Attribution Theory

Attribution is the process by which individuals

explain the causes of behavior and events.
Attribution theory is the study of various
models that attempt to explain those
processes.

Attribution Theory
The theory assumes that people try to determine why
people do what they do, i.e., attribute causes to
behavior.
A person seeking to understand why another person did
something may attribute one or more causes to that
behavior.
A three-stage process underlies an attribution:
The person must perceive or observe the behavior,
The person must believe that the behavior was intentionally
performed, and
The person must determine if they believe the other person
was forced to perform the behavior (in which case the cause
is attributed to the situation) or not (in which case the cause
is attributed to the other person).

Attribution Theory
The explanations that people tend to make to explain success or failure
can be analyzed in terms of three sets of characteristics:
1. The cause of the success or failure may be internal or external.
(One may succeed or fail because of factors that he believes have
their origin within him or because of factors that originate in the
environment.)
2. The cause of the success or failure may be either stable or
unstable. (If one believes cause is stable, then the outcome is likely
to be the same if he performs the same behavior on another
occasion. If it is unstable, the outcome is likely to be different on
another occasion.)
3. The cause of the success or failure may be either controllable or
uncontrollable. (A controllable factor is one which an individual
believes he himself can alter if he wishes to do so. An
uncontrollable factor is one that an individual does not believe he
can easily alter.)

Attribution Theory
Four factors related to attribution theory that influence motivation in
education: ability, task difficulty, effort, and luck.
Ability is a relatively internal and stable factor over which the
learner does not exercise much direct control.
Task difficulty is an external and stable factor that is largely beyond
the learner's control.
Effort is an internal and unstable factor over which the learner can
exercise a great deal of control.

Luck is an external and unstable factor over which the learner

exercises very little control.
It is the learner's perception that determines how attributions will
influence future effort.

Exercise
Give reasons for your answer
A runner had already been expending high
effort, but had failed to reach a race final,
then encouraging him to attribute the failure
to lack of effort might simply demoralise him.
True/False.

Solution (true)
If the qualifying standard were simply too
difficult to meet, then encouraging
attributions to lack of effort might serve little
purpose, because increasing effort would
probably do little to improve outcomes.
If the wrong race strategy were used, then
increasing effort would not logically lead to
improved outcomes, if the same strategy were
used in future.

Attribution Theory
An important assumption of attribution theory
is that people will interpret their environment
in such a way as to maintain a positive selfimage.
People will attribute their successes or failures
to factors that will enable them to feel as good
as possible about themselves.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Error in assigning cause is called the fundamental
attribution error.
In North America, there is the tendency of a person to
overestimate the influence of personal factors and
underestimate the influence of situational factors when
assessing someone else's behavior. That is, when
observing behavior, a person is more likely to assume that
another person's behavior is primarily caused by them and
not by the situation. In the workplace, this may mean that
managers are more likely to assume that employees' poor
performance is due to a lack of ability or effort rather than
to task difficulty or luck.
In India, the fundamental attribution error is that the
people assume that others are more influenced by
situation than by personal factors.

 A common assessment of a person's own success might be:

"I got a raise because I'm very skilled at my job" (ability), or
"I was promoted because of all of the hours I've put into the
job" (effort).
Common assessments of a person's own failure might be:
"I didn't finish the project on time because the deadline was
unreasonable for the amount of work required" (task
difficulty), or
"I didn't make the sale because someone else happened to
speak to the client first" (luck).
Coupled with the fundamental attribution error, the self-serving
bias indicates that people tend to make different attributions
about their own successes and failures than the successes and
failures of others.