Causal attribution in psychology: reasons and mechanism of attribution

What is causal attribution

Causal attribution in psychology is the phenomenon of interpersonal perception in which a person comes up with motives and reasons for the actions of those around him. Translated from Latin, causa means “cause” and attributio means “attribution.”

An individual explains other people's actions using his own logical conclusions. He doesn't have enough facts. Guided solely by observations, which cannot give a complete picture. As a result, a person simply completes it in his head.

The term was coined back in the 1920s by Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider. In his writings, he tried to find out how people perceive and interpret the information received. The phenomenon was studied and supplemented by other scientists.

What is an attribute projection?

The very concept of “projection” was first described by Freud as a direction of avoiding an existing conflict within the framework of psychological defense. Projection is the direction in which information is transferred.

Attributive projection is expressed in the transfer of one's own qualities to others .

In other words, the world is perceived through the prism of one’s own “I”. At the same time, the personality endows others with both positive and negative traits.

Projective projection is synonymous with likening others. A person perceives those around him in the light of his own experience and mindset; accordingly, all actions are interpreted by him “through himself” - as he himself would have acted.

Attributive projection is built as an element of psychological defense when an individual tries to explain and accept new facts about the people around him.

Attributive projection emphasizes the subjective meaning of concepts in the structure of assessment of the situation and other people . A person accepts the world not as it is, but as he would make it.

The transfer of the qualities of one’s behavior can be carried out in a positive or negative direction, while one’s own bad qualities are more often attributed to good people, and vice versa.

Varieties of causal attribution

Fritz Haider said: “Our perception of causality is often distorted by our needs and certain cognitive distortions.” Depending on these distortions, psychology distinguishes 6 types of causal attribution.

Fundamental error

A person explains the actions of other people by internal reasons, and his own by external reasons. For example, he accuses someone of being boring. He explains his similar actions by incorrect circumstances. This is how the fundamental error of such judgments manifests itself.

There are several reasons for this phenomenon:

Unequal opportunities. The person ignores the features that are determined by the role-playing game.
False consent. The individual considers his own behavior to be correct and that of others to be wrong.
Trust not in judgments, but in facts.
Rejection of the value of what did not happen. A person analyzes behavior based on what people didn't do.

For clarity, imagine that you and a friend are taking the same test. My friend couldn't pass. First you point out that he has always had poor knowledge of the subject. Then you conclude that he is lazy, irresponsible, and pays attention to everything except his studies. It is a mistake to think so. You did not take into account that he may have learning problems, for example, it is difficult for him to remember information. Or there are family circumstances that prevent you from studying.

You can give another example from life. Let's say you meet a person whose car has broken down in the middle of the road. Of course, your first instinct will be to help him. You gave some advice, but the stranger rejected it or simply ignored you. What will be your reaction? You will be angry and consider him a rude person who is unable to accept sincere help. But in reality, the driver may know that these tips will not help him. Or maybe he's just in a bad mood.

1.2. the influence of attribution on information processing in the process of intercultural communication

1.2.1.
The concept and essence of attribution In the process of intercultural interaction, a person perceives another along with his actions and through his actions. The structure of interaction with another person and, ultimately, the success of communication with him largely depends on the adequacy of understanding actions and their reasons. However, more often than not, the reasons and processes that determine another person’s behavior remain hidden and inaccessible. Therefore, attempts to form an idea about other people and explain their actions without sufficient information for this end in attributing motives of behavior to them, “thinking out” their characteristics that seem characteristic of this or that individual.

Naturally, the mechanism of such understanding became the subject of scientific interest of psychologists, and a separate direction in social psychology gradually emerged, which began to study the processes and results of attributing the causes of behavior. Scientists call attempts to explain the reasons for people’s behavior attributions. In modern science, attribution is viewed as a process of interpretation by which an individual attributes certain causes to observed and experienced events or actions. Interpretation of the causes of human behavior is undertaken primarily when it does not fit into the ideas and logical explanations that the explainer uses in his life. It is in situations of intercultural contacts that the existence of attributions can be seen especially clearly, since “unusual” behavior constantly has to be explained.

