Attribution theories: How people make sense of behavior.

explanations of behavior (i.e., answers to why questions); the second refers to inferences or ascriptions (e.g., inferring traits from behavior, ascribing blame to a person). What the two meanings have in common is a process of assigning: in attribution as explanation, a behavior is assigned to its cause; in attribution as inference, a quality or attribute is assigned to the agent on the basis of an observed behavior. Despite the connection between these phenomena, they have distinct psychological characteristics (Hamilton, 1998; Hilton, Smith, & Kin, 1995; Malle, in press). This chapter will focus on attribution as behavior explanation because it is a far-reaching cognitive and social phenomenon that is embedded in the larger human search for meaning (Malle, 2004). The discussion will begin with the undisputed founder of attribution work, Fritz Heider, then briefly visit Jones and Davis’s contribution, and move on to Harold Kelley’s theoretical model. Because many excellent reviews of the standard views on these theories are available (see note 1), I will spend relatively little time recounting them. My goal is rather to point out aspects of classic attribution theories that are not generally emphasized, highlight historical misunderstandings, and bring to light theoretical difficulties that have not been adequately addressed. In the second half of the chapter I then introduce an alternative theory of behavior explanations that builds on previous theories but tries to overcome their major difficulties.

[1]  E. Ross.  The Organization of Will , 1916, American Journal of Sociology.

[2]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .

[3]  H. Kelley.  The Analysis of Common Sense. , 1960 .

[4]  E. E. Jones,et al.  From Acts To Dispositions The Attribution Process In Person Perception1 , 1965 .

[5]  H. Kelley.  Attribution theory in social psychology , 1967 .

[6]  E. E. Jones,et al.  The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. , 1972 .

[7]  L. A. McArthur.  The how and what of why: Some determinants and consequences of causal attribution. , 1972 .

[8]  R. Nisbett,et al.  Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer , 1973 .

[9]  A. Kruglanski.  The endogenous-exogenous partition in attribution theory. , 1975 .

[10]  J. Harvey,et al.  New Directions in Attribution Research , 2018 .

[11]  L. Ross.  The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process1 , 1977 .

[12]  A. Buss,et al.  Causes and reasons in attribution theory: A conceptual critique. , 1978 .

[13]  A. Kruglanski.  Causal explanation, teleological explanation: On radical particularism in attribution theory. , 1979 .

[14]  J. Harvey,et al.  On problems with the cause-reason distinction in attribution theory. , 1979 .

[15]  Explanation and Social Interaction: Some Dialogues on Dialogue , 1981 .

[16]  Don C. Locke,et al.  Reasons and other causes: Their role in attribution processes. , 1982 .

[17]  George A. Quattrone.  Overattribution and unit formation: When behavior engulfs the person. , 1982 .

[18]  Miles Hewstone,et al.  Attribution Theory: Social and Functional Extensions , 1984 .

[19]  Adrian Furnham,et al.  Explanations and information search: Inductive and hypothesis‐testing approaches to arriving at an explanation , 1984 .

[20]  B. Weiner.  An attributional theory of motivation and emotion , 1986 .

[21]  W. Turnbull.  Everyday Explanation: The Pragmatics of Puzzle Resolution , 1986 .

[22]  Y. Trope.  Identification and Inferential Processes in Dispositional Attribution. , 1986 .

[23]  E. E. Jones.  Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior , 1987 .

[24]  B. Weiner,et al.  Perceiving the Causes of Success and Failure , 1989 .

[25]  R. D'Andrade.  A folk model of the mind , 1987 .

[26]  S. Read,et al.  Constructing causal scenarios: a knowledge structure approach to causal reasoning. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  D. Gilbert,et al.  On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. , 1988 .

[28]  Daniel T. Gilbert,et al.  Thinking lightly about others: Automatic components of the social inference process. , 1989 .

[29]  D. Sperber,et al.  Relevance: Communication and Cognition , 1989 .

[30]  A. L. McGill,et al.  Context effects in judgments of causation. , 1989 .

[31]  D. Hilton.  Conversational processes and causal explanation. , 1990 .

[32]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Social cognition, 2nd ed. , 1991 .

[33]  D. Gilbert,et al.  The trouble of thinking: Activation and application of stereotypic beliefs. , 1991 .

[34]  F. Försterling.  The Kelley model as an analysis of variance analogy: How far can it be taken? , 1992 .

[35]  J. Fodor.  A theory of the child's theory of mind , 1992, Cognition.

[36]  M. Fakhr El-Islam,et al.  Lay Explanations of Symptoms of Mental Ill Health in Kuwait , 1992, The International journal of social psychiatry.

[37]  B. Bower.  A Child's Theory of Mind , 1993 .

[38]  Roger Lamb,et al.  Attribution in conversational context: Effect of mutual knowledge on explanation‐giving , 1993 .

[39]  J. Perner.  Understanding the Representational Mind , 1993 .

[40]  C. Antaki.  Explaining and Arguing: The Social Organization of Accounts , 1994 .

