Attribution theory is a general title for a body of theory
and research into the ways in which people explain why things
happen. By and large the bulk of the work has confined itself
to the explanations that people offer for various types of
human behaviour, rather than the behaviour of objects,
animals or natural forces, and this preoccupation probably
reflects Western conceptions and values about the nature of
the world. For religious and other reasons, we tend to view
ourselves as the focus or centre of the Universe, or as the
high point of creation, and hence attribution theory has
concentrated on the explanation of human behaviour to the
relative neglect of other things. It is clear that from other
cultural perspectives, which see humans as part of a larger
purposive universal process with a will and/or direction of
its own, attribution theory would take a different and rather
interesting turn; for example, certain central precepts would
simply not make sense from such a perspective (Jahoda 1979).
Nonetheless, within our own cultural framework,
attribution theory has offered important insights into the
ways in which people explain their own actions and the
actions of others; and in the course of that process light
has coincidentally been shed on the difference between causal
explanations as social constructions (reasons) and causal
explanations as scientific statements (causes).
For example, the 'reason' for a particular
action is frequently a verbal statement made by an individual
when asked a question by a third party, such as 'Why did you
do this?' or 'Why did she do that?'. In answering the
question the motives, affiliations, intentions and
self-perceptions of the person doing the explaining are often
reflected in the type of explanation offered. This is
regularly seen in party political broadcasts, when members of
a governing party explain unpopular policies by reference to
circumstances beyond their control; perhaps making use of
sentences that begin, 'We in the XXXXXXX party had no choice
but to do this because…' On the other hand, popular
policies will be explained by reference to internal qualities
such as compassion, concern or goodness, and an explanation
might lead with, 'We in the XXXXXXX party did this because we
felt it was high time that something was done to help the
situation of…' Such explanations are easily seen to be
primarily social constructions with clear purposes and
functions for the person doing the explaining; specifically,
the avoidance of blame and the accumulation of personal
credit.
By contrast, within our idealised conception of
science (see for example the Logical Empiricist view of
science advanced by Popper 1959) the question 'Why does water
turn to steam when it boils?' is presumed to elicit a
scientific statement of 'causality' that is independent of
the motives, intentions and self-perceptions of the scientist
doing the explaining (an assumption that is by no means
true—see for example Kuhn 1970). From this idealised
scientific viewpoint, it is assumed that different scientists
will offer the same causal account regardless of their own
motives, dispositions and propensities; that the explanation
will represent the state of knowledge rather than the state
of the explainer; and that in some sense the explanation
offered will be 'real' or 'absolute'.
Unfortunately, we sometimes lose sight of the
distinction between causal accounts that are socially
functional, and those which are scientifically functional,
and the two become intermingled. Thus we may try to shed
light on the causes of theft amongst drug users by
asking them to tell us their reasons for stealing; or
to investigate the causes of relapse amongst alcohol
abusers by asking them their reasons for relapsing. In
other words, we can fall into the trap of assuming that
reasons provide a shortcut to discovering causes. Even more
problematic is the fact that sometimes it is difficult to
know which type of account we are dealing with, and that in
real-life situations the two may be closely interwoven.
However, by becoming involved in this
discussion of social versus scientific explanations we have
to some extent jumped the gun. Originally, attribution theory
sought to shed light on the nature of people's explanations
for everyday events without distinguishing between the social
nature of reasons and the scientific nature of causes. These
were lumped together under a general banner of 'causal
explanations', and it is to this earlier work that we must
now turn in order to grasp the fundamental principles of
attribution.
The Bases of Attribution Theory
Several accounts of the multi-faceted pedigree of
attribution theory are available for the reader wishing to go
into more detail than is provided in this chapter. Two of the
best are given by Antaki (1982), and by Hewstone (1983) and
it is worthwhile highlighting the salient features from these
accounts.
The basis for attribution theory is the desire
to understand how people arrive at common-sense explanations
for their own and for others behaviour. The original stimulus
for the work came from Heider (1958) in a much-cited work, The
Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, in which it was
suggested that a major task for anyone trying to understand
the social and physical world was to produce satisfactory
accounts of why things happened. Insofar as this applied to
understanding why people do the things they do, this amounted
to finding satisfactory causal accounts of behaviour; and
furthermore, since searching for explanations is something
that scientists do, this amounted to regarding people as if
they were in some sense natural or primitive psychologists.
From this basis, the idea of man as a naive scientist began
to emerge, this notion deriving from the accumulating
evidence that people made inferences about the causes of
human behaviour on the basis of their observations of social
acts, in the way that the scientist or physicist makes
inferences on the basis of observations of physical events.
