Attribution Theory and the key characteristics of this theory.

Attribution theory was developed by the social psychologists Heider, Kelley, Jones and Ross. The theory is concerned with how people explain or attribute various causes to events. According to the 'attribution theory' it is normal for people to look for explanations or causes - that can be attributed to their own success or failure. An assumption of the attribution theory is that people will interpret their environment in such a way as to maintain a positive self-image. Attribution theory provides an important method for examining and understanding motivation in academic settings. It examines individuals' beliefs about why certain events occur and correlates those beliefs to subsequent motivation. The basic premise of this theory is that people want to understand their environments and, therefore, strive to understand why certain events happen. In the classroom, the understanding students have about the causes of past events influences their ability to control what happens to them in the future. For example, if students fail a test, they will probably attribute that failure to a specific cause, such as (1) Lack of ability, (2) Lack of effort, or (3) Poor instruction. The selected attribution will affect their subsequent motivation to engage in similar learning activities.

HOW ATTRIBUTIONS INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR

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Many studies indicate that the types of attributions that individuals make influence their subsequent behaviors in predictable ways. Both the expectancy beliefs and the emotions that individuals experience as a result of the attributional process tend to determine future behaviors. Research generally indicates that academic achievement is improved and enhanced when learners attribute academic outcomes to factors such as effort and the use of appropriate study strategies; in contrast, academic achievement is hindered when learners attribute their failure to factors such as lack of ability or chronic health problems and attribute their success to luck. Consequently, a student who attributes failure on an examination to a lack of effort (e.g., she did not study enough the week before the exam) may be motivated to put forth additional effort when preparing for a subsequent exam. In contrast, a student who attributes failure on an examination to a lack of ability (i.e., she believes that she does not have adequate ability in the examination area) will be unlikely to exert effort for a subsequent examination. Main Features of the Theory

Heiders (1958) initial ideas have been expanded in a number of ways to account for the complex process of attribution. For example, researchers have argued that attributions vary from one another not only based on causal locus but also on other dimensions. These include stability, or whether or not we see the cause of something as stable (Hes late because he doesnt care about other people) or unstable (Hes late because he wasnt feeling well and it took him a while to get ready); and control, or whether or not we think a person was able to alter the cause (Hes late because he forgot to set his alarm again) or unable to alter the cause (Hes late because there was a traffic accident that delayed traffic). In addition to a broadening of what form attributions take, four theoretical currents have emerged since Heider introduced the concept of attributions. Most research relies on just one of these currents, but, collectively, they make up the primary features of attributional scholarship.

A FOCUS ON CORRESPONDENCE

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One of the ways that any action can be explained is as a product of some set of characteristics (i.e., a kind person would act that way). When attributions are informative of a persons nature or personality, they are considered correspondent. Jones and his colleagues (Jones & Davis, 1965; Jones & Harris, 1967) developed this line of theorizing, and it has since been studied in a wide variety of disciplines and contexts. For example, Stamp and Sabourin (1995) found that relationally abusive or aggressive men tend to attribute their violence to things that were external to them, such as a wifes behavior or jealousy. Most of these external factors are considered correspondent, because abusive men tend to attribute such causes to intentional and negative factors in their partners. Importantly, such attributions reflected the mens thinking, rather than what may actually have prompted the behavior.

A FOCUS ON COVARIATION

Attributions are not tied only to dispositions. In order to understand the underlying structure of attributing causes to effects, Kelley (1967, 1971) proposed a normative model that came to be known as the ANOVA (an acronym for analysis of variance) cube. In general, events are attributed to causes with which they covary or co-occur. Causes are attributed to factors that are present when an event or effect is observed, and not present when the event or effect is absent. If you find that your relationships tend to get more complicated and are more likely to dissolve only after one of you says I love you, you might attribute the utterance or state of love as the cause of relationship problems. For you, these events covary.

A FOCUS ON RESPONSIBILITY

Not all attributions are about the cause of an action, however. When we are making sense of things, we often focus instead on who or what was responsible for that behavior or outcome (Weiner, 1986). Importantly, research following this reasoning has looked at the potential consequences of responsibility attributions, and these consequences can be extensive. For
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example, according to research by Badahdah and Alkhder (2006), people are, for example, more likely to feel sympathetic to a person with AIDS if that person is viewed as not responsible for his or her own plight (e.g., if AIDS was contracted through blood transfusion) as opposed to intentional risky conduct. Thus attributions of responsibility can have significant repercussions.

A FOCUS ON BIAS

Whereas people can make relatively logical assessments of cause and responsibility, as Heider (1958) predicted, researchers have found there are often sys- tematic biases in how we make attributions (see Ross, 1977). Perhaps the most well-known bias is the fundamental attribution bias, which is our tendency to make more internal attributions than external attributions for others behaviors. But there are other biases as well. For example, Canary and Spitzberg (1990) predicted a self-serving bias in conflict situations, and found that actors in conflicts tend to view their behavior as significantly more appropriate than the behavior of their partners. They further predicted and found that more salient conflict behaviors such as anger and criticism would be more correlated between self and partner perceptions than less salient behaviors such as topic shifting and integrative discussion. To the extent that we generally view ourselves as competent and not responsible for negative events, and that we view our partners as stable and personally responsible for negative events, conflicts are spring loaded to escalate in unpleasant ways.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.education.com/reference/article/attribution-theory/ https://sites.google.com/site/motivationataglanceischool/attribution-theory
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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_theory http://grimstad.uia.no/puls/studystrategy/mot02/02mot02.htm http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Interpersonal %20Communication%20and%20Relations/attribution_theory.doc/ https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:4vgNJ8WF3OoJ:www.engr.psu.ed u/awe/misc/ARPs/AttributionWeb_03_22_05.pdf+&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADG EESgBDTSrRkQDB2iho-wndAUI5Lp-y-bC6ePGfPS8l6IwPD8yaCWXA1fIaZSvH6H7iEPEs3PebmUlKaU6cehTj93ZiPZOUNKQl8KdqpKA4nJiT49jIAL5dAcQz2xvTn78dB9po_&sig=AHIEtbTfqbkamMCBLS uFC2yxND6N0uoIEw http://www.simplypsychology.org/attribution-theory.html#sthash.0067rAc4.dpbs http://webspace.ship.edu/ambart/Psy_220/attributionol.htm https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:DXRJ6YTISOgJ:www.corwin.co m/upmdata/21200_Chapter_3.pdf+&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg81Zl8VMp3SOm u48UQuHyIWVXd1oQIxWQ5iPM82W90JlYeTy1i1LusqinhM1qFYef90mDXtO rkHFWaka_uvAjOlN4M0e8-dQiD5XaqripRPuogbsDCoSu2MJ0XkVhhlfOva9E&sig=AHIEtbQ9zgt2ZcdQ-1VlJ2PVrdBeOLe3Bw

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