Day by day we meet a large number of people, observe their behavior, think about them, try to understand what they are saying.
It may seem to us that we see not only whether a person is short or tall, fat or thin, what color his eyes or hair are, but also whether he is stupid or smart, respectable or not, whether he is happy or sad... What meaning do we put into in certain events? How do we explain our behavior or the behavior of loved ones? For example, why is a person angry, angry, maybe something happened? All this explains the concept of attribution. What is it and how to use it? Let's try to figure out these questions together.
Definition
Scientifically speaking, attribution is the process by which people use certain information to make inferences about the causes of events or the behavior of other people. During the day, it is common for a person to make numerous conclusions about his own behavior, as well as the thinking of others. Simply put, attribution is all those ordinary thoughts and actions we make without awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to certain conclusions.
Examples of attribution in psychology
Here's an example of how it works:
- For example, a person is a juror.
- A woman is being tried for murder after being beaten by her husband, whom she killed in her sleep.
- The defense argues this is a case of self-defense. They show compelling evidence of a history of long beatings, child abuse and unheeded calls to the police for help.
- The prosecution, on the other hand, argues that the defendant clearly knew and was aware of what she was doing, that she could have done differently, and that personality tests show that this woman is a “powder keg” ready to explode at any moment.
- How will the juror vote? Guilty or innocent? The choice will be determined in part by his attributional attitudes. The answers that a juror will come to regarding the questions “why did she do it?” are attribution.
Every day, people attribute various motives and reasons to human behavior. If a person believes that the battered wife was a harmless woman driven to desperate action by dire circumstances, then he is more likely to vote for acquittal.
On the other hand, if he attributes her actions to revenge or a diabolical nature, then the jury will probably be eager to return a serious charge.
How it works
There are 2 types of attribution for explaining the behavior of other people. First, we can explain the action of one person in relation to another. Secondly, behavior in relation to the situation. For example, if a student behaves quietly and modestly on the first day of school, we can conclude that shyness is the reason for this behavior of the person. This is a dispositional attribution (towards 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 individuals. People make them to understand and explain certain processes. And these conclusions, in turn, influence interactions with others.
The essence and significance of perception. Attribution, errors in perception
Impression management.
The essence and meaning of perception
Perception
- a complex cognitive process that forms a picture of the world, which may differ significantly from reality. The solution to the problem is to better understand the specific situation.
Sensations are usually associated with the five physical senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. Perception is a more complex and capacious process than sensation. It consists in the interaction of the process of selection, systematization and interpretation, that is, perception is a cognitive process. Sense organs are suppliers of “raw” material, which in the process of perception is filtered, modified and can be changed.
II. Social perception and impression management
For the study of social perception, the participants in this process, that is, the observer and the observed, as well as the processes of social perception (attribution, stereotyping, the “areola” effect) are important. The influence of observer traits on perception:
if the observer understands himself, he understands others better;
personality traits of the observer influence his perception of the traits of the observed;
harmonious people tend to notice the positive in others first.
In a formal organization, all members are constantly watching each other: workers to the manager, managers to the workers, etc.
Factors of social perception
Attribution
- the process of people explaining the causes of behavior and its results to themselves and others.
With the help of attribution, we determine the reasons and motives of people's behavior. Attribution can be dispositional (presumed) and situational. Dispositional
Attribution determines a person’s behavior by internal factors (character traits, motivation, knowledge, skills, etc.).
Situational
Attribution attributes behavior to external factors. When applied to social perception, attribution is the search for causes or attributes when explaining the behavior of others and oneself. Stereotyping and the areola effect can be considered attribution errors.
Stereotyping –
regarding perception means the tendency to perceive another person through his belonging to a certain class and categories. Due to uniqueness, an individual's traits or characteristics may not coincide with those assumed by the stereotype.
The “areola” effect is similar to a stereotype. The difference is that a stereotype is formed based on a group of traits, and the “areola” effect affects perception only on the basis of one of the traits, and not objectively. This trait could be intelligence, appearance, cooperativeness, etc.
