What is attribution: examples of the phenomenon from real life

Attribution is a mechanism for explaining the reasons for other people's behavior. That is, attribution explains how we answer the question “why did he do this?”, what we rely on and what we are guided by.

Observations are not enough for a person - he is forced to “complete” the information he receives from them. It is not enough for us to know that the other person did not share something with us; we also need to draw a conclusion about his greed, that is, “complete” our understanding of the situation. Attribution accomplishes exactly this task.

Understanding the mechanism of attribution will help us avoid a number of mistakes in our explanations of other people's behavior, and will also contribute to a more conscious and accurate identification of these reasons.

Defensive attribution

The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term that refers to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of protecting himself from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attributions occur if a person witnessed a particular disaster. In such situations, attribution of responsibility and drawing of one's own conclusions will depend on the severity of the outcome of the failure and the levels of personal and situational similarity between the person and the victim. An example of a defensive attribution is the well-known hypothesis “good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.” Everyone believes this because they feel vulnerable in situations they cannot control. At the same time, it leads to blaming the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died as a result of a car accident, they assume that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and try to convince themselves that the accident would never happen to them. However, oddly enough, some people believe that positive events happen to them more often than to others, and negative ones, accordingly, less often. For example, a smoker believes that he is less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.

Number of channels

If you have very long chains, but one channel (for example, Google Ads) and one advertising campaign, then you can also use Last Click.

If you have one Google Ads channel, but a large number of advertising campaigns, then Last Click will not be suitable.

Working with attribution in a company is an evolutionary and living process. You cannot choose one MA for your whole life. This doesn't happen. It all depends on how your marketing develops. Today you work with one advertising channel, tomorrow – with another. And the day after tomorrow you launched some kind of comprehensive advertising campaign to intensively saturate the top of the funnel. And so on.

You must choose the right MA correctly and use it.

Varieties

Attribution in psychology is divided into three types. It is worth considering the types of attribution in more detail.

• Personal attribution means that a person is looking for the culprit of a particular situation. More often than not, the cause is a specific person.
• Comprehensive - in this case, a person is not interested in specific culprits; he is looking for the reasons for what is happening in external factors.
• Stimulus - a person blames an inanimate object. This happens more often if he himself is to blame. For example: the glass broke because it was standing on the very edge of the table.

The causal attribution effect helped reveal some facts. If an individual has to explain the good fortune of a stranger or his own personal problems, then incentive attribution is used.

But if there is a need to analyze the success of the individual himself and the failure of an outsider, then personal attribution is used. This indicates a peculiarity of the psychology of any person - we treat ourselves much more loyally than others. Such examples of attribution very clearly prove this fact.

Also of interest is the fact that usually, when talking about success, a person indicates himself as the main reason. But in unsuccessful business, circumstances are always to blame. The individual believes that he has achieved everything because he is very smart and hardworking, and if any failure occurs, then the reason for this was factors beyond the control of the individual.

We recommend: Accommodation in psychology

However, if a person talks about the successes of another person, then everything is the opposite. The other one was lucky because he is a suck-up, a weasel, and is on good terms with his bosses. But he is unlucky because he is lazy and not smart enough.

Social causal attribution is very clearly visible among organizational leaders when they need to characterize subordinates. There are long-standing biases at play here, and they are often formulaic. If management is asked to tell about the reason for an ineffective result, then the causal factor will always be internal. Always and everywhere, ordinary workers will be to blame for the decline in production.

And few will point out that the reason for the decline in production was insufficient funding or improper organization of labor. In such cases, there is a tendency to underestimate situational factors and greatly overestimate the capabilities of individual ones.

It can also be noted that managers most often do not take responsibility for any failures. When asked why they are so ineffective in their place, they will point to low financial support as the reason, but not their own oversight. However, if we are talking about success, then management, as a rule, takes full credit for this achievement.

Examples

For example, you take an exam and do well, but your friend fails. You can conclude that you are smart because you completed the task, but at the same time it is easy to assume that your friend did not succeed because he spent the whole night in some club and was simply not able to pass the material. Human psychology is designed in such a way that he will attribute a certain property to you as a result of successfully passing an exam, and vice versa to your friend.

Lee Ross experiment

The subject of this study, conducted in 1977, was the perception of others' intelligence. It turned out that we tend to overestimate it under conditions of social pressure.

Lee Ross recreated the events of his own life in an experiment. The exam he once had to take ended in failure for him: the examiners bombarded him with questions in which they themselves were obvious “experts.” Ross was in despair at his “ignorance” and in admiration at the “genius” of the examiners.

