Foundations in Communication Theory - Coursework Example

Foundations in Communication Theory: Attribution Theory and number: submitted: One of the most fascinating things features of mankind is this: Human being can explain or describe anything. Maybe it comes from the idea that they have responsibilities as parents/guardians and that their young ones keep asking them, “why?” As superior beings, they just naturally have better explanations to their young ones’ request. No matter the basis, mankind has a strong necessity to comprehend and explain what is going on in their world. Because individuals must explain, it opens up some infrequent and unexpected persuasion possibilities (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Take a moment and reason about it. If an individual can influence how other individuals comprehend and explain what is going on, he/she might be capable of changing them, too. To understand the main principles of how individuals explain their surroundings, it abundantly vital to look at the application of attribution theory (McLeod, 2010). Attribution theory focus on how people interpret events and how this associate to their thinking and conduct. It assumes that individuals tend to determine why individuals do what they do. An individual striving to apprehend why other individual did something may explain one or more causes to that conduct (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). According to researchers, there are two ways an individual can make attributions 1) internal attribution, the implication that mankind is reacting in a certain way because of something about the individual, for instance, attitude, and personality. 2) External attribution, this is the implication that an individual is acting a certain way as a result of something about the circumstance he or she is involved. In addition, human being’s attributions are also expressively driven by their emotional and motivational initiatives. Accusing other individuals and avoiding personal recrimination are extremely real self- serving explanations (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Human being will often make attributions support what they perceive as attacks. They will even try to accuse victims of their fate as they seek to distance themselves from thoughts of suffering the same predicament. Human being will also try to ascribe little variability to other individual than themselves, looking at themselves as more complicated and less foreseeable than others (McLeod, 2010). To establish the effects of attribution theory, it vital to look at the elements that influence mankind in explaining their world. Some of these elements include correspondent inference theory, common sense psychology, covariation model of attribution, and three-dimensional model of attribution. These elements are discussed in the following paragraphs (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). Correspondent inference theory state that individuals make a conclusion about an individual when his/her deeds are freely selected is unforeseen and causes a small number of anticipated impacts. According to researchers, in this element of attribution theory, individuals make conclusions by investigating the context of conduct. It demonstrates how individual tend to figure out individual’s personal characteristics from the behavioral evidence. Human beings make conclusions on the basis of three influences; predictability of conduct, degree of choice, and impacts of someone’s actions (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Common sense psychology tries to explore the nature of relationships amongst different individuals and expose the concept of what is known as naive psychology. Researchers believe that individuals observe, analyze, and interpret behaviors with attributions. However, individuals have different kinds of attributions for the events of mankind behaviors (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Researchers find it vital to put attribution into two categories; Personal and situational attributions. When a personal attribution is established, the cause of the given conduct is appointed to the person’s characteristic such as mood, attitude, personality, ability, efforts, and disposition. On the other hand, when a situational attribution is administered, the cause of a given conduct is appointed to the situation in which the conduct was involved such as the task, luck (that the people resulting to certain behavior do so because of the social circumstance or the surrounding environment). These two categories of common sense psychology direct to extremely different perceptions of the person engaging in behavior. Covariation model of attribution conveys, that individuals explain behavior to the impacts that are available when behavior happens and unavailable when behavior does not happen. Hence, the theory assumes that individuals make casual explanations in a logical fashion, rational and that they allocate the cause of an action to the influence that co-varies best diligently with that action (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). It looks to three key types of facts from which to make an explanation conclusion about a person’s behavior. First is consensus information on how other individuals in a similar situation and with similar stimulus behaves. Second, is distinctive information on how people respond to various stimuli (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). Third is consistency information on how frequent person’s behavior can be perceived with the same stimulus in varied situations. From these three ideas, people make attribution conclusions on the individual’s behavior as either personal or situational. In other words, when distinctiveness and consensus are low, individuals make personal explanations for behaviors that are high in