Day by 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 whether a person is short or tall, full or thin, what color his eyes or hair is, but also whether he is stupid or smart, solid or not, whether he is happy or sad …
What meaning do we put in certain 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 such a thing as attribution. What is it and how to use it? Let's try to deal with these issues together.
Definition
Scientifically, attribution is the process by which people use certain information to draw inferences about the causes of events or the behavior of others. During the day, a person tends 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 withoutawareness of 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. First, 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 training, we can conclude that shyness is the reason for this behavior of a person. This is a dispositional attribution (in relation to a person). Or we can assume that the cause of shyness is lack of sleep or personal problems of the student (situational). So, attribution in psychology is the conclusions that people make about the causes of events and the actions of other individuals. People make them to understand and explain certain processes. And these conclusions, in turn, influence the interaction with others.
Examples
For example, you take an exam, and you do well, but your friend failed it. 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 is simply not able to pass the material. Human psychology is designed in such a way that he will ascribe a certain property to you as a result of successfully passing the exam, and vice versa to your friend.
Attribution types
- Interpersonal relationships. When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you are likely tostrive to tell it as interestingly and captivatingly as possible. What for? For your friends to make a positive conclusion about you.
- Predictions. 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 your car in the same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
- Cause attribution (so-called explanatory) helps us understand the world around us. Some people tend to be optimistic about events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.
Attribution theory
She tries to explain how and why ordinary people draw certain conclusions, as well as how they explain events and their causes.
1. Fritz Heider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to make sense of the social world, they tend to see causal relationships even where there are none. However, 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 attributions such as personality traits, for example, we associate a person's behavior with their naivety or reliability;
- when we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to rely on external (situational) attributions.
2. Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people place emphasis on intentional behavior (as opposed to random orthoughtless). This theory explains the process of creating internal attribution. That is, in their understanding, attribution is the performance of certain actions due to the connection between the motive of human behavior and the behavior itself.
3. Harold Kelly's (1967) covariance model is the best known attribution theory. He developed a logical model for evaluating a particular action, which should be attributed to one characteristic: a person - to the internal, the environment - to the external. The term "covariance" means that a person has information from several sources, which he received at different times and in different situations, as a result of which he concludes about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that influence our judgments:
- consensus;
- distinctiveness;
- sequence.
So we see that two events happen at the same time, and therefore we consider 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
The fundamental error is a common type of cognitive bias in social psychology. In essence, this is an emphasis on internal personality 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 rolesituations in their behavior and emphasize their own role. This, in turn, illustrates several types of cognitive deviations. For example, a person walks and carries bags full of groceries, which may interfere with other people's passage. If a passing cyclist collides with this person, he may think that the driver is extremely ill-mannered and has no respect for those passing by. In this case, the person fails to consider situational factors such as their bags taking up more space than they think, thereby forcing people to run into them. To avoid the fundamental attribution error, a person should put themselves in the place of another and think about what they can do in the same situation.
Defensive attribution
Defensive Attribution Hypothesis is a socio-psychological term referring to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of protecting oneself from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attributions take place if a person has witnessed a particular catastrophe. In such situations, attributing responsibility and drawing one's own conclusions will depend on the severity of the failure outcomes 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 they cannot control. At the same time itleads to blaming the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died in a car accident, they assume that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and try to convince themselves that the accident will never happen to them. However, strangely enough, some people believe that positive events happen to them more often than others, and negative ones, respectively, less often. For example, a smoker believes they are less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.
Application
All of the above psychological terms and theories we apply in real life. For example, the feeling of helplessness, "writing" the story, the image of a person, criticism and self-criticism - all this is a consequence of one or another type of attribution. So let's sum it up. 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.
