Every day we meet a large number of people, observe their behavior, think about them, try to understand what they are talking about. It may seem to us that we see not only a short or tall man, full or thin, what color his eyes or hair are, but also that he is stupid or smart, handsome or not, he is cheerful or sad ...
What is the point we put in these or other events? How do we explain our behavior or the behavior of loved ones? For example, why is a person angry, angry, maybe something happened? All this explains the concept of attribution. What is it and how to use it? Let's try to deal with these issues together.
Definition
From a scientific point of view, attribution is a process in which people use certain information to draw conclusions about the causes of events or the behavior of other people. During the day, it is common for a person to draw numerous conclusions about his own behavior, as well as the thinking of others. Simply put, attribution is all those ordinary thoughts and actions of ours, committed without realizing the underlying processes and prejudices that lead to certain conclusions.
How it works
There are 2 types of attribution to explain the behavior of other people. Firstly, we can explain the act of one person in relation to another. Secondly, behavior in relation to the situation. For example, if a student behaves quietly and modestly on the first day of study, we can conclude that shyness is the reason for such human behavior. This is dispositional attribution (in relation to a person). Or we can assume that the cause of shyness is the lack of sleep or the student’s personal problems (situational). So, attribution in psychology is the conclusions that people make about the causes of events and the actions of other personalities. People make them to understand and explain these or those processes. And these conclusions, in turn, affect interaction with others.
Examples
For example, you pass the exam, and it works out well for you, but your friend failed. We can conclude that you are smart, because you coped with the task, but at the same time it is easy to assume that your friend did not succeed, because he spent the whole night in some club and simply was not able to turn in the material. A person’s psychology is structured in such a way that he ascribes a certain property to you as a result of a successful exam, and vice versa.
Attribution Types
- Interpersonal relationships. When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you probably want to tell it as interesting and fascinating as possible. What for? For your friends to make a positive conclusion about you.
- Forecasting. If your car was destroyed, you can attribute the crime to the fact that the car was in the wrong place. As a result of this event, you will not leave the car in the same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
- Attribution of the cause (the so-called explanatory) helps us understand the world around us. Some people tend to be optimistic in explaining events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.
Attribution theory
She tries to explain how and why ordinary people make certain conclusions, as well as how they explain events and their causes.
1. Fritz Hyder (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to figure out the social world, they tend to see causal relationships even where they are not. Nevertheless, the scientist put forward two main theories of the appearance of attribution:
- when we explain the behavior of others, we try to build on internal attributes, such as personality traits, for example, we connect a person’s behavior with his naivety or reliability;
- when we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to build on external (situational) attributions.
2. Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people pay particular attention to deliberate behavior (as opposed to casual or thoughtless). This theory explains the process of creating internal attribution. That is, in their understanding, attribution is the fulfillment of certain actions due to the connection between the motive of human behavior and the behavior itself.
3. The Harold Kelly covariance model (1967) is the most famous attribution theory. He developed a logical model to evaluate this or that action, which should be attributed to one characteristic: a person - to the inside, the environment - to the outside. The term "covariance" means that a person has information from several sources that he received at different times and in different situations, as a result of which he makes a conclusion about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that have influenced our judgment:
- consensus;
- distinctiveness;
- sequence.
So, we see that two events occur simultaneously, and therefore we believe that one causes the other. Such an explanation of the causes of events is called nothing more than social attribution. Each of us can observe this phenomenon in everyday life.
Attribution Error
Fundamental error is a common type of cognitive bias in social psychology. In fact, this focuses on internal personal characteristics to explain behavior in a particular situation, and not on external situational factors. The flip side of this mistake is that people tend to underestimate the role of the situation in their behavior and emphasize their own role. This, in turn, illustrates several types of cognitive decline. For example, a person walks and carries full bags of products that may interfere with other people passing. If a cyclist passing by collides with this person, he might think that the driver is extremely rude and has not a bit of respect for those passing by. In this case, the person is not able to consider situational factors, such as the fact that his bags occupy more space than he thinks, thereby forcing people to collide with him. To avoid the fundamental error of attribution, a person must put himself in the place of another and think about what he can do in the same situation.
Defensive attribution
The defensive attribution hypothesis is a socio-psychological term that refers to a set of beliefs belonging to an individual with the function of protecting oneself from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attributions take place if a person has witnessed a particular disaster. In such situations, attributing responsibility and creating your own conclusions will depend on the severity of the outcome of the failure and the levels of personal and situational similarity between the person and the victim. An example of defensive attribution is the well-known hypothesis "good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people." Everyone believes this because they feel vulnerable in situations that they cannot control. At the same time, this leads to the accusation of the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died as a result of a car accident, they decide that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and try to convince themselves that an accident will never happen to them. However, oddly enough, some people believe that positive events occur with them more often than others, and negative ones, respectively, less often. For example, a smoker believes that he is less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.
Application
All the above psychological terms and theories we apply in real life. For example, a feeling of helplessness, the "appending" of history, the image of a person, criticism and self-criticism are all the consequences of this or that type of attribution. So to summarize. Attribution is the process of deriving the cause of an event or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, situations.