Theories Of Causal Attribution: Definition And Authors
Social psychology attempts to describe the laws that regulate the interaction between people and their influence on behavior, thought and emotion.
From this branch of psychology, theories have been formulated about how we explain our own behavior and that of others, as well as the events that happen to us; These models are known as “causal attribution theories.”
In 1958, the Austrian Fritz Heider formulated the first theory of causal attribution to explain the factors that influence our perception of the causes of events
Heider believed that people act like ‘naïve scientists’: we connect events with unobservable causes to understand the behavior of others and to predict future events, thus obtaining a sense of control over the environment. However, we tend to make simple causal attributions that mainly take into account one type of factor.
Heider’s attributional model distinguishes between internal or personal attributions and external or environmental attributions While the ability and motivation to carry out behaviors are internal factors, luck and task difficulty stand out among the situational causes.
If we attribute our own behavior to internal causes we take responsibility for it, while if we believe that the cause is external this does not happen.
Jones and Davis’s theory of corresponding inferences
The attribution theory of Edward E. Jones and Keith Davis was proposed in 1965. The central concept of this model is that of “corresponding inference”, which refers to the generalizations we make about the behavior that other people will have in the future based on how we have explained their previous behavior.
Fundamentally, Jones and Davis proposed that we make corresponding inferences when we believe that certain behaviors of a person are due to their way of being. To make these attributions, it is first necessary that we can affirm that the person had the intention and capacity to carry out the action.
Once the attribution of intention has been made, there will be a greater probability that we will also make a dispositional attribution if the evaluated behavior has effects that are not common to other behaviors that could have occurred, if it is socially frowned upon, if it intensely affects the actor (hedonic relevance ) and if it is directed to the person making the attribution (personalism).
Covariation model and Kelley configuration
Harold Kelley formulated a theory in 1967 that distinguishes between causal attributions based on a single observation of behavior and those based on multiple observations.
According to Kelley, if we have only made one observation, the attribution is made based on the configuration of the possible causes of the behavior. For this we use causal schemes beliefs about the types of causes that cause certain effects.
They highlight the scheme of multiple sufficient causes, which is applied when an effect can be due to one of several possible causes, and that of multiple necessary causes, according to which several causes must occur for an effect to occur. The first of these schemes is usually applied to common events and the second to more infrequent ones.
On the other hand, when we have information from various sources we will attribute the event to the person, the circumstances or the stimulus based on consistency, distinctiveness and consensus around the behavior.
Specifically, we more easily attribute an event to the actor’s personal dispositions when consistency is high (the person reacts the same in different circumstances), distinctiveness is low (he or she behaves in the same way when faced with multiple stimuli), and consensus is also low (other people they do not perform the same behavior).
Weiner’s causal attribution
Bernard Weiner’s causal attribution theory, from 1979, proposes that we distinguish causes based on three bipolar dimensions: stability, controllability and locus of control. Each event would be located at a specific point in these three dimensions, giving rise to eight possible combinations.
The stability and instability poles refer to the duration of the cause. Likewise, events can be completely controllable or uncontrollable, or somewhere in between in this dimension. Finally, the locus of control refers to whether the event is mainly due to internal or external factors; This dimension is equivalent to Heider’s attribution theory.
Different people can make different causal attributions to the same event; For example, while for some, failing an exam would be due to lack of ability (internal and stable cause), for others it would be a consequence of the difficulty of the exam (external and unstable cause). These variations have a key influence on expectations and self-esteem
Attributional biases
Very frequently we make causal attributions incorrectly from a logical point of view. This is largely due to the presence of attributional biases, systematic distortions in the way we process information when interpreting the causes of events.
1. Fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error refers to the human tendency to attribute behaviors to internal factors of the person who carries them out, ignoring or minimizing the influence of situational factors.
While we tend to attribute our own behaviors to circumstances and environmental factors, we interpret the same behaviors in others as a consequence of their personal characteristics.
3. False consensus and false peculiarity
People think that others have opinions and attitudes more similar to ours than they really are; We call this “false consensus bias.”
There is another complementary bias, that of false peculiarity according to which we tend to believe that our positive qualities are unique or rare even if this is not the case.
4. Egocentric attribution
The concept ‘egocentric attribution’ refers to the fact that we overestimate our contributions in collaborative tasks. Also We remember our own contributions more than those of others
5. Pro-self bias
The pro-self bias also called self-serving or self-reliant bias refers to our natural tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external causes.
The self-serving bias protects self-esteem. It has been found that it is much less marked or occurs in the opposite direction in people with a tendency to depression; This is the basis of the concept ‘depressive realism’.
