People have an innate need to understand the reasons that things happen. One of the three fundamental human needs according to self-determination theory is autonomy–the need to control the environment. An important part of control is understanding the causes for things. If you understand the cause, you can figure out a way to exert control. Attribution is about trying to understand causes, although often not correctly. There are underlying psychological processes at play that can lead us in the wrong direction. Attributions are important to understand, so we start with what is the definition of attribution in psychology?
The Need for Understanding
As we go through life, we strive to make sense of our surroundings. We learn what and who to trust, and what and who to be careful about. We learn what behavior is likely to have a favorable outcomes and what behavior is not. As children we develop a view of the world that enables us to function successfully, and avoid pitfalls that lead us to disaster. At work we learn what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior, codified as written policies. Professionals like accountants, lawyers and psychologists have codes of ethics and rules of practice. These all serve the important function of helping us navigate life successfully.
What Is the Definition of Attribution in Psychology?
An attribution is an explanation we tell ourselves for the cause of an event. If we are given a promotion, for example, we might attribute our success to our high level of motivation and great job performance. In psychology attributions are classified as either internal or external to a person. If my colleague receives a promotion, I might attribute it to their high work motivation and good job performance (internal) or to the fact that the CEO of the company is their father and so their supervisor gave it to them out of fear of negative consequences for not doing so (external).
We can also attribute causes to factors that are under someone’s control or to factors that are uncontrollable (luck or fate). How we react to someone’s success or failure is influenced by whether we feel it was controllable. If a piece of equipment an employee is using malfunctions, how their supervisor responds depends on whether the attribution of the malfunction is due to the employee’s negligence (internal and controllable) or to a lightning strike (external and uncontrollable). The employee will likely receive corrective action for their negligence, but support and well wishes for surviving a near-miss lightning strike.
Beware Premature Attributions
Attributions are a natural human reaction in seeking to understand the world, but we need be be careful in jumping to conclusions about events, particularly when they are important. Our immediate gut level reaction to learning of a work problem is to try to come to a fast remedy to fix it and prevent future occurrences. But keep in mind that our attributions are based on our past experiences and our biases. We need to guard against making up our minds too quickly, and should recognize that attributions are guesses–hypotheses about why an event happened. To be sure we need to collect evidence to test our attributions. If an employee makes a major mistake, we need to investigate what happened. Let’s say a sales representative loses a big client. If we like that employee, our tendency is to give them the benefit of the doubt, and make an external attribution. If we dislike them, we might be only too happy to make an internal attribution and assume they messed up. An investigation can determine the real cause of the lost client–was our sales rep unreliable and gave poor service, or did the competition undercut our prices so low that we would be unable to match?
One bias that affects judgment is hostile attribution bias. It is the tendency to assume when bad things happen that they were done by someone on purpose who intended the harm. In other words the attribution is internal (a person did it) and it is controllable (it was done on purpose), and of course that their intention was hostile, thus the term hostile attribution bias. It is a bias because this is the person’s default assumption–someone is hostile unless I know otherwise. Sometimes the person’s gut feeling might be correct–the person was out to get them, but other times it is completely wrong. The event really was an accident.
It is important that we understand what is the definition of attribution in psychology, because understanding attributions can be helpful in avoiding the pitfalls of premature conclusions. Attributions can provide a framework for thinking about causes, that is, we can ask if the cause is internal or external? Was the event controllable or due to luck? Knowing about attributions can help us think through possible explanations, and suggest the kinds of information we need to provide evidence-based conclusions before we take actions.
Image generated by DALL-E 4.0. Prompt: “Person sitting at a table in a coffee shop and in front of him is a spilled paper cup of coffee with coffee on the table. At the next table is a person looking at him and seeing the spilled coffee. She looks like she is thinking, with her chin resting on her hand.” “Make this in steampunk style.”
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