The task then became one of finding out how such causal
inferences were made, and illuminating the kinds of evidence
involved in the process.
More importantly however these causal
inferences, 'describing and predicting events as a science
should do' (Hewstone op cit), were held to have
important implications for behaviour whether they were
'true' or not. With respect to addiction, for example,
this would imply that belief in the inability of addicts to
control their own drug use, would have important behavioural
implications whether such a belief were true or not.
Attribution as Lawful Explanation
Subsequent to Heider's original ideas, Jones and Davis
(1965) are usually credited with making the next major step
forward with their theory of 'correspondent inferences'. This
theory sought to explain how far a person's actions could be
accounted for in terms of the traits, dispositions and
intentions of the person doing the act (known in
attributional parlance as the 'actor'), rather than in terms
of situational or other 'external' factors. The empirical
work on this topic centred around 'common and non-common
effects', and the reader is referred to either of the two
texts cited above for an explanation of these terms.
However, the development by Kelley (1967) of
the ANOVA model of causal inference merits closer inspection
within this present text, because it presents a very clear
picture of the type of thinking which can underlie the
construction of causal explanations of human action. The
model conceptualises the causal attribution process as
hinging around the covariation of three dimensions, the title
of this theoretical approach (the 'ANOVA' model of
attribution) deriving from a loose analogy with analysis of
variance. Kelley's approach is particularly useful as it
illustrates one of the central features of attribution
theories in a very graphic and comprehensible manner; namely,
the fact that the explanation postulated for some action
results from the way in which that situation is perceived by
the person constructing the causal account (the 'observer').
Kelley's formulation of the attributional
process was first revealed in a widely-read paper presented
at the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, in 1967. He proposed
that the type of explanation a person is likely to offer for
an observed piece of social behaviour depends on the
interaction (the "covariation and configuration")
of three factors. At risk of doing some violence to the
original conceptions, the three factors Kelley proposed were
in essence:
i) consensus — given that I have seen this
person doing this thing, are other people doing it also?
To the extent that the answer is "yes", there
is high consensus. If "no", there is low
consensus.
ii) consistency — does this person do this
thing repeatedly, or regularly? To the extent that the
answer is "yes" there is high consistency. If
the behaviour is rare or a single instance, there is low
consistency.
iii) distinctiveness — considerthe object
of this behaviour. Usually, this is the person who is
having this thing done to them. Is he/ she the sole
recipient, or do other people have this done to them
also? To the extent that the object person is unique,
there is high distinctiveness. To the extent that he/she
is only one of a number who receive this treatment, there
is low distinctiveness.
It is important to bear in mind that
information about consensus, consistency and distinctiveness
can come to the observer through channels other than direct
observation. Regardless of Heider's, Jones and Davis's, or
Kelley's original intentions, the general model does not in
principle appear to require first hand information, but can
be applied to reported information, or even to beliefs or
preconceptions (referred to in the literature as "causal
schemata") formed in the absence of literal multiple
observations. Whilst attribution theorists sometimes
conceptualise such a situation as one of incomplete data, this
is perhaps misleading if we thereby conclude that the
resulting causal account must, as a consequence, necessarily
be less powerful or persuasive than one based on direct
observation. In fact a persons beliefs about, say, the
consistency of an act (for example, that
"alcoholics" inevitably relapse after one drink)
can be plugged into the model as readily as can direct
observations, where their influence will be as powerful as
direct observations if the beliefs in question are
sufficiently strongly held.
Whilst the detailed explication of Kelley's
system can become almost as complex as one wishes to make it,
a process involving independent consideration of
"persons, entities, and time" and their
interactions, in practice it is easy to elucidate at a basic
level in the following way.
Suppose we observe one day that Tom is hitting
Mary, and that we have information available (of whatever
type—observations, second-hand reports, stereotypes,
prejudices etc.) about the pattern of consensus, consistency
and distinctiveness surrounding this act. For example, it is
just Tom who hits Mary (low consensus), he seems to hit Mary
quite often (high consistency) and he also hits other girls
(low distinctiveness). In these circumstances, we are likely
to explain the event in terms of a negative property of Tom;
he is aggressive, unpleasant, a bully, and so forth.
Imagine, however, that our information suggests
high consensus (other children also hit Mary); high
consistency (they hit her often); and these children are not
generally noted for hitting other people (high
distinctiveness). In these circumstances, we are likely to
attribute the act to some disposition of Mary; perhaps for
example there is something she repeatedly does that tests
everyone's patience. Whatever the truth of the matter, we are
likely to attribute the behaviour to a negative property of
Mary.