consistency. On the other hand, individuals make stimulus explanations when distinctiveness and consensus are high (McLeod, 2010). Three-dimensional model of attribution proposes that people have initial sentimental responses to prospective significances of intrinsic or extrinsic motives of the character, which in turn impacts future behavior. That is an individual’s own observation or an attribution as to why they achieved or failed at an activity establishes the amount of work the individual will involve in future activities. People employ their attribution search and cognitively to evaluate casual features on the behaviors they experience (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). When explanations lead to a positive impact and high predictability of the future achievement, such explanation should result in bigger willingness, to approach same achievement tasks in the future than those explanations that produce a negative impact and low predictability of future achievement. Eventually, such cognitive and affective assessment impacts future behavior when people meet similar situations. According to researchers, success attribution has 3 categories 1) locus of control (internal and external) 2) stable theory (stable and unstable) and 3) control (controllable and uncontrollable). In other words, stability impacts people’s predictability about their future; control is associated with people’s persistence on a mission; while causality impacts emotional responses to the result of the task. Attribution theory has been widely used in various fields such as mental health domain, clinical psychology, law, and education. There is a strong link between self-concept and achievement. According to research carried by Weiner (2004), casual explanations establish effective reactions to success and failure. For instance, an individual is not likely to experience pride in achievement, or feelings of proficiency when getting a grade of an ‘A’ from an instructor who offers few high scores or a success over a highly rated track and field athlete following an outstanding deal of experience generates substantial positive effect. Students with high rates of self-esteem and higher school achievement try to attribute success to unstable, personal, uncontrollable influences such as the ability while they subsidize failure to either uncontrollable, unstable, internal factors as effort or uncontrollable, external factors such as task difficulty (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). For instance, students who repeatedly fail in reading are most likely to look at themselves as less proficient in reading. This self-perception of reading capabilities reflects itself in the student’s expectations of achievement in reading tasks and reasoning of achievement of failure of reading. The same experience happens to students with learning disabilities they will always seem to be less likely than non-disabled friends to attribute failure to controllable, effort, unstable influences, and more probable to attribute failure to a stable, uncontrollable, ability factor. Also, attribution theory has been applied to define the dissimilarities in motivation between high and low successful individuals. Highly successful individuals will always approach, rather than avoid tasks linked to succeeding because they believe achievement is due to high efforts and ability which they are confident of. Failure is alleged to be as an outcome of bud luck or poor assessment, i.e. not their fault. Hence, failure does not influence their self-esteem, but success builds pride and confidence (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). On the other hand, inferior achievers dodge success-related chores because they try to (a) doubt their capabilities, (b) assume achievement is linked to luck or who an individual associate with or to other influences beyond their control. Hence, even when successful it is not promising to unsuccessful individual because he/she does not feel accountable, that is it does not upsurge his/her confidence and pride (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). However, all these being discussed over attribution theory there are critique to it by other theorists. Human beings make attributions every day of their lives, although, these attributions are not true all the time. Most known problems in allocating cause are referred to as the ultimate attribution error. This is the affinity of an individual to overestimate the impact of personal influence and underestimate the impact of situational impacts when examining someone else’s behavior. That is when examining the behavior; an individual is more likely to undertake that another individual’s behavior is chiefly caused by them and not the situation (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). For example, at the place of work, this may mean that managers are more likely to undertake that employees’ incompetence is due to deficiency of capability or effort rather than to duty difficulty or luck. While this error is projecting in North America, is not common globally. In other nations, such as India, the fundamental attribution error is the contrary; individuals undertake that others are more impacted by the situation than by personal influences. Thus, while an individual can undertake this error to be available in American managers’ perceptions this is not the case for mangers from other countries (McLeod, 2010). As discussed previously, when an individual recognizes their own achievement or failure versus recognizing the achievement or failure of others, they employ one or more causes: task difficulty, effort, luck, or ability. Ability and effort are personal causes, and luck and task difficulty are situational causes McLeod, 2010). Some researchers claim that it is mankind nature to have a self-serving bias: the tendency to credit