is high.
• If its is first time your friend is doing this we say Consistency is low.

17. DISTINCTIVENSS
• The extent to which an individual responds in the same manner to different
stimuli or events.
• Your friend always orders finer items from the menu, If they do so
Distinctiveness is low.
• But if he is one who always tries to save money and prefer to go to low budget
restauarant then Distinctiveness is High.

18. • Imagine that you see a server in a restaurant flirt with a customer. This behavior raises
an interesting question: Why does the server act this way? Because of internal causes or
external causes? Is he simply someone who likes to flirt (an internal cause)? Or is the
customer extremely attractive—someone with whom many people flirt (an external
cause)?
• According to Kelley’s theory, your decision (as an observer of this scene) would depend
on information relating to the three factors.
• First, assume that the following conditions prevail:
(1) You observe other servers flirting with this customer. (Consensus is ________)
EXAMPLE

19. (2) you have seen this server flirt with the same customer on other occasions.
(Consistency is ________).
(3) you have not seen this server flirt with other customers. (Distinctiveness is
__________).
• Under these conditions—high consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness—you
would probably attribute the servers’s behavior to external causes—this
customer is very attractive and that’s why the server flirts with her.
• Now, in contrast, assume these conditions exist:
(1) No other servers flirt with the customer (consensus is _______).
(2) you have seen this server flirt with the same customer on other occasions
(consistency is ________)

20. (3) you have seen this server flirt with many other customers, too
(distinctiveness is ________).
• In this case, Kelley’s theory suggests that you would attribute the server’s
behavior to internal causes: the server is simply a person who likes to flirt.

23. • Some internal causes of behavior tend to be quite stable over time, such as personality traits or
temperament.
• Other internal causes can, and often do, change greatly, for instance, motives, health, and fatigue.
• Some internal causes are controllable—individuals can, if they wish, learn to hold their tempers in
check, other internal causes, such as chronic illnesses or disabilities, are not.
• The same is true for external causes of behavior: some are stable over time (e.g., laws or social
norms telling how we should behave in various situations) ,whereas others are not (e.g., bad luck).
• A large body of evidence indicates that in trying to understand the causes behind others’ behavior,
we do take note of all three of these dimensions—internal–external, stable–unstable, controllable–
uncontrollable (Weiner, 1985, 1995).
OTHER DIMENSIONS OF CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION

27. • Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to explain others’ actions as stemming from
(corresponding to) dispositions even in the presence of clear situational causes.
• We tend to perceive others as acting as they do because they are “that kind of person,” rather
than because of the many external factors that may influence their behavior.
• The actor- observer effect: The tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational
(external) causes but that of others to dispositional (internal) ones.
• when we see another person trip and fall, we tend to attribute this event to his or her
clumsiness. If we trip, however, we are more likely to attribute this event to situational causes,
such as ice on the sidewalk.
• The self serving Bias: The tendency to attribute our own positive outcomes to internal causes
but negative ones to external factors.
Attributional biases

28. Hostile attribution bias
Ultimate attribution error
Ismorphic attributional bias
Self defeating bias
Read Upon

30. The Sociogenesis of Psychological Disorder: An
Attributional Theory
• Fatalism-Instrumentalism" (F-I), defined as a learned and persistent causal attribution
tendency on the part of individuals that directs their perception of the causes of
behavioral outcomes either toward external factors (e.g., task difficulty or luck), or toward
internal factors (e.g., ability or efforts).
• Fatalism refers to a predisposition to interpret the external environment as having high
causal power while person forces are felt to be minimal, and instrumentalism refers to the
opposite case
• "Learned and Persistent": The fact that fatalism is learned implies that such attribution
tendencies are the product of socialization experiences. "Persistent" means that these
attribution tendencies do not change rapidly: They constitute the relatively stable
predispositional aspect of causal attributions, not the specific situational attributions for a
given behavior.

