What is attribution: examples of the phenomenon from real life

According to social psychologists, the fundamental attribution error is a phenomenon that affects most people on the planet. If a person realizes what his essence is, then he is able to better understand how his value judgment about his immediate environment is formed and how other individuals see his actions.

In addition, he gains the ability to more objectively analyze his own achievements and failures. The article will examine in detail the concept of “causal attribution”, systematically outline its various styles and types, and also list the main errors of attribution and their impact on the life of an individual.

Attribution - what is it?

Attribution in psychological science is the process of endowing one person with another with such personal qualities and individual characteristics that he cannot objectively record in the actual field of perception.

To put it simply, people tend to “think out” another person’s behavior, based not on the real situation, but rather on internal preferences. Using the attribution mechanism, an individual analyzes and tries to predict the behavioral patterns of those who meet him on his life path, thereby making it easier for himself to evaluate their actions.

Psychologists associate the emergence of this phenomenon with the fact that the individual often lacks the information that she received at the time of direct observation. Therefore, the individual fills such “voids” of perception with his own rational “fantasies” based on past experience.

However, the choice of one or another explanation for someone else’s behavior is not made blindly; most often it is based on those factors of the current situation that the observer pays the main attention to.

These include:

• subjective factors: personal characteristics and efforts of the observed;
• situational factors: specific conditions and general environment in which the act of behavior takes place.

An excellent example of attribution error is the story that happened to the famous zoologist Konrad Lorenz. In one of his autobiographical books, he talked about a situation when tourists approached his country house and began to watch through the fence as a tall and bearded man ran in shorts through the tall grass, waving his arms and shouting cheerfully about something.

From their side it might seem that they recorded the moment when the great scientist went crazy. However, Lorenz explains that in fact he was not alone on the lawn, but together with small ducklings, which could not be seen behind the tall grass. At that time, he was studying the effect of imprinting in birds. Tourists, in the absence of a complete amount of information, calmly came up with the most suitable version for the observed situation. This is called attribution.

The power of attribution is entirely based on these two “pillars”:

1. The extent to which the observed behavior corresponds to the role expectations and preferences of the observer. That is, the more commonality between what an individual saw and how he understood it (the process of understanding includes reference to personal preferences and expectations), the smaller the deficit in the information field, and therefore the weaker the attribution effect.
2. How well the observed action fits into the cultural norms in which the observer grew up.

Is it so important to understand each other?

Explaining the reasons for one’s own and others’ behavior is the key to the most important questions of social existence: who am I? who's near me? Can I trust others? What determines actions: personal properties or situations?

Knowing the correct answers to these questions allows you to:

• get rid of unnecessary negativity: anxiety, suspicion, panic;
• protect yourself from betrayal, meanness, manipulation;
• manage different situations;
• make rational decisions;
• predict behavioral patterns of others.

Comprehension of another person's experience, as he himself understands it, is the main goal of interpersonal interaction. This is an indispensable guideline when choosing:

• qualified specialists;
• candidates for political office;
• business partners;
• life partners.

It is not surprising that the study of attribution has long gone beyond the scope of social psychology. Today, the art of understanding is relevant for teachers, athletes, managers, for each of us. It allows us to adequately evaluate each other, interact effectively, get along with a variety of people, count on leniency and sympathy.

Attribution Types

In social psychology, it is customary to divide attribution into three separate types, each of which has its own characteristics. Let's take a closer look at them.

Personal attribution

The cause is attributed by the observer to the main “culprit” of the behavioral pattern. That is, it is common for an individual to “shift” in his reasoning to the personality of another person, as a factor leading to a certain result. For example, a colleague received a promotion. How will his achievement be explained to those who prefer personal attribution? Certainly not for such objective reasons as hard work, perseverance or professionalism. Rather, that he is a suck-up, a careerist and curries favor with his superiors.

Similarly, this applies to such a common phenomenon as self-flagellation. Let's say that some woman cannot find a worthy chosen one in life. With personal attribution, she will tend to blame herself for all troubles.

For example: “I’m ugly, so no one wants to date me” or “I’m not interesting enough for any man to be interested in me.” And this despite the fact that the real reasons may lie in a completely different plane, which a person deliberately ignores, preferring his favorite mechanisms for explaining his own failures.

