Attribution Theory's Influence on Psychology - Essay Example

Attribution Theory Attribution Theory, as initially developed by Fritz Heider in the 1950s, does not exist in a vacuum. Its profound influence on several fields of psychology, as well as other fields of study, can be attributed to the setting in which it was developed and by the researchers who expanded on the theory. This paper attempts to summarize key concepts in attribution theory, as well as to explain its influence, fifty years after its formulation. Keywords: attribution theory, psychology, social psychology, Heider, Weider, inference, organizational behaviour Attribution Theory Every new development, even scientific theories, does not exist in a vacuum. They exist in a context influenced by the setting in which they were developed, and by the lives and experiences of those who created them. This is the case with attribution theory, developed initially by Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider, with his publication of his 1958 book, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, in the mid-twentieth century. Before conducting any scientific experiment, it is important to have operational definitions of the terms used, so before discussing the influences of attribution theory, it must be defined. Attribution theory is an influential contemporary theory of psychology. It must be understood, as Thomas (1999) points out, that there are multiple models of attribution theory as expressed by Heider, Bernard Weiner, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. For the most part, however, most attribution theorists emphasize that learners are strongly motivated by the pleasure of learning new things and of mastery over new skills and knowledge. They also agree that learners’ current self-perceptions strongly affect how they interpret the success or failure of their current efforts and their confidence in their future behaviors (Weiner, 1992). In other words, attribution theory tries to explain how people “attribute” causes to their behaviour and experiences, and focuses on people’s explanations for the causes of their behaviour—why and how they think and act. For Thomas, the important question in attribution theory is, “To what do individuals attribute human thought and action, and how are their attribution concepts organized?” (p. 165). The theory holds the assumption that everyone, scientists and non-scientists alike, have beliefs that explain why people behave the way that they do. These beliefs may change at different points and times of a person’s life, but they are always there. One of the goals of attribution theory, then, is to “explain how people accumulate and refine their beliefs about the causes of human thought and action” (Thomas, 1999, p. 165). Heider argued that like scientists, people are active perceiver of events that occur around them, so they tend to continuously or spontaneously make casual inferences about why events occur. These inferences eventually become beliefs or expectations that enable them to predict and understand future events they observe and experience. In other words, attribution theory studies how people interpret events and how their interpretations relate to future behavior. Yet another way to put it could be by using the old saying: “Past behavior predicts future behavior.” There are two types of attributions, internal and external (Hayes, 2000, 481). An internal attribution is made when the person’s personality, attitudes, character, or disposition is thought to be the cause of the behaviour. An example of internal attribution is “Phil succeeded because he is basically a good person.” An external attribution is made when the cause of a behavior is outside of the person doing it, or because of the surrounding environment or the social situation. An example is “Phil succeeded because he comes from a good family.” The behavior is the same in both cases—“Phil succeeded,” but the interpretations of them are very different. Bernard Weiner, who developed a form of attribution theory that explains the emotional and motivational elements of academic success and failure, conceptualized attribution as having three dimensions; attribution of an event or behavior can be placed along any one of them. These dimensions are external/internal, stable/labile, and controllable/uncontrollable. When discussing the external/internal dimension, the terms “locus of control” are involved. When an event or behavior is attributed to external forces, the person’s locus of control is on the outside, in the form of environmental forces like an earthquake or tsunami, supernatural powers, or simple good or bad luck. When an event or behaviour is attributed to internal forces, its cause can be either due to a person’s genetic make-up or to his or her “lasting traits which have been acquired through a combination of genetic disposition and learning experiences” (Thomas, 1999, p. 165). Stability or lability is involved in the attribution of events or behavior because some characteristics of people and the environment tend to be more permanent than others. A person’s personality, for example—whether he or she is kind, beautiful, or friendly—is more stable than his or her mood. In another example, the weather is seen as ever-changing, while the climate is more permanent. Whether a cause for an event or behavior is seen as controllable