Six months later, he himself became a teacher and got the opportunity to “bring down” his students in the same way. One of them admitted that he experienced the same feelings during the exam as Ross did when he acted as the examinee.

After this, the psychologist decided to conduct a quiz experiment. The participants were divided into three groups: presenters, players and spectators. The first step was to ask the most difficult questions.

By the way, each of us can come up with such questions, based on our specialization. However, the quiz participants came to a different conclusion: they considered those asking questions to be much more erudite than those answering. Subsequent experiments showed that even very smart people are prone to similar conclusions.

A similar “halo effect” can be observed in life situations when we have to evaluate the intelligence of an interlocutor endowed with power. Usually such a person, be it a teacher, a boss or a high-ranking official, conducts a dialogue and asks “tricky” questions. We often attribute to him an outstanding intellect and feel an involuntary reverence for him.

Ross's experiments led to the following conclusions:

• people tend to attribute non-existent qualities to others based on individual aspects of behavior;
• It is impossible to form a correct judgment about a person based on one or more actions.

Fundamental attribution error

We usually attribute our successes to our own personal qualities, and our failures to external circumstances. When we judge others, exactly the opposite happens. If a friend achieves success, we tend to attribute this to fortunate external circumstances. And we will attribute the problems in our friend’s affairs to his personal qualities.

Only a few people think differently. Explaining a failure in a partner’s performance by circumstances, recognizing his talent, hard work, dedication, putting him on the same level with you, or even higher, is a task that is too difficult for many. Most of us overestimate ourselves and underestimate others.

This is understandable: if you don’t blame unfavorable situations, you will have to roll up your sleeves and work hard to improve yourself. And there are never too many people who want to “plow” - even for themselves. Thus, the attributional theory considers exaggeration of one’s own importance to be the main error of perception.

For clarity, let's consider a specific situation. A modest young man dares to talk to a beautiful girl on the street. However, the stranger was not delighted with either his stylish suit or his wit and sharply rejected his attempt to start a relationship.

The guy was shocked by the discrepancy between the girl’s “antics” and his expectations and cultural norms. After this failure, he will probably program himself with negative attitudes such as “all women are bitches”, “they are only interested in moneybags”. But the girl may have just been in a bad mood.

This example shows how important a correct explanation of the other person's motives is for the formation and maintenance of a relationship. Far-fetched reasons can be radically different from the true ones

Therefore, in a situation with a clear lack of information, it is better to once again clarify some details or ask again than to rely on your own imagination.

application

Attribution theory can be applied to juror decision making. Jurors use attributions to explain the reason for the intentions and actions associated with a defendant's criminal behavior. The attribution made (situational or dispositional) can influence a juror's punitiveness toward the defendant. When jurors attribute a defendant's behavior to a dispositional attribution they tend to be more punitive and more likely to find the defendant guilty and recommend the death sentence compared to life imprisonment.

Application

We apply all the above psychological terms and theories in real life. For example, a feeling of helplessness, “adding to” a story, an image of a person, criticism and self-criticism are all a consequence of one or another type of attribution. So, let's summarize. Attribution is the process of inferring the cause of events or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.

In clinical psychology

Attribution theory has had many applications in clinical psychology. Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale developed the depressive attributional style theory, arguing that people who tend to attribute their failures to internal, stable, and global factors are more vulnerable to clinical depression. The Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) was developed to assess whether individuals have a depressogenic attributional style. However, the ASQ has been criticized, with some researchers preferring to use a method called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE), in which an individual's routine work is analyzed to assess how vulnerable he/she is to a depressive attributional style.

learned helplessness

The concept of learned helplessness originated from animal studies in which psychologists Seligman and Stephen F. Mayer discovered that dogs had a classically conditioned reflex to an electric shock that they could not escape; subsequently, by not trying to escape they could avoid shock in a similar situation. They argued that learned helplessness applied to human psychopathology. In particular, people who attribute negative consequences to internal, enduring, and global factors reflect a view in which they have no control over the situation. It is suggested that this aspect of not trying to improve the situation worsens the negative mood, and can lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses.

Problems of mutual understanding

Trying to explain to ourselves the actions of people around us, to predict their behavior, we attribute our individual vision to their actions. We judge other people from the perspective of personal experience and level of culture. This is the phenomenon of causal attribution. The first word in this phrase is translated from Latin as “cause”, the second is “attribution”.

