Individual Behaviour

Attribution

What is attribution?

Attribution refers to our intuitive attempts to infer the causes of human behaviour. One of the major attribution tasks we face is determining whether an observed behaviour reflects something about the person or something about the situation in which we observe the person. We attribute as we seek to make sense of the world, assign people's action/behaviour to either internal or external causes. Generally we attribute in a fairly logical way.

Attributions also implies the ways in which people come to understand the causes of their own and others' behaviour. In essence, the attribution process reflects people's need to explain events through deliberate actions of others rather than viewing them as random events.

Attribution Process

People make attributions in an attempt to understand why people behave as they do and to make better sense of their situations. Individuals do not consciously make attributions all the time although they may do it unconsciously most often. However, under certain circumstances, people are likely to make causal attributions consciously. For example, causal attributions are common in the following situations:

The perceiver has been asked an explicit question about another's behaviour (Why did she/he do that?

An unexpected event occurs (I have never seen him behave that way. I wonder what is going on?

The perceiver depends on another person for desired outcomes. (I wonder why my boss made that comment about my expense account?)

The perceiver experiences feelings of filaure or loss of control. (I can't believe, I failed in my public lecture assignment despite so much of preparation.