Attribution is ... Social attribution. Psychology

Day by day we meet a large numberpeople, we observe their behavior, think about them, try to understand what they are talking about. It may seem to us that we see not only that a low or tall man, full or lean, what color his eyes or hair, but also whether he is stupid or clever, solid or not, is fun to him or sad ...

What meaning do we put in these or those events? How do we explain our behavior or the behavior of our loved ones? For example, why is a person angry, angry, maybe something happened? All this explains the notion of attribution. What is it and how to use it? Let's try to deal with these issues together.

Definition

From the scientific point of view, attribution is a process,in which people use certain information to draw conclusions about the causes of events or the behavior of other people. During the day, people tend to make numerous conclusions about their own behavior, as well as the thinking of others. Simply put, attribution is all those ordinary thoughts and actions committed without realizing the profound processes and prejudices that lead to one or other of the conclusions.

How it works

There are 2 types of attribution to explain the behaviorother people. First, we can explain the act of one person in relation to another. Secondly, the 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 cause of such a person's behavior. This is 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 personalities. People make them to understand and explain certain processes. And these conclusions, in turn, affect the interaction with others.

Examples

For example, you pass the exam, and you are doing wellBut your friend has failed him. It can be concluded that you - smart, because coped with the task, but at the same time easy to assume that your friend is not possible because the whole night was spent in some club and just not able to deliver the material. human psychology is arranged in such a way that it will assign you a certain property as a result of passing the exam, and your friend the other way around.

Attribution types

1. Interpersonal relationships. When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you are probably eager to tell it as interesting and exciting as possible. What for? To your friends made a positive conclusion about you.
2. Forecasting. If your car was destroyed, you can link the crime to the fact that the car was in the wrong place. As a result of this event, you will not leave the car in the same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
3. Attribution causes (the so-called explanatory)helps us to understand the world around us. Some people tend to be optimistic about the events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.

Attribution theory

She tries to explain how and why ordinary people make certain conclusions, and also how they explain the events and their causes.

1. Fritz Heider (1958) believed that people - naïve psychologists trying to understand the social world, they tend to see causal relationships, even where they do not exist. 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 human behavior with its naivety or reliability;
• When we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to build on external (situational) attributions.

2. Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people pay special attention to deliberate behavior (as opposed to accidental or thoughtless). This theory explains the process of creating internal attribution. That is, in their understanding, attribution - is the commission of certain actions due to the connection between the motive of human behavior and the behavior itself.

3. The Harvard Kelly covariance model (1967) is the most well-known attribution theory. He developed a logical model for evaluating an action that should be attributed to one characteristic: the person to the internal, the environment to the external. The term "covariance" means that a person has information from several sources that he received at different times and in different situations, thereby making a conclusion about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that have influenced our judgments:

• consensus;
• distinctiveness;
• sequence.

So, we see that two events are happeningat the same time, and therefore we believe that one is causing the other. This explanation of the causes of events is called only social attribution. Each of us can observe this phenomenon in everyday life.

Attribution Error

A fundamental error is commontype of cognitive bias in social psychology. In fact, this emphasis on the internal personal characteristics to explain the behavior in a particular situation, rather than on external situational factors. The flip side of this error is that people tend to underestimate the role of the situation in their behavior and emphasize their own role. This, in turn, illustrates several types of cognitive abnormalities. For example, a person goes and carries a full bag of products that may interfere with other people. If a passing bicyclist encounters this person, he may think that the driver is extremely ill-mannered and does not have a drop of respect for those passing by. In this case, a person is not able to consider situational factors, such as the fact that his bags take up more space than he thinks, thereby forcing people to face him. To avoid the fundamental error of attribution, a person must put himself in the place of another and think about what he can do in the same situation.

Defensive attribution

The defensive attribution hypothesis isa socio-psychological term referring to a set of beliefs belonging to a person with a function of protecting oneself from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attribution takes place if a person has witnessed a particular catastrophe. In such situations, attributing responsibility and creating your own conclusions will depend on the severity of the outcome of failure 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 in this, because they feel vulnerable in situations that they can not control. At the same time, this leads to the accusation of the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died as a result of a car accident, they decide that the driver was drunk at the time of the disaster and try to convince himself that the accident will never happen to them. However, strangely enough, some people believe that positive events occur with them more often than with others, and negative ones, respectively, are less frequent. For example, a smoker believes that he is less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.

Application

All the above psychological terms andtheory we apply in real life. For example, the feeling of helplessness, the "appending" of history, the image of a person, criticism and self-criticism is all a consequence of one or another type of attribution. So, let's summarize. Attribution is the process of deducing the cause of events or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.

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