Scientifically speaking, causal attribution is the basis of interpersonal perception, which consists in interpreting the behavior and internal state of another person in the absence of real information about him. From this point of view, any dialogue is a process of mutual persuasion, a mutual imposition of opinions.

The luminary of the theory of causal attribution is considered to be the American psychologist F. Heider. A great contribution to the development of the problem of interpersonal perception was made by his colleagues - Americans F. Fiedler and G. Kelly, as well as Canadian Lee Ross.

Attribution theory

It attempts to explain how and why ordinary people reach certain conclusions, as well as how they explain events and their causes.

1. Fritz Heider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to understand the social world, they tend to see cause-and-effect relationships even where there are none. However, nevertheless, the scientist put forward two main theories of the emergence of attribution:

• when we explain the behavior of others, we try to build on internal attributions, such as personality traits, for example, we associate a person’s behavior with his naivety or reliability;
• When we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to rely on external (situational) attributions.

2

Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people place special emphasis on intentional behavior (as opposed to random or mindless behavior). This theory explains the process of creating internal attribution

That is, in their understanding, attribution is the commission of certain actions due to the connection between the motive of a person’s behavior and the behavior itself.

3. Harold Kelly's (1967) covariance model is the most famous attribution theory. He developed a logical model for assessing a particular action, which should be attributed to one characteristic: a person - to the internal one, and the environment - to the external one. The term “covariation” means that a person has information from several sources, which he received at different times and in different situations, as a result of which he draws a conclusion about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that influence our judgments:

• consensus;
• distinctiveness;
• subsequence.

So we see two events happening at the same time, and therefore we believe that one causes the other. This explanation of the causes of events is called nothing less than social attribution. Each of us can observe this phenomenon in everyday life.

Use of attribution in psychology

We use all the theories and psychological terms described above in real life. For example, “adding to” a story, a feeling of helplessness, a person’s image, self-criticism and criticism are a consequence of a certain type of attribution. So, here's the result.

Attribution is the process of inferring behavior or causes of events due to human curiosity or when trying to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.

We tried to give the most complete definition and concept of the term attribution, to reveal its essence, types, features of use

Background

Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is often described as the early 20th century "father of attribution theory".

In a 1920s dissertation, Heider addressed the problem of phenomenology: why do perceivers attribute properties such as color to perceived objects when these properties are mental constructs? Heider's answer is that the perceptual attribute that they "directly" sense—vibrations in the air, for example—to an object, they interpret as conditioning those sense data. "The perceiver is confronted with sensory data and thus sees the perceived object as 'there' because they attribute the sensory data to underlying causes in the world."

Heider extended this idea of ​​attributions about people: "motives, intentions, feelings... basic processes that manifest themselves in overt behavior."

What is attribution

In psychology, attribution is the cognitive process of explaining the behavior of other people and one's own actions. It is mainly expressed in explaining the actions of others through one’s own judgments, since many qualities cannot be perceived directly by social perception through direct observation, but are attributed to them.

Attribution is an attempt to interpret some object, its actions, to understand the motives of behavior in the conditions of a lack of information using conjecture. Attribution is a cognitive process that occurs in the lives of millions of people and is studied by social psychology. In attributional studies, compared with studies of one person’s perception of another, there is an increase in the level of intelligence of the phenomena being mastered.

The simplest classification of attributions is divided into dispositional and situational.

There is such a psychological term as the defensive hypothesis, it refers to a system of beliefs belonging to an individual who has the function of protecting himself from external anxiety. Defensive attributions usually occur when a person witnesses a horrific scene. Attributions of responsibility in such situations, drawing personal conclusions, will relate to the level of severity of failure and the degree of internal and situational similarity between the person and the victim.

Many people know examples of defensive attribution, for example, the well-known hypothesis that says that good things happen only to good people, bad things happen to bad people. There are people who believe in this because they feel vulnerable and unable to control the situation completely. This leads to reproaches from others, even in the case of the tragic situation of the victim herself.

So, people may hear that someone was beaten by hooligans, they begin to think that if he had not walked where he shouldn’t, or given a reason, he would have been safe. Or they heard the news about a car accident, they begin to attribute all the blame to the driver (for example, he was drunk), while making them assure themselves that this will not happen to them.

People often believe that positive events happen to them more often than others, and therefore negative events happen less often.

Examples of attribution: a heavy smoker thinks that he has a much lower chance of getting cancer than other smokers.