Psychologists are convinced that this type of attribution is absolutely not productive and over time can lead to severe depression, neuroses of varying intensity, suicidal tendencies and a persistent decrease in self-esteem. An individual who does not try to look at his behavior critically, “from the outside,” is doomed to negative reflection and all the ensuing consequences.

Object type of causal attribution

In the case of stimulus attribution, the person prefers to make the culprit of the current situation a certain third-party object or object. For example, a child broke a family vase. How will he explain his action? It’s very simple: “The vase broke on its own.” That is, the fact that he ran around it all day and ended up catching it and breaking it is not important. According to his logic, the vase wanted to break itself, as if possessing a separate consciousness.

Most serious problems in an individual's interpersonal behavior originate precisely from the object type of attribution. Thus, a jealous husband explains that he beat his wife by saying that she gave him a reason for it. A group of high school students interpret their taunting of an animal by saying it barked at them. The feeding ground for such an attribution is aggression uncontrolled by the individual, as well as outbursts of anger, after which the individual, in order to calm his conscience, needs to somehow justify his own destructive behavior.

Circumstantial type

For individuals prone to this type, everything is always to blame for the prevailing circumstances, some environmental factors, which at first glance have no correlation with the situation. Thus, a hypochondriac finds in “magnetic storms” a reason to take medication, and an alcoholic in “signs of fate” a reason to drink. At the same time, the objective factors that provoke this or that behavior are completely ignored.

Psychologists are convinced that in this way a person tries to transfer internal tension externally, shifting responsibility for events onto the shoulders of someone or something else. This is especially true for religious people and those involved in esoteric practices. They explain their successes as “a gift from heaven,” and their failures as “the wiles of the devil.” The thorough type is extremely difficult to respond to psychotherapeutic influence, since its roots lie deep in the childhood of the individual.

What is attribution

It all started with the desire of people to explain the motives for their own behavior and the behavior of other people. Very soon the term was expanded, as a result of which it was possible to go beyond the initial scope.

Attribution is the attribution of different psychological properties to a person based on observation of him. Even unconscious conclusions about someone can take place here, and the reasons for behavior can also be considered.

Now attribution is not just about determining the characteristics of someone's behavior. It represents a number of psychological characteristics that can be directed to other objects. In any case, attribution is the main mechanism of social perception.

Application

We apply all the above psychological terms and theories in real life. For example, a feeling of helplessness, “adding to” a story, an image of a person, criticism and self-criticism are all a consequence of one or another type of attribution. So, let's summarize. Attribution is the process of inferring the cause of events or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.

Causal attribution

Causal attribution is a concept in psychology that arose from attempts to explain the motives of one’s own and others’ behavior. But soon the term was expanded. Modern psychology is aimed at identifying the causes of behavior, which is accompanied by the attribution of various kinds of characteristics.

Causal attribution is a concept in psychology introduced by psychologist F. Heider. Sometimes you need to predict someone's behavior, but there is not enough data for this. Therefore, the motives and qualities of a person are often guessed at. Also, characteristics of various kinds (not represented in the field of perception) can be attributed to a social community and group.

In addition, causal attribution is an example in psychology of explaining the actions, thoughts, and feelings of another person. Thus, there is a search for reasons that explain the behavior of the individual. Research has shown that each person prefers a range of causal schemas. That is, he explains other people's behavior, guided by familiar patterns. Additionally, each person has their own range of systems and options. There are also certain personal methods of causality that explain other people's behavior.

A little theory

Photo by Matt Fernandes from Pexels
The concept of attribution is strongly associated with the concept of the “naive psychologist.” You yourself act as a psychologist when you have to come up with an explanation for the actions of others. In other words, you try to explain other people's actions or your own through basic experience and knowledge of possible causes.

The picture of the world with this approach is largely illusory. You must understand that the role of such a “naive psychologist” relieves you of unnecessary anxiety and possible troubles. Attribution is a method of psychological defense that allows the subconscious to actively look for familiar aspects in unfamiliar people.

Also note that there are three attribute types. This phenomenon cannot be trained, it is innate:

• perception of physical features to a greater extent (then attribution appears in a reduced form);
• greater emphasis on psychological character traits (the strongest influence of attribution);
• complex attribution - the perception of physical and psychological characteristics simultaneously.