[41]  D. Hilton,et al.  Processes of causal explanation and dispositional attribution. , 1995 .

[42]  B. Weiner.  Judgments of Responsibility: A Foundation for a Theory of Social Conduct , 1995 .

[43]  H. Wellman,et al.  Children Talk About the Mind , 1995 .

[44]  D. Medin,et al.  The role of covariation versus mechanism information in causal attribution , 1995, Cognition.

[45]  A. Leslie.  A theory of agency. , 1995 .

[46]  B. Malle.  Intentionality and explanation: A study in the folk theory of behavior. , 1995 .

[47]  Adam Morton,et al.  Folk Psychology is not a Predictive Device , 1996 .

[48]  E. Higgins,et al.  Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. , 1996 .

[49]  G. Reeder.  Dispositional Inferences of Ability: Content and Process , 1997 .

[50]  John McClure,et al.  For you can't always get what you want: When preconditions are better explanations than goals , 1997 .

[51]  B. Malle,et al.  The Folk Concept of Intentionality , 1997 .

[52]  Michael A. Becker.  Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles , 1998 .

[53]  Yoshihisa Kashima,et al.  The Category of the Mind: Folk Psychology of Belief, Desire, and Intention , 1998 .

[54]  Joel Cooper,et al.  Attribution and social interaction : the legacy of Edward E. Jones , 1998 .

[55]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  Group Entitativity and Social Attribution: On Translating Situational Constraints into Stereotypes , 1998 .

[56]  D. Hilton,et al.  Are goals or preconditions better explanations? It depends on the question , 1998 .

[57]  B. Malle,et al.  How People Explain Behavior: A New Theoretical Framework , 1999, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[58]  David R. Olson,et al.  Developing theories of intention : social understanding and self-control , 1999 .

[59]  Norbert Schwarz,et al.  Telling what they want to know: participants tailor causal attributions to researchers' interests , 1999 .

[60]  Laurence Goldstein,et al.  Moore’s Paradox , 2000 .

[61]  B. Malle,et al.  Conceptual structure and social functions of behavior explanations: beyond person--situation attributions. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[62]  J. J. Guajardo,et al.  How infants make sense of intentional action , 2001 .

[63]  R. Sutton,et al.  Covariational influences on goal-based explanation: an integrative model. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[64]  H. Wellman,et al.  Developing intentional understandings , 2001 .

[65]  Dare A. Baldwin,et al.  Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition , 2001 .

[66]  Bertram F. Malle,et al.  The distinction between desire and intention: A folk-conceptual analysis , 2001 .

[67]  B. Malle,et al.  How people explain actions performed by groups and individuals. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[68]  J. McClure.  Goal-based Explanations of Actions and Outcomes , 2002 .

[69]  Bertram F. Malle,et al.  Self and other in the explanation of behavior: 30 years later , 2002 .

[70]  Bertram F. Malle,et al.  Attributions as Behavior Explanations: Toward a New Theory , 2003 .

[71]  B. Malle.  How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social Interaction , 2004 .

[72]  D. Ames,et al.  Inside the mind reader's tool kit: projection and stereotyping in mental state inference. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[73]  D. Hilton.  Knowledge-Based Causal Attribution : The Abnormal Conditions Focus Model , 2004 .

[74]  D. Rosenthal.  Consciousness and mind , 2005 .

[75]  N. Haslam,et al.  Lay Expectations of Mental Disorder: A Test of the Folk Psychiatry Model , 2005 .

[76]  Siobhan Chapman.  Logic and Conversation , 2005 .

[77]  Sara Kiesler,et al.  Relationship effects in psychological explanations of nonhuman behavior , 2006 .

[78]  B. Malle,et al.  The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: a (surprising) meta-analysis. , 2006, Psychological bulletin.

[79]  Denis Hilton,et al.  10. Causal explanation: From social perception to knowledge-based causal attribution , 2007 .

[80]  B. Malle,et al.  Actor-observer asymmetries in explanations of behavior: new answers to an old question. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[81]  J. Uleman,et al.  Spontaneous inferences, implicit impressions, and implicit theories. , 2008, Annual review of psychology.

[82]  B. Malle.  Chapter 12 – The Fundamental Tools, and Possibly Universals, of Human Social Cognition , 2008 .

[83]  John Perry,et al.  Moore's paradox , 2008 .

[84]  C. Frith.  Social cognition , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[85]  R. Sorrentino,et al.  Handbook of motivation and cognition across cultures , 2008 .

[86]  C. Rees,et al.  “Enough is enough, I don’t want any audience”: exploring medical students’ explanations of consent-related behaviours , 2008, Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice.

[87]  K. Davis.  Book Review: An Overlooked Classic? Review of How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social Interaction , 2009 .

[88]  G. Reeder.  Mindreading: Judgments About Intentionality and Motives in Dispositional Inference , 2009 .

[89]  Bertram F. Malle,et al.  From Uncaused Will to Conscious Choice: The Need to Study, Not Speculate About People’s Folk Concept of Free Will , 2010 .