31. • Since fatalism implies a belief in the environmental causation of behavioral outcomes, it
also implies that one's ability in coping situations and/or one's coping efforts may be
ineffective.
• fatalism leads to a reduction in coping effort, it is also likely that as a result it will lead to an
increased susceptibility to a number of types of psychiatric symptom.
• When it is associated with SES, individuals will develop a consistent "bias" in their
attribution,
• Towards the external if they are of low status
• Towards the internal if they are of high status.
• An external (or fatalistic) attributional orientation increases the vulnerability to
psychological disorder because the goal of coping effort behavior becomes ambiguous, and
coping behavior is inhibited in the face of environmental demand that on a day-to-day basis
periodically exceeds the fluctuating response capabilities of the individual.

33. • In Figure 1, "disorder" is considered as evidence of the relative presence or
absence of functional adaptation potential.
• Success is followed by an increment in the tendency to make internal
attributions, whereas failure is followed by an increment in the tendency to make
external attributions. The overall proportion of success versus failure experiences
will be related to a consistent tendency in causal attributions, an increasing
proportion of failure experiences leading to an increasing proportion of external
attributions.
• A higher rate of external attributions will lower coping effort and thereby will
increase the chances of the appearance of maladaptive responses in the face of
environmental demand in success/failure contexts.
• If these propositions hold, then we can expect SES to be inversely related to
fatalism and fatalism to be positively related to psychological disorders.

34. Attribution and
Depression
• Though many factors play a role in depression, one that has received
increasing attention is what might be termed a self-defeating pattern of
attributions. which is in contract to self serving bias.
• An individul with depression tend to adopt an opposite pattern.
• They attribute negative outcomes to lasting, internal causes such as their
own traits or lack of ability, but attribute positive outcomes to temporary,
external causes such as good luck or special favors from others.
• Such people perceive that they have little or no control over what
happens to them they are simply being blown about by the winds of
unpredictable fate.
• The tendency to engage in this self-defeating pattern is strengthened,
and a vicious cycle is often initiated.

35. Delusion and attributional style
• The deluded patients are found to make global and
stable attributions when compared to the normal
subjects and mostly are external.
• They made excessively external attributions for
negative events and internal attributions for
positive events.
• On the locus of control measure, the deluded
patients showed particularly high scores for beliefs
in powerful others.
• There is a tendency for deluded patients to make
external attributions for unwelcome experiences.
• Poor covariation detection and the externalizing of
unpleasant events would be seen as independent
facets of delusional thinking.

36. • Patients with schizophrenia exhibit impairment in their ability to accurately recognize
facial emotions in others, and the severity of this emotion perception deficit has
been associated with poorer functioning.
• Evidence to suggest that patients, particularly those with certain positive symptoms,
may misinterpret other people’s facial expressions as having an overly negative
valence.
• Within the patient group, severity of positive symptoms was associated with more
‘fear’ misperceptions.
• Patients with relatively high levels of ‘anger’ misperceptions tended to have more
severe disorganization and negative symptoms and more pronounced functional
impairments.
• Patients who reported seeing relatively high levels of ‘shame’ and ‘happiness’ showed
better functioning and less severe symptoms.
Attribution Biases in Schizophrenia: Relationship to Clinical and
Functional Impairments

37. REFERENCES
• Social psychology by Robert A. Baron, Nyla R. Branscombe. -- 13th ed
• Bell-Dolan, D., & Anderson, C. A. (1999). Attributional processes: An
integration .of social and clinical psychology. In The social psychology of
emotional and behavioral problems: Interfaces of social and clinical
psychology (pp. 37–67). American Psychological Association.
https://doi.org/10.1037/10320-002
• Cohen, A. S., Nienow, T. M., Dinzeo, T. J., & Docherty, N. M. (2009). Attribution
Biases in Schizophrenia: Relationship to Clinical and Functional Impairments.
Psychopathology, 42(1), 40–46. https://doi.org/10.1159/000173702
• Persecutory delusions and attributional style—Kaney—1989—British Journal
of Medical Psychology—Wiley Online Library. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2023,
from https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-
8341.1989.tb02826.x
• Wheaton, B. (1980). The Sociogenesis of Psychological Disorder: An
Attributional Theory. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 21(2), 100–124.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2136730