Thanks to the classification of attribution types, it can be seen that some people tend to record physical traits to a greater extent in the process of interpersonal perception, while others perceive predominantly the psychological character traits of others. In the latter case, a wide scope for attribution opens up.

Attribution theory

Disposition - philosophy

In analytical philosophy, the dispositive method is actively used to approximate possible situations. Such points have not been tested in practice and have a purely hypothetical meaning. Nevertheless, the occurrence of this situation is real, and for this purpose a preliminary plan is being developed. When a person is dispositive, it helps him in life, because he knows how to think through the course of his actions in advance, thereby making mistakes less often.

In philosophy, this term is used to characterize many descriptions that are not expected to be observed in person in the near future. In this science, mental representation and further work on it are very important. Experts note that this method helps people quickly integrate into the social environment and find their social circle in which they can simply be themselves.

The need for attribution

The information that can be obtained through observation is insufficient. It is not enough for a person to fully interact with what is happening. Therefore, such information needs to be “completed”.

Everything happens to predict the actions of the individual of interest in the future. Attribution can be made by a team or an individual.

It can be difficult to understand someone's behavior. For this there is not enough sensitivity, knowledge in psychology or simply information. As a result, other people's behavior is subject to speculation.

Errors of perception

The study of causal attribution has led to the identification of various patterns that lead to perceptual errors. It is noteworthy that people explain the success of strangers and personal failures using situational attribution. Usually we try to treat ourselves softer and more loyal than we treat strangers. But to analyze one’s own successes and the failures of others, personal attribution in psychology is used. This is a feature of the human psyche.

It is also interesting that the reason for success is usually associated with one’s own merits. But failures are blamed on circumstances. A person believes that he is successful because he is hardworking and smart. And his failure was solely due to external factors.

But if we are talking about another person, then attribution in the psychology of communication manifests itself in the opposite way. Example: he is lucky, he is a sneaky and sneaky person, this person’s relationship with the manager is not formal. Or his failures are associated with laziness, insufficient intelligence.

Perceptual significance

When people try to make attributions for someone else's behavior, their information becomes focused on that person. Their perception of this person lacks most external factors that could influence him

Whitespace is typically skipped and attribution is made based on the most relevant perceptual information. The most significant perceptual information dominates a person’s perception of the situation.

For individuals who define themselves behaviorally, the situation and external environment are of great importance, but their own body and behavior are less important. This leads to a tendency to make external attributions for one's own behavior.

Conclusion

It is very important to avoid causal attribution, especially when it ruins your life and leads to trouble. Stop your flow of thoughts for a moment and understand the reason for the behavior of a particular person - this is usually enough to avoid making sudden conclusions. This will improve your observation skills and teach you to empathize with others.

In addition, you should understand that there is no problem in attributing your failures to external factors, and your success to internal ones (especially if it is deserved). Just don’t make a blind habit out of it, but look at the situation.

We wish you good luck!

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Key words:1Cognitive science

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Attribution when evaluating subordinates

Conflicting attribution biases are typical in any organization. This mainly concerns different situations, namely, existing prejudices.

If managers are asked to talk about the reasons for the ineffectiveness of their subordinates, they mainly cite internal factors as the reasons. They consist of a lack of effort and ability. At the same time, they mention external factors, such as insufficient support, much less often. Thus, there is an overestimation of the influence of individual factors in the behavior of other people. These results indicate a tendency to underestimate the influence of situational factors and exaggerate the influence of individual factors.

Disposition – sociology

Social experience fixes certain predispositions of people to a particular situation. What does disposition mean in this case? Correct perception and assessment of the conditions of your activities and the reactions of people around you. Thus, in sociology, disposition occurs when a certain situation arises and is resolved correctly. A person’s inner mood and experience play a very important role here.

Modern society constantly confronts people with choices. Experts structured the disposition and identified four main levels:

1. Rapidly changing situations, both objective and real.
2. Problems of a group nature, where decisions are made by at least ten people.
3. Long-term conditions of activity - family, work.
4. Longer and larger-scale conditions of activity - politics, culture, and so on.