Impression management
Impression
- a trace left in the mind by the influence and impact, opinion and assessment formed after meeting. In an organization, all people evaluate each other. In some cases, the significance of the assessment for the person being assessed is very high. We are talking about assessment during employment, promotion, personal acquaintances, when personal interests are present. Naturally, people try to present themselves in a socially attractive light. Here we are talking about “presenting” oneself to others or impression management. Understanding the impression management process is important for both parties:
to avoid manipulation of you by others;
can be an applied tool for those making a career.
There are 2 components of the impression management process:
impression management motivation;
impression formation.
The degree of motivation to manage someone else’s impression depends on the following factors:
:
the significance of the impression made for solving the problems facing the individual;
the value of these tasks;
discrepancy between the impression that a person wants to make on others and actually makes.
Impression formation determines what kind of impression a person wants to make on others and what he does to achieve this.
Organizational behavior studies two impression formation strategies that employees can use:
avoidance of demotion;
strategy to increase chances of promotion.
First with
The strategy is used by employees if they are trying to minimize responsibility for any negative event. Features of this strategy: justification, apology, dismissal. Justification is when an employee tries to explain his actions. Apologizing – in the absence of a rational justification, employees begin to apologize to the manager. Suspension - used when the employee is indirectly connected with the problem, that is, he participated in the group (commission) that made the wrong decision. He will say that he was against it, but found himself in the minority.
Second
The strategy includes the following elements: attribution, build-up, identification of obstacles, association. Attribution - used by an employee when it seems to him that he was not given a position for some actions. Buildup - the employee is rewarded for his achievements, but it seems to him that this is not enough, that his contribution and merits are much greater. Identifying obstacles - the employee focuses on the difficulties that he had to overcome. Association - the employee makes the necessary efforts to be seen with the right people, this will indicate his connections, importance, and therefore effectiveness.
Recommendations for recognition:
be ready;
do not create conditions that encourage subordinates to manage your impression (incentives can be: division of work into profitable and unprofitable, lack of resources);
see hidden motives and do not allow impressions to be controlled.
Examples
For example, you take an exam and do well, but your friend fails. You can conclude that you are smart because you completed the task, but at the same time it is easy to assume that your friend did not succeed because he spent the whole night in some club and was simply not able to pass the material. Human psychology is designed in such a way that he will attribute a certain property to you as a result of successfully passing an exam, and vice versa to your friend.
Attribution Types
- Interpersonal relationships. When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you probably want to tell it as interesting and engaging as possible. For what? So that your friends will draw a positive conclusion about you.
- Forecasting. If your car was totaled, you may be able to attribute the crime to the car being in the wrong place. As a result of this event, you will not leave your car in that same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
- Attribution of cause (so-called explanatory) helps us understand the world around us. Some people tend to have an optimistic explanation of events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.
The need for attribution
The information that can be obtained through observation is insufficient. It is not enough for a person to fully interact with what is happening. Therefore, such information needs to be “completed”.
Everything happens to predict the actions of the individual of interest in the future. Attribution can be made by a team or an individual.
It can be difficult to understand someone's behavior. For this there is not enough sensitivity, knowledge in psychology or simply information. As a result, other people's behavior is subject to speculation.
Attribution theory
It attempts to explain how and why ordinary people reach certain conclusions, as well as how they explain events and their causes.
1. Fritz Heider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to understand the social world, they tend to see cause-and-effect relationships even where there are none. However, nevertheless, the scientist put forward two main theories of the emergence of attribution:
- when we explain the behavior of others, we try to build on internal attributions, such as personality traits, for example, we associate a person’s behavior with his naivety or reliability;
- When we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to rely on external (situational) attributions.
2. Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people place special emphasis on intentional behavior (as opposed to random or mindless behavior). 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 a person’s behavior and the behavior itself.