person’s own achievement to personal influences and person’s own failure to situational influences. Hence, a common examination of an individual’s own success might be: they got promoted because they are highly skilled at their jobs (ability) or they got raised due to all the hours they have worked their work (effort) (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Also, a common examination of an individual’s own failure might be: they did not finish the work as schedule because the deadline was unreasonable for the size of work required (task difficulty), or they did not make sales because someone else happened to communicate to the customer first (luck). Coupled with this error (fundamental attribution error), the self-serving shows that individuals tend to postulate diverse attributions about their own accomplishment and disappointments than the accomplishment and disappointments of others. On the hand, some researchers claim that the self-serving bias is widely dispersed across mankind in most countries, others debate that this is not true. Inference from a meta-analysis (a procedure that statistically syndicates outcomes of different empirical research studies) aims to address this issue. In probing more than 500 published researches, some of the outcomes of this meta-analysis identified that, in general, there were no dissimilarities between male and female in their self-serving prejudices; male and female were just as probable to make self-serving ascriptions (Weiner, 2004). In addition, the researchers noticed that in U.S and other Western countries had a strong self-serving, that was more prominent than in most other countries on other continents. However, despite these strong-related dissimilarities, the researchers identified that there was an optimistic self-serving prejudice in all nations studied. Within the U.S, there were no expressive dissimilarities in self-serving prejudice among diverse racial and ethnic population. In other words, the researchers concluded that there is a universal self-serving attribution bias that exists across nation, gender, and race (McLeod, 2010). While discussing all about the attribution theory, the questioned that should be addressed is “based on conventional criteria, what constitutes attribution theory a good theory?” A good theory is a well-substantiated clarification of some characteristic of the natural world, based on a structure of actualities that have been repeatedly established by observation and experiment. Researchers postulate concepts from hypotheses that have been validated through the scientific procedures, and then collect proof to test their exactness. As with all forms of research, research theories are inductive and do not make legit proposals; instead, they focus for explanatory and predictive force (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). The quality of a research theory is linked to the diversity of phenomena it can define, which is dignified by the capability of demonstrating falsifiable predictions with respect to those phenomena. Research theory is most rigorous, comprehensive, and reliable form of research knowledge. This is expressively different from the term “theory” in ordinary usage, which indicates that something is unproven or speculative (McLeod, 2010). Thus, with all this being discussed, attribution theory is a good theory. By stating the concept that individual make sense of their environment, on the basis of what they determine is the basis and what is the outcome of phenomena, attribution theory clarifies the characteristics of the natural world. Based on a structure of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed by observation and experiment, researchers linked to attribution theory are able to explain that individuals see their own behaviors, tend to find out the cause and then shape their future behavior accordingly. On the other hand, there still some bias to attribution theory by other researchers, this constitutes that there is still some speculation to be investigated, thus attribution theory qualifies to be a good research theory (McLeod, 2010). Even though it attribution theory is a good theory, but, what is its strength in research? The strength of a theory is linked to the diversity of phenomena it can define, which is weighed by its ability to illustrate falsifiable expectations with respect to those phenomena. Theories get stronger as more evidence is collected, so that accuracy in expectation progresses over time. In the case of attribution theory, researcher’s first ideas have been expanded in various ways to account for complex procedures of attribution (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). For instance, researchers have debated that attributions vary from each other not only founded on casual locus but also on other scopes. This involves “stability”, or whether or not people see the cause of behavior or something as stable or unstable; and “control” or whether or not individual think an individual was able to interfere the cause or unable to interfere with the cause (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). In addition, broadening of what constitute the form attributions take, four theoretical currents have evolved since researchers introduced the idea of attributions. These currents involve as discussed previously, focus on bias, focus on responsibilities, focus on covariation, and focus on correspondence. Researchers relied on these currents, but, collectively they made up the key feature of attribution scholarship. Another aspect of theory strength is the “Explanatory power”. It refers to the most vital necessity of any theory: how good does it define, or make meaning of, phenomena. It is a close paradox that a theory define how individual explain is itself need to be a good definition. Attribution theory has the strength of postulating