The emergence of interest in attribution processes is usually associated with the works of the outstanding American psychologist Fritz Haiger. Reflecting on how “naïve analysis of behavior” occurs in any ordinary person, Haiger pointed to the crucial role of attributing to another the intention to perform some act. According to his assumptions, two main components can be distinguished in the behavior of each person: effort and skill. He considers effort as the sum of intentions to perform an action and the efforts made to implement these intentions. Skill is defined by him as the difference between the ability to perform an action and the objective difficulties that prevent the performance of these actions. Since intentions, efforts and abilities belong to the person, and difficulties are determined by external circumstances, then the “naive observer”, attributing the main significance to any of these factors, will be able to draw a conclusion about why the person performed the action. In accordance with Heider’s ideas, the observer, possessing only information about the content of the action, can explain the action either by the personal qualities of the actor or by the influence of the external environment. In his opinion, the construction of attributions is associated with the desire to simplify the environment and try to predict the behavior of other people. In this context, attributions perform the most important mental function, since they make events and phenomena predictable, controllable and understandable.

A different explanation of attribution, one that allows us to find its cause both in the individual and in the environment, was proposed by Harold Kelly. In his opinion, information about any action is assessed according to three aspects: consistency, stability and discrimination. Consistency refers to the degree of uniqueness in relation to socially accepted norms of behavior. At the same time, low consistency reflects the uniqueness of this behavior, and high consistency indicates that this action is common for most people in this situation. Stability of behavior implies the degree of variability of a given person’s reactions in familiar situations. High stability is said when a person behaves unchanged, and low stability indicates that this action is unique for similar circumstances (it is performed only today). Distinction determines the degree of uniqueness of a given action in relation to a given object. A low difference suggests that the person behaves the same way in other similar situations. High difference implies a unique combination of response and situation.

According to Kelly, various combinations of high or low values of factors determine the attribution of the cause of an action either to personal characteristics (personal attribution), or to characteristics of the object (stimulus attribution), or to characteristics of the situation (circumstantial attribution). With personal attribution, a person’s behavior is considered from the point of view of its uniqueness or traditionality, that is, how typical the behavior of a given person is for other people. With stimulus attribution, attention to human behavior is focused on the question: does the person behave the same way in relation to different people or objects? Does the nature of behavior depend on the object of action and its characteristics? Circumstantial attribution establishes the dependence of a person’s behavior on the characteristics of the situation in which the action occurs.

Thus, both these and other theories and models of attribution help to clarify how we understand the causes of human behavior. Thanks to attribution, events and people's actions become understandable, predictable and controllable, and communication in such conditions does not cause conflicts or create problems.

1.2.2. Attribution errors and their impact on the process

intercultural communication

The results of many studies of the attribution process indicate that in experimental settings people often evaluate the behavior of others as if they were determining the reasons for their behavior according to one or another attribution scheme. However, in real life this happens extremely rarely. The considered attribution models involve complex analysis of various information about human actions. But not always there is all the necessary information and time to analyze it. In everyday life, people are usually not sufficiently informed about the real reasons for another person's behavior or even do not know about them at all. Then, in the face of a lack of information, we begin to attribute reasons for behavior to other people in order to give a “reasonable” explanation for their actions. A whole system of such attribution is created, the result of which is biased, erroneous attributions.

Attribution researchers talk about two classes of reasons that lead to erroneous attributions. Firstly, there are differences in available information and observation position and, secondly, motivational differences.

Informational and perceptual differences are most evident when analyzing differences in attributions of causes for behavior made by the author of an action and an outside observer. Indeed, attribution depends on the observer's perspective on the situation. Obviously, any situation looks different from the inside than from the outside, and in this case we can talk about different situations for the one who acts and for the one who observes. Accordingly, the attribution of causes occurs differently for the actor and the observer.

American researchers Jones and Nisbet described the attribution of the perceiver as dispositional, and the attribution of the actor as situational. In other words, they suggested that people tend, when explaining their own behavior, to attribute its causes primarily to situational demands and circumstances, and when explaining the behavior of others, to attribute the causes primarily to internal conditions—dispositions. So, if another person acts, then the reason for his behavior is that “he himself is like that,” and if I act, then “these are the circumstances.”