Attribution for executives

If managers are asked to determine their ineffectiveness, then the majority chooses a lack of support, that is, an external situational factor. This is due to the tendency of bosses at various levels to deny their responsibility in the situation. This approach is also notable for taking responsibility for success. Attribution in psychology is a characteristic that manifests itself in managers’ assessment of their own performance.

There was an increase in their work efficiency with improved levels of support. They did not believe that their ability, as well as their desire to work hard, were significant factors. But in relation to subordinates they insisted on the importance of these aspects.

But people with a developed sense of empathy quickly understand the feelings of others. In addition, they tend to consider such behavior as their own.

That is, attribution is the inference of someone’s behavior in the absence of additional information. We all try to get as much insight as possible about the interlocutor or team based on some data. But when there is not enough of them, an attribution arises that may correspond to reality or contradict it. Points like these should be taken into account.

Why is it important to consider not just the last, but the last significant transition

Let's imagine another situation: a person saw an ad and wanted to buy a product, but did not do so immediately. The tab was open for a while, and later he returned and completed the target action. Formally, contact with an advertisement in this case is not the last source of traffic. Yandex.Metrica links such conversions to internal transitions. However, it was watching the advertisement that became the decisive stage. Therefore, it is better to take into account the one that preceded the secondary source (transition from bookmarks, to a typed address, from locally saved files). That is, the primary source of traffic that influences the purchasing decision: organic search, social networks, other advertising systems, etc. For such cases, the model based on the last significant interaction is suitable. Direct and Metrica solve different problems, and therefore offer different approaches to attribution and conversion statistics.

Research objectives and possibilities of using the phenomenon of casual attribution

As mentioned earlier, the first studies concerned social causal attribution. The study of this phenomenon made it possible to establish the degree of responsibility that each member of the team assumed for their joint activities. And also evaluate and correlate this with the real contribution to the work for possible forecasts of the prospects and success of employees.

However, now the theory of attribution is used within the framework of pedagogical, developmental, and sports psychology. And attribution errors help practicing psychologists pay attention to some life attitudes and possible problems.

In addition, obvious biases towards one or another type of attribution may indicate unprocessed childhood fears, which, in turn, can lead to various psychological characteristics of behavior or, even worse, personal problems. So, if you are interested in something or some point in the article is not completely clear to you, do not hesitate to talk about it with a psychologist.

Lapshun Galina Nikolaevna, Master of Psychology, psychologist I category

Even (or precisely for this reason) such a complex device as the human psyche “jumps”—it is subject to cognitive distortions. Some of them are obvious, so it’s easy to fight them; it’s enough to be aware of them. But others are confusing and you can’t figure them out quickly. One of these complex phenomena is causal attribution, a phenomenon of human perception.

Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is considered the “father” of causal attribution, which he wrote about back in the 1920s. In his dissertation, Haider addresses the problem of information perception and how a person interprets it. After him, many scientists began to study the phenomenon in more detail. We will talk about their theories later, but first we will deal with the concept itself.

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The structure of interaction with another person, and ultimately the success of communication with him, largely depends on the adequacy of the understanding of actions and their motives. Often, attempts to form an idea about other people and explain their actions end up speculating about the reasons for their behavior due to the absence or lack of information. In such cases, past experience (comparison with the behavior of another person in a similar situation), which has a large role in the interpretation process, can play a negative role.

In social psychology, the explanation of the methods used to determine the causes of social behavior is carried out within the framework of the theory of causal attribution.

Attribution is a process of interpretation by which an individual attributes certain causes to observed and experienced events or actions. First of all, it occurs when a person’s behavior has no logical explanation.

The emergence of interest in the property of attribution is associated with the works of the outstanding American psychologist Fritz Heider (1950s).

Thus, in accordance with Heider’s ideas, the observer, possessing only information about the content of the action, can explain the action either by personal characteristics or by the influence of the external environment. In his opinion, the construction of attributions is associated with the desire to simplify the environment and try to predict the behavior of other people. Thus, attribution performs the most important mental function - making events and phenomena predictable, controllable and understandable.

According to Harold Kelly, each person has his own habitual explanations for other people's behavior.