3. Harold Kelly's (1967) covariance model is the most famous attribution theory. He developed a logical model for assessing a particular action, which should be attributed to one characteristic: a person - to the internal one, and the environment - to the external one. The term “covariation” means that a person has information from several sources, which he received at different times and in different situations, as a result of which he draws a conclusion about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that influence our judgments:
- consensus;
- distinctiveness;
- subsequence.
So we see two events happening at the same time, and therefore we believe that one causes the other. This explanation of the causes of events is called nothing less than social attribution. Each of us can observe this phenomenon in everyday life.
Causal attribution and learned helplessness
Causal attribution, interestingly enough, is often used to understand the phenomenon of learned helplessness.
Learned/acquired helplessness is a state of a person in which he does not make attempts to improve his condition (does not try to receive positive stimuli or avoid negative ones), although he has such an opportunity. This happens when he has tried several times to change the situation but failed. And now I’m used to my helplessness.
The father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, demonstrated in his experiments that people put less effort into solving a “solvable” problem after they had suffered a series of failures at “unsolvable” problems.
Seligman believes that people, having received unsatisfactory results, begin to think that further attempts will also not lead to anything good. But the theory of causal attribution says that people do not try to redouble their efforts in order not to lower their self-esteem, because otherwise they will attribute failure to their internal personal characteristics. If you don’t try, it’s much easier to blame external factors for everything.
Attribution error
The fundamental fallacy is a common type of cognitive bias in social psychology. Essentially, it is a focus on internal personality characteristics to explain behavior in a particular situation, rather than on external situational factors. The flip side of this mistake 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 deviations. For example, a person walks and carries full bags of groceries, which may interfere with the passage of other people. If a passing cyclist bumps into this person, he may think that the driver is extremely rude and has no respect for those passing by. In this case, the person fails to consider situational factors such as his bags taking up more space than he thinks, thereby forcing people to bump into him. To avoid the fundamental attribution error, a person must put himself in someone else's shoes and think about what he might do in the same situation.
Causal attribution and locus of control
It should be said that causal attribution is closely related to locus of control.
Locus of control is the characteristic ability of an individual to attribute his successes or failures only to internal or only to external factors.
In the case of causal attribution, there is a double standard. Whereas locus of control shows that a person chooses his own reaction. Having received a bad mark on an exam, he can manifest this locus in two different ways:
- It's my own fault that I got a bad grade. I didn’t prepare much, I walked around, I thought about absolutely the wrong things. I'll fix it and start right now.
- The ticket, the difficult subject, or the teacher are to blame. If it weren't for this, I would get what I deserve.
The difference between causal attribution and locus of control is the presence of willpower in the second case.
To change your locus of control, you must first get rid of the victim syndrome. Take full responsibility even if external factors really greatly influenced the result.
Defensive attribution
The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term that refers to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of protecting himself from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attributions occur if a person witnessed a particular disaster. In such situations, attribution of responsibility and drawing of one's own conclusions will depend on the severity of the outcome of the failure and the levels of personal and situational similarity between the person and the victim. An example of a defensive attribution is the well-known hypothesis “good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.” Everyone believes this because they feel vulnerable in situations they cannot control. At the same time, it leads to blaming the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died as a result of a car accident, they assume that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and try to convince themselves that the accident would never happen to them. However, oddly enough, some people believe that positive events happen to them more often than to others, and negative ones, accordingly, less often. For example, a smoker believes that he is less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.
What is attribution
It all started with the desire of people to explain the motives for their own behavior and the behavior of other people. Very soon the term was expanded, as a result of which it was possible to go beyond the initial scope.
Attribution is the attribution of different psychological properties to a person based on observation of him. Even unconscious conclusions about someone can take place here, and the reasons for behavior can also be considered.
Now attribution is not just about determining the characteristics of someone's behavior. It represents a number of psychological characteristics that can be directed to other objects. In any case, attribution is the main mechanism of social perception.
Application
We apply all the above psychological terms and theories in real life. For example, a feeling of helplessness, “adding to” a story, an image of a person, criticism and self-criticism are all a consequence of one or another type of attribution. So, let's summarize. Attribution is the process of inferring the cause of events or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.
