Attribution Theory: The Way We Make Judgments
Human beings are quite judgmental. Judging other people's behaviour seems to be a natural, inherent tendency wired in our minds and common behaviours. Whenever we see something (which we don't perceive as immediately harmful), one of the first reactions we tend to have, generally speaking, is to judge that something, in a way trying to frame it into our perception box, drawing from past experience and beliefs that are rooted in us. While the racing mind, where thoughts arise consecutively one after the other without us even noticing, can be acknowledged and worked upon by us through mindfulness practice and living in the present moment, this is out of the scope of this article, which is on the other hand concerned with the exploration of what is behind our judgment of people's (and our own) behaviour, some common patterns that can be noticed in that sphere, as well as biases and heuristics involved with judgment. Biases and heuristics are sort of mental fallacies everyone is subject to. Heuristics are mental shortcuts and simplifications of reality our minds put into practice in order to cope with the often very complex events happening in our lives. Biases are complete mistakes of judgment we are prone to making, due to the fact that our brains are inherently faulty.
One of the most frequent targets of judgment is human behaviour. Very often do we find ourselves trying to find causal relationships between a person's behaviour and internal versus external causes being the source of it. This is what attribution theory attempts to explain. Attribution theory is a branch of behavioural psychology which tries to explain the reasons behind why we judge people differently, what are the foundational principles we use when making judgments, what biases and heuristics are at play in this sphere, and why we tend to judge a behaviour as internally or externally caused.
This last factor of attribution theory is a crucial one. This framework of reference, as a matter of fact, suggests that “whenever we observe an individual's behaviour, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused.” (Robbins, 'Organizational Behaviour', Global Edition).
Let's take a small step back and see the whole picture as far as attribution theory is concerned, to then dive into the deeper layers of this psychological framework.
Internal vs. External Causation
"They have not won the match because of their lack of discipline and seriousness during training sessions". "I knew it all along". Some supporter may say after witnessing a lost game from his favourite team.
That is a clear case of internal attribution to a behaviour or event. We love finding causal relationships in whatever we come across. One of the main reasons that comes to mind is the need we all have for control, clarity, explanations of what we see. So, whenever we make judgments, we want some control and clarity back.
The first key pillar of attribution theory is that when judging a behaviour we pretty instantly try to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. In other words, was it caused by the person's personality traits and characteristics (under the control of the individual — internal), or did it stem from some uncontrollable external factor that manifested in the life of the person (uncontrollable and infrequent — external)?
In order to understand what determines our final judgment as to internal or external causation, we must go a layer deeper into fundamental attribution theory and get to the 3 determining factors for internality or externality.
Distinctiveness, Consensus, Consistency
In attribution theory, there are three determining factors whose influence leads to judging a behaviour as internally or externally driven. These are distinctiveness, consensus, consistency. Let's break down their meaning and understand how they impact our final judgments.
Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays different behaviours in different situations. The main underlying meaning of this determining factor is that we want to understand whether the behaviour is unusual or frequent in the person, across different situations. The higher distinctiveness (i.e. the more unusual the behaviour), the more we will attribute the cause to external situations, and vice versa. If you think of someone who is late at work one day, the way distinctiveness plays out in your judgement of that behaviour is through making you look for patterns in his behaviour. Is he someone who blows off also other kinds of commitment very often? If that's a yes, then you are likely to attribute the cause of the lateness to personal factors which are controllable by the individual. Distinctiveness, however, is only one piece of the puzzle making up your final judgement.
Consensus is the second determining factor of attribution theory. Consensus is the degree to which everyone who faces similar situations (as the one you are judging) responds in the same way. A high consensus (e.g. the majority of people working in that job taking the same route of the late employee arrived late that day) is generally linked to attributing the behaviour to an external cause (e.g. there was traffic).
The last determining factor in attribution theory is consistency. Consistency tells us how often the person whose behaviour or performance we are judging acts in the same way across time in the same kind of situation. Coming late for work is not perceived in the same manner for someone who hasn't been late for several months as for someone who is late 3 times a week (Robbins, 'Organizational Behaviour', Global Edition). So, the higher consistency is, the more we will tend to attribute the behaviour to internal causes.
The mix of these three determinants make up the final verdict our weird mind comes up with. But wait, there is more to it. When you are a human being, things tend not to be linear and smooth. This framework of judgement of people's behaviour would not be a simplification of reality if we were not so biased and mistaken in many ways. We fall prey to many interpretation and attribution mistakes, called biases and heuristics, which are very tough to notice, but do a great job at distorting the reality as we see it. Let me explain further.
Common Fallacies in Judging Others
If only it were that simple. If you live life, you might know that things are a bit more convoluted than the attribution theory framework (which is by definition a framework which attempts to describe the process of behavioural judgment as close to reality as possible). Enter biases and heuristics in attribution theory.
Biases and heuristics are mental fallacies and shortcuts we use when navigating life and making judgments too. They are inherent, but can be spotted with time, awareness, practice. Here are some of the most prominent biases and heuristics our minds are subjected to in the domain of attribution theory.
The fundamental attribution error is a bias which makes us have the tendency to overestimate the impact of internal causes and underestimate the influence of external factors on events and behaviours. But it doesn't end there. We also tend to attribute our own successes to internal causes and our own failure to external causes. This is called self-serving bias.
Because reality is often much more complicated than black-and-white thinking, these biases allow us to simplify things, take back control over them, establish an opinion on the situation or behaviour, and do so quickly, hence reducing significantly the mental burden of trying to carefully think through our opinions and judgments.
And what about the halo effect? This is the tendency to draw a positive general impression of an individual based on a single characteristic. This bias also plays out in its opposite form (i.e. drawing a negative general impression based on a single characteristic — horn effect). The foundation of this bias is to be found in the fact that our attention is drawn to shiny, noticeable objects or characteristics of a person, which often jeopardise our whole judgment of that individual. The contrast effect and stereotyping are other biases influencing attribution theory.
So, in this post, we have dug into how we make judgments about behaviours and situations in our daily life (attribution theory), what drives these judgments (distinctiveness, consensus, consistency), and why in reality things are more complicated than that, thanks to our minds' ability to be completely faulty and use the most unimaginable shortcuts and rational mistakes when making judgments.ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Khan Academy on Covariation model of Attribution Theory
Attribution Theory | SimplyPsychology
Organizational Behavior | Robbins & Judge
Similar Posts you may like:
. . . and more posts here