or uncontrollable is another important consideration in attribution. Weidner would say that all these dimensions are factors in how people or even how society attributes events or behaviors, and that they influence someone’s motivation to learn as well. Weidner (1992) sees attribution theory as a scientific, mechanistic way to view motivation. He believed that it was based upon a philosophy, similar to Freud’s theories, which viewed the human being as all-knowing, even “God-like.” “It is evident,” Weidner states, “that most motivational psychologists have accepted the belief that behavior is in service of the pleasure-pain principle. That is, organisms seek to maximize pleasurable stimulation and to minimize painful experiences” (p. 221). In other words, humans have all the resources available to make the best decisions, to attribute the correct interpretations of actions and behaviour, and to possess the correct motivations to grow and to learn. Other theorists have taken Heider’s initial studies of attribution theory and expanded on them. Jones and Davis developed correspondence inference theory, which as Hayes (2000) puts it, “explores the different factors which contribute to the inferences which we make about social responsibility” (p. 478). In other words, people tend to make inferences about others’ behaviours and their responsibility for them. Stability, intentionality, and disposition are important concepts in correspondence inference. People tend to put personality traits on the actions of others; for example, “Phil won the contest because he really wanted to.” People tend to look for stable causes for behaviour because they tend to predict future behaviour. They also tend to look for the intentions of others’ behaviour so that they can ascribe responsibility to them. Finally, people tend to make distinctions between dispositional and situational attributes. They either base decisions regarding others’ behaviour either on internal characteristics or on the outside setting. For example, it is possible to say either of the following: “Phil succeeded because he is smart,” or “Phil succeeded because his family can afford to send him to a good school.” Later, Kelley developed another aspect of attribution theory, covariation theory, which looks more closely at external attributions. Kelley’s approach to attribution is more “scientific” than the previous theories. Like Heider, Kelley saw the person perceiving actions and behaviours as utilizing basic scientific principles to attribute causes. People utilize a basic rule he called “the covariation principle,” which according to Bordens and Horowitz (2002), “states that if a response is present when a situation (person, object, event) is present and absent when that same situation is absent, then the situation is the cause of the response” (p. 88). In order to make attributions, there are three available sources: consensus information, distinctiveness information, and consistency information. The covariation theory utilizes an ANOVA model to conceptualize how people make attributions. Research on correspondence inference theory and covariation theory has shown that people tend to have biases when making attributions (Bordens & Horowitz, 2002, p. 88). This is called “attribution bias error,” and was developed conceptually by Jones and Niebert. It points out one of the weakness of attribution theory; namely, that people, in spite of having the resources available to make sound attributions, are often incorrect for all kinds of reasons, leading to the concept developed by Ross called “the fundamental attribution error.” People, according to Ross, make the fundamental attribution error because they tend to over-emphasize the personal and under-estimate the situational. People also tend to attribute to their successes to internal and dispositional reasons, and their successes to external and situational reasons. This is known as “self-serving bias,” which helps people maintain their self-esteem and see themselves in a favourable way. For example, one could explain his or her behaviour by saying, “I passed my biology exam because I am good at biology but failed French because my roommate gave me the flu,” instead of saying, “I passed biology because the class was easy but failed French because I am constitutionally incapable of learning a foreign language.” There have been many explanations for why people do this. Jones and Berglas attribute it to “self-handicapping,” which provides people, in their example, alcoholics, with a ready-made excuse for failure. According to this way of thinking, alcoholics drink because they want an external reason for their failures (Bordens & Horowitz, 2002, p. 89). The studies that have been conducted on attribution theories have focused on questions such as, “If people were rewarded enough, would they have high motivations to learn and to change?” For the most part, the large body of evidence supports the validity of attribution theory, in spite of its fifty years of existence as a theory. Although attribution theory is not nearly as prominent as it was in its heyday (1970-1985), it still has a profound influence on psychology and on psychological research. Weider (2008) suggests the power of the theory lies in its intrinsic value. Unlike much of psychological inquiry in the mid-twentieth century, Heider was open to the work of others interested in pursuing