Informational differences between the observer and the actor consist in different possession of information about the action: the actor is informed about the reasons for the action more than the observer. He also knows his desires, motives, expectations from this action, but the observer, as a rule, does not have this information. Hence, the differences in perception lie in the fact that the action is seen differently from the point of view of the doer and the observer. As a result, the observer tends to constantly overestimate the capabilities of the individual and the role of dispositions in the behavior of the actor. This overestimation is called the fundamental attribution error. The essence of this mistake is that all people tend to exaggerate the importance of personal factors and underestimate situational factors when interpreting the reasons for the actions and behavior of other people. As a result, the current situation is recognized as the cause of one’s own negative actions, while the similar behavior of another person is explained by his or her inherent personal qualities.

Along with the fundamental error, other attribution errors were identified, caused primarily by the nature of the information used. They are called the “fallacy of illusory correlations” and the “fallacy of false agreement.”

The fallacy of illusory correlations arises from the use of a priori information about causal relationships. In accordance with his ideas, a person is inclined in any practical situation to highlight some points and completely ignore others, and instead of looking for real reasons, use standard and well-known explanations. An example of this would be a young parent's explanation of their baby's crying. Some are inclined to “consider” crying as a request for food and begin to feed the child, others believe that he is cold and warm him up, others are sure that something hurts him and call a doctor, etc. Since it is very difficult to reliably establish the cause of crying in each case, it is obvious that attribution uses some preliminary ideas about why children cry.

If we consider the mechanism of the error of illusory correlations as the influence of expectations about the reasons for certain actions, then the question of the origin of these expectations is very important. It is obvious that illusory correlations appear in a person due to various circumstances: past experience, professional and other stereotypes, education received, age, personal characteristics and much more. And in each case the illusions will be different, and therefore the attribution will be different.

The error of false agreement in attribution is that the attribution of reasons always occurs from an egocentric position: it seems to a person that his behavior is ordinary and the only correct one. If other people act differently, then their behavior is considered abnormal, and the reason is in their personality characteristics. In this case, a person uses his behavior as an assessment criterion, while overestimating its commonality and prevalence.

The second class of causes of differences in attribution, motivational bias, finds its manifestation in ego-protective subjectivity. The essence of this reason is that people tend to perceive successes as their own achievements, and failures as a consequence of certain circumstances. The motivational attribution error is aimed at maintaining a person’s self-esteem, according to which the results of a person’s actions should not contradict his ideas about himself.

Thus, there are many attribution errors due to different reasons, due to which attributions lead to different results. But the point is that all attribution errors are “errors” only with respect to ideal models of causal attribution. In real attribution, these “incorrectities” are simply a reflection of those features of the vision of situations of interaction and communication, which serve as the subject of attribution. After all, a person’s attribution of causes occurs not for the sake of an abstract need to understand the world, but for the sake of improving joint communication, finding a common view of the world with a partner. Therefore, it is natural that the goals of joint activity, the conditions of interaction, and the points of view of partners are reflected in attributions and can subordinate them to themselves. But even in cases where the difference in attributing reasons turns out to be very large, but the goals of the activity are common and equally accepted by the partners, if this sets a common perception of the context of interaction for them, then the attribution of reasons to behavior will be closer to the real situation, to understanding partner and thus will turn out to be correct.

Various attribution errors are especially important in intercultural communication, since the motives and reasons for the behavior of representatives of other cultures are understood and assessed by a person, as a rule, inaccurately and incompletely. In this type of communication, the behavior of participants can be determined by ethnic, cultural, racial, status and many other reasons that remain hidden and unknown to the partner.

How are causal attribution and locus of control related?

Locus of control is the ability of the human personality to attribute successes and failures to the influence of external and internal factors. And it has some connection with causal attribution. In both cases, the individual does not want to see the true reasons for what is happening.

But there are a number of differences between the concepts. There are double standards at work in causal attribution. Locus of control encourages you to independently determine your reaction to what is happening around you.

And again the exam example. Here the locus can manifest itself in 2 ways:

You blame yourself for a bad grade. You understand that you were poorly prepared, were inattentive, and irresponsible. Plus, you're ready for correction.
You blame everything: the teacher, the subject, the wrong ticket.

