ATTRIBUTIONS AND PERSONALITY

According to Moskowitz, G. B. (2005) Human beings are always aggravated to allocate causes to their actions and behaviors. Humans are always giving a reason to and assign meaning to their behaviors’ in their own way this one of the important part of their personality. These reasons are also called as the attributers which helps the individual to portray the socially accepted behaviors any cultural context.

In social psychology, attribution is the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events. There are several models that explain the process of attribution which is called attribution theory [Kassin; Fein; Markus 2010]. Attributions are inferences that people formulate in relation to the causes of events and behavior. Citizens construct attributions in order to comprehend their experiences. Attributions strappingly persuade the way people intermingle and interrelate with others and themselves. Attributions are determined by other factors such as locus of causality, stability, globosity, controllability.

Types of Attributions

Researchers have classified attributions along two major magnitudes: internal vs. external and stable vs. unstable. By combining these two proportions of attributes, researchers can classify a particular attribution as being internal-stable, internal-unstable, external-stable, or external-unstable.

Internal vs. External

Attribution theory claims that the attributions in an individual and people make about proceedings and performance in different events resulting in different behavior can be classed as either internal or external. In an Internal, or dispositional, Attribution, people surmise that an event or a person’s behavior is due to personal factors such as personality traits, a person’s abilities, or feelings. In an External, or situational, Attribution, people conclude that a person’s behavior is due to situational factors such as a particular event, or climate.

Example: A Person’s car breaks down on the limited-access highway. If they believe that the collapse happened because of their unawareness about cars, they are making an internal attribution. If they believe that the crash happened because the car being old, they are making an external attribution.

Stable vs. Unstable

Researchers also distinguish between stable and unstable attributions. When people make a Stable Attribution, they conjecture that an event or behavior is due to stable, unchanging factors. When making an Unstable Attribution, they conclude that an event or behavior is due to unstable, temporary factors.

Example: if a person fails in his sociology or any term paper. If he/she attributes that they failing because of the fact that he always has bad luck, he is making a stable attribution. If he/she attributes the failing is because of the fact that he/she didn’t have much time to study that week, he/she is making an unstable attribution.

References:

Moskowitz, G. B. (2005). Social cognition: Understanding self and others. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Kassin; Fein; Markus (2010). Social Psychology (Eighth international ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-8400-3172-3.

Sanderson, Catherine (2010). Social Psychology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-471-25026-5.