attribution theory. As a result, there is no one unified attribution theory. As Weider (2008) states, Heider’s openness allowed for alternative concepts, methods, and ideas, and “paved the way for the richness of attribution theory, its application to so many areas of psychology, and its lengthy shelf-life” (p. 152). Weidner believes that the longevity of attribution theory can also be explained by its “common sense” applicability to many fields of study and practice, another aspect of the theory that ran counter to many other social psychology theories developed during the same era, which Weidner believed had an aversion to “common sense” psychology. Weidner also says that the Zeitgeist of the times made the field of psychology ready for this kind of approach to humans and the way they think and behave (p. 152). As Weiner puts it, “Heiden, to the contrary, embraced common-sense and was believed to capture the views of the ‘naïve’ person, or the person ‘on the street’” (p. 152). In fact, Heiden’s insights were called, sometimes derisively, “naïve psychology.” Weiner (2006) also states that attribution theory is applicable to so many fields because it “focuses on the universal concern with explanation—why a particular state, event, or outcome has come about, and consequences of phenomenal causality” (p. 192). As a result, attribution theory has applications not only to social and motivational psychology, but other branches of psychology and related fields. Much of Heider’s work came out of his personal observations, experiences, and insights rather than empirical, experimental research. He claimed that his thinking about the theory began after noticing sand on his desk and going back figuring how it got there. It is fortunate for psychology and social psychology that Heider’s insights were grounded so firmly in reality. As Weiner (1992) states, Heider is “perhaps unique in academic psychologists in drawing heavily on works of literature for his scientific insights” (p. 231). In another setting, Weiner (2008) tells an anecdote about Heider’s use of literature like Romeo and Juliet and Ibsen’s Wild Duck to develop his other significant contribution to psychology, balance theory. Weiner (1992) also says that Heider “exemplifies the scholar-humanist-scientist ideal” (p. 231). It is fortunate that so many studies have proven the validity of attribution theory, although it makes sense that they would. Scientific inquiry should be rooted in truth, and if a theory is based upon the truth, experiments and empirical research should prove it. As Weiner (2008) states, “For Heider, any event, action, or occurrence, including sand on a desk, can give rise to the search for causes” (p. 154). In other words, attributions were essential for adaptive behavior, or cognitive functionalism. Weiner recognizes, however, that attribution theory does not fully predict future actions based upon past behaviour. Heider made no distinction between the attributions that explained the past and ones that anticipated the future. Weiner suggests that more studies need to be done in this area. Organizational behavior, which often attempts to predict the behaviour of the members of an organization or workplace, is one of the fields that could benefit from these studies. Martinko believes that although attribution theory “plays an important role in present and future research in organizational behavior” (p. 18), there are some weaknesses when applying the concepts of attribution theory to organizational behaviour. According to Farquhar (1995), the terms used in attribution theory do not easily transfer to organizational behaviour as they may in other fields. As a result, there is a lack of operational definitions and the lack of psychometrically sound instruments that measure attribution (p. 168). There are likely other fields that do not lend as easily to the concepts and applications of attribution theory. Weidner (2008) insists that it was Heiden’s openness to new ideas, as well as his generosity to other thinkers, that contributed to the success of the theory and its profound influence on several fields of psychology and other fields. Other theories have come and gone, but attribution theory has lasted longer than most of them, and has had a far-reaching influence on research and the application of its concepts. References Bordens, K.S., & Borowtiz, I.A. (2002). Social Psychology. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Farquhar, K. (1995). Attributions and the emergence of leadership: Patterns in employee responses to executive succession. In M.J. Martinko (Ed.), Attribution Theory: An Organizational Perspective, (pp. 149-170). Danvers, Mass.: St. Lucie Press. Hayes, N. (2000). Foundations of Psychology. London, England: Thomson Learning. Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Thomas, R.M. (1999). Human Development Theories: Windows on Culture. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. Weiner, B. (1992). Human Motivation: Metaphors, Theories, and Research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. Weiner, B. (2006). Social Motivation, Justice, and the Moral Emotions: An Attributional Approach. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Weiner, B. (2008). Reflections on the history of Attribution Theory and research: People, personalities, publications, problems. Social Psychology, 39(3), 151–156. Read More