Developing the above lines of argument, it is
easy to conceptualise the Tom-hits-Mary scene in tabular form
as follows, with each of the three variables being
potentially high (HI) or low (LO), leading thereby to
particular types of explanations for the observed act.
| TOM HITS MARY |
| consensus | HI | or | LO |
| consistency | HI | or | LO |
| distinctiveness | HI | or | LO |
Using Kelley's three dimensions, we have
seen how the pattern LO, HI, LO leads to explanation in terms
of negative attributions about Tom; whilst HI,HI,HI leads to
negative attributions about Mary. It is amusing and
instructive to consider other alternatives, and to try and
predict the type of explanation which might be forthcoming.
Some patterns are quite easy, others are more subtle. For
example, HI, LO,HI implies that there are particular
situations in which Mary gets on everyone's nerves (i.e.
a person x situation interaction); and LO, LO, HI suggests
that the incident was due to some unfortunate and
unforeseeable circumstance.
These simple examples based on Kelley's notions
serve to illustrate two of the general points made earlier.
Firstly, people construct explanations of social behaviour in
a manner which is psychologically dynamic rather than
primarily veridical. In fact, the attribution process has
nothing to say on the issue of whether explanations
constructed in these terms are true or not. Secondly, the
process also appears to be lawful, Kelley suggesting a way of
conceptualising it in terms of three major building blocks
out of which explanation is formed in a logical or
quasi-logical fashion.
Viewed in this way, social explanation is not
based on any knowledge of actual causality, but is an
inference made on the basis of certain social features of the
act about which the observer has information of some kind.
Consequently, the account might be "true" or not.
In addition, as we shall see later, this approach is not
specific to the explanation of other people's behaviour,
since there is research indicating that the explanation of our
own actions can also be handled within the attributional
perspective.
The Work of Michotte and Heider on the Perception of
Causality
In tracing the development of attribution theory, however,
it is useful to go back to Heider and consider the influence
of Gestalt psychology and specifically certain experiments by
Michotte (1946) into "phenomenal causality" which
clearly influenced Heider's thinking. In the cited studies,
Michotte was primarily interested in perceptual processes,
notably visual perception. Within that historical context,
the word perception retained its classical meaning and was
considered to be distinct from cognition. It certainly had
none of the social-cognitive implications of more modern
usages as embodied in phrases like "interpersonal
perception". Nonetheless, Michotte's studies elegantly
illustrate the manner in which perception and cognition are
closely intertwined.
Michotte investigated the ways in which people perceived
causality. His experiments used visual stimuli consisting
of combinations of blobs, circles, squares and lines which
appeared to move in certain ways; Michotte achieving his
visual effects by means of revolving discs on which were
drawn distorted circles, only portions of which could be
observed through a slot. In one example, a small black square
would proceed across a plain visual field towards a second,
stationary, square. The first square would appear to strike
the second. After the apparent impact, the second square
would move away in the same direction whilst the first one
would stop. When viewing this and other similar visual
arrays, people would describe the events in causal terms. The
movement of the second square would be seen as caused by
the impact of the first square. In a similar way, other
stimuli would give rise to the phenomenological impression of
a causal chain of events when visual representations of
objects (usually geometrical shapes) appeared to strike each
other "causing" various kinds of reactive movement.
This impression of events as caused by "collisions"
or "rebounds" was sometimes very strong, and by
adapting and making use of certain Gestalt-type principles
such as contiguity, proximity and good continuation Michotte
was able to show how the perception of causality could be
enhanced or reduced in ways that were predictable by the
experimenter.
In conceptual terms it is not difficult to find
parallels between Kelley's attempts to define the nature of
social explanations in terms of his three-dimensional ANOVA
model, and Michotte's much earlier work to find a similar
interactive model to define the phenomenal experience of
causality in the visual mode, using Gestalt principles.
Importantly, at roughly the same time as
Michotte was working on phenomenal causality in the visual
mode, Heider was doing similar work with a social import to
it. In a study by Heider and Simmel (1944), subjects were
presented with visual stimuli of the type illustrated below
in Fig. 1.
 |
Fig. 1. Stimulus of the type
used in the Heider studies
|
In the example given, the small circle moved
around inside the square, followed closely by the large
triangle. From time to time the small circle bumped against
the sides of the square. Subsequently, the small triangle
(outside the square) moved into contact with the top
right-hand side of the square, and after a brief pause moved
away again. At this point, the upper section of the
right-hand side of the square opened, making a gap in the
perimeter as shown in the figure. The small circle then went
through the gap so created.