How to keep attribution

Since this phenomenon is an ordinary part of communication, as well as a protective mechanism of the psyche, there is no point in getting rid of it completely. But there are a number of rules to reduce the impact of this phenomenon on communication:

• if attribution arose as a defense mechanism, then do not resist it. For example, a person suddenly jumped out at you from around the corner. The subconscious will work clearly, and you will pull back;
• When meeting someone, always be friendly, no matter what emotions the person evokes in you. The first impression can be deceiving, but your opponent will remember your communication features for a long time;
• Do not discuss other people's appearance and actions. Everything is subjective. You may not have time to wash your hair today, but that doesn't mean you're untidy. Perhaps something happened or the children took more time than usual;
• do not answer or think for another person. For example, your husband was in no mood all evening and was reluctant to talk to you. You immediately figured out that he doesn’t love you, is angry about something, etc. In fact, maybe he had trouble at work or something hurts.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: Pexels
When communicating and getting to know each other, remember that the other person initially has a different life situation, which may not correspond to what you are used to living with. Therefore, the motives, thoughts, actions of this person will be different from yours and this is normal.

Of course, the technique of our communication is laid down from an early age and develops throughout life. Therefore, work on the peculiarities of perception and further interaction with people will not be one day. First of all, try to remember what your first impression was when meeting old friends. Perhaps it was not true.

Thus, attribution as a perceptual feature is important to understand. Knowing the main mistakes, you will not make them in communication and will be able to build good communications.

Examples of causal attribution

Any of us feels discomfort if we cannot explain something to ourselves. A holistic picture of the world collapses if at least one event is left without interpretation:

• “Well, why has he been gone for so long?” - the young lover suffers;
• “What does he want from me?” — the subordinate is tormented over the solution to the boss’s remark;
• “What will they do this time?” - the teacher thinks with caution when going to a lesson in a “difficult” class.

The hero of each of these situations tries to imagine what is on the other person's mind. The problem is always the same - a lack of facts. And then the imagination turns on - thinking through, completing the picture, bringing it to logical comprehension.

The main assistant in this process is personal life experience.

Research by psychologists has shown that people’s reactions to habitual and non-standard patterns of behavior are ambiguous. If, for example, students expecting a new geographer teacher are presented with him as a good specialist, they are unlikely to tune in to an interesting lesson. If the children are warned that their future teacher is a tourist, a bard and a master of sports in rowing, then the children will gather in the classroom during recess in anticipation of an unusual lesson.

Locus of control

This concept is inextricably linked with causal attribution. Within it, a person attributes his failures or successes exclusively to external or exclusively to internal factors. This results in a kind of double standard. For example, a student received a low grade on an exam. Within this situation, locus of control can manifest itself in two ways:

1. I didn't prepare much for the exam, didn't think much about it, and that's why I got a low grade. I will definitely improve and start learning tickets right now.
2. The teacher who disliked me from the very beginning is to blame for the low grade. And the ticket was the most difficult of all. I don't deserve a low rating

How can you get rid of locus of control? The only advice: take full responsibility for everything that happens to you. Even if external factors really influenced the result.

Locus of control is the characteristic ability of an individual to attribute his or her successes to

To change your locus of control, you must first get rid of the victim syndrome. Take full responsibility even if external factors really greatly influenced the result.

Conclusion

It is very important to avoid causal attribution, especially when it ruins your life and leads to trouble. Stop your flow of thoughts for a moment and understand the reason for the behavior of a particular person - this is usually enough to avoid making sudden conclusions. This will improve your observation skills and teach you to empathize with others.

In addition, you should understand that there is no problem in attributing your failures to external factors, and your success to internal ones (especially if it is deserved). Just don’t make a blind habit out of it, but look at the situation.

We wish you good luck!

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Key words:1Cognitive science

Attribution Types

1. Interpersonal relationships. When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you probably want to tell it as interesting and engaging as possible. For what? So that your friends will draw a positive conclusion about you.
2. Forecasting. If your car was totaled, you may be able to attribute the crime to the car being in the wrong place. As a result of this event, you will not leave your car in that same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
3. Attribution of cause (so-called explanatory) helps us understand the world around us. Some people tend to have an optimistic explanation of events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.

The need for attribution

The information that can be obtained through observation is insufficient. It is not enough for a person to fully interact with what is happening. Therefore, such information needs to be “completed”.

Everything happens to predict the actions of the individual of interest in the future. Attribution can be made by a team or an individual.

It can be difficult to understand someone's behavior. For this there is not enough sensitivity, knowledge in psychology or simply information. As a result, other people's behavior is subject to speculation.