• personal attribution - people in any situation tend to find the culprit of the event that happened, attribute the cause of what happened to a specific person, but not to themselves.
• circumstantial attribution - they blame circumstances without trying to identify a specific culprit.
• stimulus attribution - a person sees the cause of what happened in the object to which the action was directed or in the victim himself.

Attribution errors and their impact on the process of intercultural communication.

There are two types of reasons leading to erroneous conclusions:

1) differences in available information and observation position;

2) motivational differences.

1. The first class of reasons is based on different perceptions of the situation by those who act and those who observe it. That. attribution of causes occurs differently for the “actor” and the “observer.” The actor is better informed about the reasons for the action than the observer. He also knows the desires, motives, and expectations from this action, but the observer, as a rule, does not have this information.

American researchers have suggested that when people explain the reasons for their own, for example, negative behavior, they refer to circumstances, and when explaining someone else’s behavior, they refer to the fact that he is “the way he is.” Positive actions of others are often not noticed, viewed as a “rare event,” a lucky coincidence, or the result of extreme efforts. This overestimation of one’s own personal efforts and underestimation of situational factors is called the “fundamental attribution error.”

“Error of illusory correlations” - a priori attitudes and expectations (past experience, stereotypes, upbringing, age and personal characteristics) influence the perception of the situation. A child is crying - he wants to eat, teeth are cutting, etc., a student looks down on a test - he is cheating, but the real reason may be different.

Everyone will have their own illusions, therefore, the attributions will be different.

“Error of false consent” - the behavior of other people is viewed from the standpoint of egocentrism. One’s own behavior is considered the norm, someone else’s behavior that differs from it is considered a deviation from the norm. The commonality and prevalence of one's behavior is overestimated.

2. The essence of motivational bias is that people tend to perceive successes as their own achievements, and failures as a consequence of certain circumstances. The motivational attribution error is aimed at maintaining a person’s self-esteem, i.e. the results of a person’s actions should not contradict his ideas about himself (personal identity).

However, even in cases where the real difference in attributions is large, it can be consciously leveled out by communicants if they have common goals of activity.

Attribution errors are especially important in intercultural communication, since the motives and reasons for the behavior of representatives of other cultures are understood and assessed by a person, as a rule, inaccurately and incompletely. In this type of communication, the behavior of participants can be determined by ethnic, cultural, racial, status and many other reasons that remain hidden and unknown to the partner.

The best advice for representatives of different cultures is the words of the American scientist Harry Triandis: “The wisdom of intercultural interaction is not to rush to conclusions when people do, in your opinion, something strange. Play along with them until you understand the culture.” More specific recommendations are:

1. learn to extract information from everything and analyze it competently.

2. don’t be afraid to ask again and find out what you don’t understand.

3. do not ignore the context of communication (place, time, use of certain means of communication), it always carries a semantic load.

4. when communicating in a foreign language, pay special attention to linguistic units that have different semantic content (hand), interlingual paronyms (words of the same phonetic design, but different meanings (grandmother - babushka (bandana, head scarf, pasta - macaroon - macaroons), words that have different connotations (the English “bear”, in addition to the literal meaning of “bear”, also has a slang meaning - “policeman” - in relation to a person - “loving order”, in our case - “lump”, “ignorant”. In the French tradition, a monkey is associated with love, and in English and German with drunkenness - to carry the monkey, to suck the monkey, to have a monkey on the back, einen Affe haben (to have a monkey), sich einen Affe kaufen (to buy a monkey ) are united by one meaning: “to be drunk”, “to be tipsy”, “under the fly”.

Sources used:

• https://psydeal.com/psihologiya/obshhaya/fundamentalnye-oshibki-atributsii/
• https://cosmeton.ru/otnosheniya/kauzalnaya-atribuciya.html
• https://studopedia.ru/15_59486_atributsiya-v-mezhkulturnoy-kommunikatsii.html

application

Attribution theory can be applied to juror decision making. Jurors use attributions to explain the reason for the intentions and actions associated with a defendant's criminal behavior. The attribution made (situational or dispositional) can influence a juror's punitiveness toward the defendant. When jurors attribute a defendant's behavior to a dispositional attribution they tend to be more punitive and more likely to find the defendant guilty and recommend the death sentence compared to life imprisonment.