Another difference between locus of control and causal attribution is the presence of willpower in the second phenomenon. Plus, it can be changed. You just need to get rid of the victim complex and learn to take responsibility.

Is it so important to understand each other?

Explaining the reasons for one’s own and others’ behavior is the key to the most important questions of social existence: who am I? who's near me? Can I trust others? What determines actions: personal properties or situations?

Knowing the correct answers to these questions allows you to:

get rid of unnecessary negativity: anxiety, suspicion, panic;
protect yourself from betrayal, meanness, manipulation;
manage different situations;
make rational decisions;
predict behavioral patterns of others.

Comprehension of another person's experience, as he himself understands it, is the main goal of interpersonal interaction. This is an indispensable guideline when choosing:

qualified specialists;
candidates for political office;
business partners;
life partners.

It is not surprising that the study of attribution has long gone beyond the scope of social psychology. Today, the art of understanding is relevant for teachers, athletes, managers, for each of us. It allows us to adequately evaluate each other, interact effectively, get along with a variety of people, count on leniency and sympathy.

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The connection between causal attribution and learned helplessness

Causal attribution helps explain the mechanism of development of learned helplessness. In psychology, this expression is understood as a state in which a person does not want to solve his problems, even if he has such an opportunity. This happens when previous attempts to cope with them ended in failure.

Psychologist Martin Seligman proved this statement. In his opinion, failures make a person think that the same thing will happen in subsequent attempts to change something. According to the theory of causal attribution, people do nothing in order to maintain their self-esteem. Otherwise, they will attribute all mistakes to themselves.

Casual attribution in psychology. Attribution Examples

This phenomenon exists because everyone wants to see the whole picture, to imagine all the events. But the problem is that the facts are not always known. And then the person begins to finish drawing, to think out the picture, bringing it to a logical conclusion. This process is carried out in accordance with existing life experience. In psychology, a diverse reaction of society to stereotypical and deviant behaviors

. Let's look at an example.

The students are waiting for a new teacher to teach them history. If you ask them to describe their history teacher, then most likely the classes will be boring and uninteresting. And if you introduce them to another teacher, having previously described his teaching style (he uses visual models, arranges skits, does everything to make the lessons interesting), then the opinion about the person will be non-standard, different from the common habitual judgment.

Causal attribution theories

There are only two of them.

Jones and Davis Correspondence Theory

In 1965, scientists Jones and Davis proposed that intentional behavior plays an important role in people. At the same time, thoughtless or spontaneous behavior is of practically no value. This theory helps to understand how the internal type of causal attribution arises.

Internal attributes provide information that allows one to make predictions about how a person will behave. Scientists call this phenomenon “correspondent inference.” This is a state in which an individual thinks that the behavior of others is determined by the properties of their personality.

Why do people make “correspondent conclusions”? Jones and Davis identified several reasons:

Choice. It is traditionally believed that actions depend on internal factors.
Spontaneous or intentional behavior. The first is related to external factors and circumstances. And the second is with personality.
Social desirability. Example: you saw a man sitting on the floor. There are many free chairs in the room. Inconsistency, isn't it? But such behavior is a manifestation of individuality.
Hedonic relevance. A condition in which a person purposefully either harms you or benefits you.

Another reason is personalism. The individual believes that the behavior of another person should somehow affect him. At the same time, he believes that it is dictated by the personal characteristics of the opponent, and not by external factors.

Kelly covariance model

People started talking about Kelly covariance in the 60s of the last century. It is considered to be the most popular theory of causal attribution. The scientist tried to figure out whether actions should be determined by internal motives or external factors.

Attribution when evaluating subordinates

Conflicting attribution biases are typical in any organization. This mainly concerns different situations, namely, existing prejudices.

If managers are asked to talk about the reasons for the ineffectiveness of their subordinates, they mainly cite internal factors as the reasons. They consist of a lack of effort and ability. At the same time, they mention external factors, such as insufficient support, much less often. Thus, there is an overestimation of the influence of individual factors in the behavior of other people. These results indicate a tendency to underestimate the influence of situational factors and exaggerate the influence of individual factors.