The Essence of Attribution Theory

there atomic number 18 many reasons why an individual behaves in a position delegacy. Correspondingly, there are numerous guesses a soul makes about the appearances and characteristics of an early(a). This is the onus of attri exception system. Since its training, attribution surmise has been applied to an array of disciplines. This facet of intelligence knowledge is not only of interest to social psychologists, but also to educators, sociologists, marketing professionals, arguement personnel, and those in the medical field.Attribution possibleness states that humans angle to give a causal explanation for someones manner, often by crediting both the situation or the persons disposition (Myers, 644). As such(prenominal), it requires three components an actor, behavior, and percipient. For example, if a driver swerves in front of others car, what is the explanation the latter will provide for the formers action? The observer may conclude that there was an obstac le in the road or that the actor has fallen ill. These two explanations credit situational causes to the behavior.What is more likely, however, is for the observer to associate the actors behavior to disposition, such as being a clumsy driver. The way in which an individual perceives another has important implications as it potentiometer commute subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Naturally, there are several possibilities why a person acts in a certain manner. Building on the example above, the actors behavior may be collectable to drunkenness or automobile mal drop deading. in that respect is a curious phenomenon in attribution theory.As alluded to above, research indicates a high occurence of undamental attribution error, which is the run awayency for observers, when analyzing anothers behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to misjudge the impact of person-to-person disposition (Myers, 644). An internal attribution claims that the actor was responsible for the event. utilise the ongoing example so, the observer will delegate the actors behavior to internal, persistent characteristics, such as being an aggressive driver.This is true even when other variables are introduced that clearly indicate situational influences. If the observer spots a deer quickly running to the periphery of the road, he is still likely to attribute the actors behavior as Attribution theory includes providing explanations for ones own behaviors. An individual who receives a failing grade on an examination may attribute this import to several reasons, most of which will be situational. He may bank the teacher is incompetent, the examination obscure, or the textbook poorly written.This is an illustration of self-seeking attributional bias which indicates a leanency to attribute successful outcomes to dispositional factors and unsuccessful outcomes o situational factors (Cardwell, 221). Self-serving attributional bias often helps an individual to rat ionalize an otherwise with child(p) situation. For example, if the individual who did not pass the examination admitted that he does not learn the material, this will likely lead him to feel uncomfortable about his intelligence or capabilities.To avoid this, he attributes the disaster to circumstances beyond his control, which relieves his self-importance of admitting a personal incompetency. It is nteresting to note that humans usually view anothers behavior as stemming from dispositional attributes, regardless of outcome or observable environmental variables, but then conversely attribute their own behaviors to dispositional influences in times of success and situational influences when the outcome is negative.Attribution theory has its origins in the 1950s with the pioneering drub of Fritz Heider his book The psychology of Interpersonal Relationships was instrumental in the development of this social psychology theory (Brown). He coined the term naive psychology which desc ribes the way in which laypeople utilize pieces of information to construct explanations of others behaviors. Edward Jones and Keith Davis systematic hypotheses about the perception of intention was promulgated in 1965 in the essay From Acts to Dipositions (Brown, 1).Expanding on Heiders work, Harold Kelley stated that people prove to function as naive scientists (Aronson, 118) and he added hypotheses about the factors that affect the formation of attributions consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus Brown, 1). Kelley published Attribution in Social Psychology in 1967 (Brown, 1). During the 1970s the field of social psychology was dominated by attribution theorists and researchers (Brown, 1).In the 1980s Bernard Weiner added to the knowledge and scope of attribution theory with his focus on achievement. He identified ability, effort, task difficulty, and pot as the most important factors affecting attributions for achievement (Attribution Theory, 1). Weiner added locus of contr ol, stability, and controllability to the lexicon of attribution theory. Weiners theory has been widely applied in education, law, clinical psychology, and the mental health domain (Attribution Theory, 1). Schanks work on the structure of knowledge, particulary in the the context of language understanding (Script Theory, 1) is intimately level(p) to attribution theory.In the 1990s attribution theory was applied to the health thrill field with the works of Lewis and Daltroy (Attribution Theory). Additionally, attribution theory applied to career development is provided by Daly (1996) who examined the attributions that employees held as to why they failed to receive romotions (Attribution Theory, 1). Most recently, this influential theory has been utilized in studying phenomena such as consumer behavior and advertising Naturally the applications of attribution theory, due to its pervasive and pliability, are limitless.Understanding why people behave in one way over another and how a n individual perceives others can lead to important developments in a sort of disciplines. Researchers have studied the different attribution attitudes of fe manlikes and males. Ones attribution expression and his comparable projection during counseling has been investigated. Seligman proposed an attribution model, which provides an explanation of learned helplessness (Schultz & Schultz). counterbalance the children of holocaust survivors have not escaped the grasp of attribution law of nature is affected by attribution theory in that it comes into play when judges, lawyers, and jurors attempt to understand why a person committed a crime. market and advertising specialists wish to know why consumers behave in a particular way and how their perceptions influence their consumption. Prudent managers seek insight into their employees perspectives and subsequent behaviors. Sociologists study how attributions affect the development of prejudices. The health care practices and attitud es of patients are of explicit importance to medical professionals.It appears the application of attribution theory to information applied science is a newly developing heavens of interest. With a growing feat of educational reforms, it seems attribution theory will be increasingly enjoin toward this area of humanity. In fact, educational professionals are eager to examine and agree the principles of attribution theory to the information process. Of particular interest to both educators and researchers are high- and low-achievers. Since 1960, hundreds of studies have contributed to understanding why some are highly prompt to achieve and and others are not (Tucker-Ladd, 1).Researchers have found that high achievers will start out rather than avoid tasks related to succeeding because they believe success is due to high ability and effort which they are confident of (Attribution Theory, 1). This means that failure is typically attributed to external variables, hich leaves thei r self-esteem intact. Low-achievers, on the other hand, avoid success-related chores because they tend to (a) doubt their ability and/or (b) assume success is related to risk or to who you know or to other factors beyond their control (Attribution Theory, 2).Therefore, when low-achievers experience success they tend to find it less rewarding than high-achievers because there exists no sense of personal influence over the outcome. Within the gifted and talented population of students, there is a segment of under-achievers. Under-achievers are those individuals in which a discrepancy mingled with ability and performance exists. Educators are oftentimes unable to effectively manage such students who exhibit above average intelligence and capabilities but who are, for whatever reason, not performing at levels that correspond to such abilities.Research indicates that attributions which then affect motivation are a common cause of such under-achievement. It is an intuitive statement to say that modifying ones attributions will then create changes in ones motivation. It logically ollows that increased motivation will lead to increased efforts. These mental phenomena are of particular interest to educators of gifted and talented under- achieving students as they can utilize such findings to increase performance.While some research has try to shed light on this particular educational occurrence, more investigation is necessary to obtain a fuller understanding. Furthermore, how such findings apply to the learning process is of utmost importance to educators that serve this subpopulation. Particular attention to the ttributional style differences between female and male gifted and talented students will alter educational personnel to more accurately attend to the needs of such learners.More specifically, the attributional style differences between middle school female and male gifted and talented under-achieving students and how this contributes to poor academic per formance is valuable area of educational and psychological research. The findings of such research will undoubtedly enable school personnel to more effectively attend to the needs of this subpopulation with the final end of aligning their performance with that of their ability.