good intuitive sense, established as they were to be responsible for laypersons as naive researchers (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Most principles and magnitudes of attribution theories are identifiable instantly in everyday meetings. For instance, three people bargaining over certain item on sale, evidence of the process of bargaining attribution and normalcy of getting to reach a conclusion to determine why the item should be sold and what it means it can be observed (Weiner, 2004). On the other hand, attribution theory has some weakness. It has been criticized as being reductionist and mechanistic for assuming that individuals are systematic, logical, and rational thinkers. However, as illustrated by fundamental attribution error, it turns out that they were motivated tacticians and cognitive misers. In addition, it fails to address the historical, cultural, and social influences that design shape attribution of cause (McLeod, 2010). This has been talked about extensively by discourse analysis, a subdivision of psychology that favors the use of qualitative methods involving the use of language to comprehend psychological phenomena. The linguistic classification theory, for instance, illustrates how language impact mankind’s attribution style. Also weakness of attribution theory, to be considered is the “Scope and generality”. This is the breadth of phenomena and context in which a theory is used. A theory that is only used to a certain place, behavior, or time is narrow in scope and not generalizable. Attribution theory was established originally as a global theory of mankind sense-making, however, research has diminished its scope (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Most research examines backgrounds in which aware attribution effort is most likely: context including potential negative consequences and violation of predictions. For instance, researchers have focused on loneliness, relationship satisfaction, shyness, accounts, abuse, achievement motivation, anger, relationship breakups, and moral responsibility. Attributions may or may not task the same way in other settings, where the essential of postulating attribution is less necessary (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). Furthermore, there is up surging evidence that attribution thought procedures may be customarily moderated to some extent. For example, Asian and Eastern culture may be more external in their attribution biases, in contrast to the West’s dispositional attribution bias. Bothe these, cultures and context, limit how broadly general claims about attribution can justifiably be postulated. In addition to the weakness of attribution theory researchers should consider what is known as “Condition ship specification”. This is the extent to which a research theory clearly articulates the nature of association among its concepts. Some of the initial theories claim the condition for the theory. For instance, attribution intentions were relatively formulaic, along the lines of the following: Individual causation is attributed as a multiplicative role of power and trying plus surrounding facilitation. Weiner (2004) argued structurally that there are only three underlying causal features that have cross-situational generality, which involves controllability, stability, and locus factors. In contrast to other researchers who summarized their broad review as signifying the scope of stability, control, globally, and locus are vital and sufficient for examining causal attributions in marriage. However, their own coding of study outcomes shows that many research find no or partial support for these scopes (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). In conclusion, people are an inquisitive species. Individuals wonder why things happen, and they cultivate sciences, philosophies, and religions as a way of responding to their questions. These curiosities impact mankind’s societal, personal, cultural, and interpersonal lives in intricate procedures. Individuals can easily observe many everyday examples of this in their own mind and their conversations with peers. For instance, individuals ask themselves why the other person seem to be lonely; they think about why they did not secure a job, and they talk to other individuals to try to find out why the individual they went out with on Friday has not called them since then. So fundamental is a way of questioning and answering “why” question-tend to find out what resulted to something else-that it has been identified as a basic human action, and a group of theories has evolved to illumine why and how things occur as they happen. One of these theories is attribution theory. Attribution theory tries to define and describe the mental and communicative procedures included in everyday attributions (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). In addition, every compliment a person makes and every activity in which they engages can be subject to attribution analysis, either by themselves or others. The result of this analysis has theoretically substantial repercussion for the nature of how an individual’s respond to other’s activities (Harvey, & Weary, 1985). Whether it is a stigmatizing condition, achievement or failure, aggressive behavior, a need for help, if these are attributed to intentional and controllable cause, neglect are more likely, whereas unintentional and uncontrollable attribution are more likely to lead to offers of help and sympathy. References Aronson E., Wilson T.D. & Akert R.M. (2003). Social Psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Harvey J.H. & Weary G. (1985). Basic Issues and Applications, Academic Press, San Diego. McLeod S. (2010). Attribution Theory. Journal of Social Psychology. Weiner, B. (2004). Attribution theory: Transforming cultural plurality into theoretical unity. . Read More