When viewing stimuli of this type, subjects who
were asked to describe what was happening gave explanations
which were causal, and which ascribed social motives
and intentions to the objects. The circle was the heroine,
pursued by the wicked villain (large triangle) from whom she
was trying to escape. Subsequently, the hero (small triangle)
saved the heroine by opening the door for her.
The reason for taking a step backwards to the
work of Michotte and Heider in the 1940's is simple. In the
examples cited above, the stimuli consisted of nothing more
than moving drawings of meaningless objects (meaningless in
the sense of having no particular referent) in a purely
visual display. There were no physical collisions, no
rebounds, no people, no pursuits, no villains or heroines and
so forth. None the less, when viewing such stimuli, people
produced causal accounts in the physical domain (action/
reaction) and in the social domain (pursuit, escape, rescue).
These facts can be summarised simply by saying that people
regularly and predictably see patterns of causality where
such causality does not exist. Alternatively, if we wish
to avoid the philosophical criticism that phenomenal
causality is the only type of causality there is (Hume
1739-40), we would have to qualify this by saying that people
regularly see physical and social causality in circumstances
where a 'scientific' account would ascribe no such
relationships.
Deriving from the above paragraph, we now see
that there is great scope for confusion when people view
objects that 'really do' knock each other over, or people who
'really do' chase each other about. In the early work of
Michotte and Heider we have little difficulty in realising
that the causal accounts provided are primarily psychological
constructions, rather than accounts of scientific causality;
mainly because we can see that the stimuli do not actually
warrant the latter type of description. Squares and
triangles, for example, cannot have motives and intentions.
Suppose however that the identical causal
account derives from circumstances in which real objects or
real people are involved. The tendency in this instance is to
see the causal account as in some sense 'real', simply
because such an account is possible given (our knowledge of)
the nature of the situation, which is coincidentally 'real'.
Consequently, the explanation offered looks feasible or
appropriate in these circumstances. In fact however, the
causal account may be identical to, and constructed from the
same elements as, that produced in response to artificial
stimuli. Viewing 'the real thing' does not invoke a different
explanatory process, nor does it guarantee a different or
more 'true' type of explanation. We have to conclude
therefore that the 'truth' of a causal account cannot be
inferred from looking at the circumstances surrounding it,
although it's salient features may well be predictable from
those circumstances.
It is worth stressing that, given the
quasi-logical nature of the psychological processes involved,
most such accounts will probably seem eminently plausible in
an appropriate context, without this in any way attesting to
the veridical value of the account; and different people
possessing different knowledge will produce different but
equally plausible accounts. For example, explanations of 'why
people use drugs' given by drug users may differ from
explanations given by non-drug users. Furthermore, as we
shall see in a later chapter, features of drug users
explanations may well be predictable from knowledge of the
extent and pattern of their drug use. However, their
explanations cannot be assumed to be qualitatively different
from other people's explanations, or to be more 'true',
simply by virtue of the fact that drug use is for them
'real'. Least of all is there any reason to presume that
their causal accounts of drug use are scientific where other
people's are social constructions.
As both Michotte and Kelley have implied,
causal accounts are constructed according to certain rules
which have no bearing on whether the account is ultimately
veridical or not. This principal remains intact, even if we
argue with Michotte or Kelley about the precise components
they use in their respective models. Accordingly, within the
constraints of a particular phenomenon, the investigation of
people's causal accounts of that phenomenon has nothing in
principle to do with the investigation of its causality as
conceptualised by 'science', and we cannot carelessly use the
one as a means of investigating the other.
Extending the Framework of Attribution
So far, a picture of attribution theory has been presented
which seeks to point out various differing approaches to the
psychological study of social explanation. Rather than being
a single entity, attribution theory is more a group of
theories held together by a common agenda within which
coherent strands may be discerned. However, the account is so
far limited in two ways.
Firstly, there are clearly a number of possible
solutions to the problem of deciding what the most important
dimensions of attribution are. One does not have to accept
Kelley's, or anyone else's, dimensions as definitive since
the basic principle of quasi-logical inference remains
unaltered even if changes are made to the components. Second
and more important, however, is the fact that classical
attribution theory concentrates on the ways in which the
inference process works; that is, on the manner in which
people derive their explanations. The problem of how those
explanations might relate to present or future actions has
remained unaddressed until more recently, and it is to these
two issues that we now turn.