This is the fundamental fallacy of causal attribution. Common mistakes in the attribution process

Theoretical and empirical studies of causal attribution have identified several different tendencies in the field of this process that are characteristic of most people who make causal attributions. These tendencies have been called typical causal attribution errors.

In addition to the principles of amplification and devaluation highlighted by G. Kelly (see paragraph 3.2.), the following typical errors of causal attribution are distinguished:

The fundamental error of causal attribution is the dependence of causal attribution on the position of the observer: when explaining someone else’s behavior, the reasons for the behavior are more often attributed to circumstances (situational causation), when explaining one’s own behavior, the reasons are more often attributed to personal characteristics (personal causation). The reasons for the fundamental errors of causal attribution include the following factors: The use of personal causation makes the behavior of others more understandable and predictable, which corresponds to the motives of causal attribution; The reason for the behavior is attributed to the object of perception and attention: “For the observer, the external environment is constant and stable, but the actions of the author are changeable and incomprehensible, which is why he pays attention to them first of all. For the author, his actions are planned and constructed, and the environment is unstable, therefore it concentrates his attention on itself.” Those

the fundamental error of causal attribution is associated with the characteristics of mental processes (perception and attention), namely with the psychological characteristics of the perception of “figure” and “ground”; “The illusion of control” is a person’s exaggeration of his own role in the situation in which he finds himself involved, due to the fact that the very fact of participation in some event makes us feel (often without reason) our ability to influence its course and results.

Egocentric, or projective attribution error, or error of false agreement - when explaining the behavior of others, a person often proceeds from his own needs and motives: projecting the behavior of another onto himself, he is guided by how he himself would act in such a situation. “The error of false consent also manifests itself in cases where one’s own meanings are invested in the actions of another person: if I acted this way, it would only be for the reason...” The egocentric attribution error is associated with the phenomenon of projection, if we use the terms of the psychoanalytic school, or generalization, if follow the terminology of behaviorism. In paragraph 4.3. the identification mechanism will be described, which is a consequence of projection (generalization) and serves as the basis for the egocentric error of causal attribution. Defensive causal attribution error. This typical mistake manifests itself in situations of explaining the reasons for obtaining the results of any activity. A person interprets unsuccessful results of his activities as external and unstable factors, and successful ones as stable and internal ones. When explaining the achievements of others, on the contrary, the reasons for positive performance results are attributed to circumstances, and the reasons for other people’s failures are attributed to personality characteristics. “If we are talking about me personally, then success is the result of my personal titanic efforts and abilities, and failure (happens to everyone!) is a consequence of unfortunate circumstances. If we are talking about something else, then minor success can be attributed to him personally - he deserved it, and great success - a coincidence of circumstances, luck... Only if it is known how much effort a person spent to achieve the result, the trend can change slightly.” The counter-defensive causal attribution error is a phenomenon that is essentially the opposite of the defensive attribution error. Counter-defensive attribution manifests itself in conditions of publicity: the reasons for one’s own achievements and other people’s failures are attributed to circumstances, and one’s own failures and other people’s achievements are explained by the influence of personal factors.

Defensive and counter-defensive errors of causal attribution are associated with psychological defense of the individual and the need for self-esteem. Defensive attribution allows you to maintain a positive self-esteem as such, and counter-defensive attribution prevents criticism from the outside, and thereby also serves to maintain a positive attitude towards yourself.

Causal attribution theories

There are only two of them.

Jones and Davis Correspondence Theory

In 1965, scientists Jones and Davis proposed that intentional behavior plays an important role in people. At the same time, thoughtless or spontaneous behavior is of practically no value. This theory helps to understand how the internal type of causal attribution arises.

Internal attributes provide information that allows one to make predictions about how a person will behave. Scientists call this phenomenon “correspondent inference.” This is a state in which an individual thinks that the behavior of others is determined by the properties of their personality.

Why do people make “correspondent conclusions”? Jones and Davis identified several reasons:

1. Choice. It is traditionally believed that actions depend on internal factors.
2. Spontaneous or intentional behavior. The first is related to external factors and circumstances. And the second is with personality.
3. Social desirability. Example: you saw a man sitting on the floor. There are many free chairs in the room. Inconsistency, isn't it? But such behavior is a manifestation of individuality.
4. Hedonic relevance. A condition in which a person purposefully either harms you or benefits you.

Another reason is personalism. The individual believes that the behavior of another person should somehow affect him. At the same time, he believes that it is dictated by the personal characteristics of the opponent, and not by external factors.

Kelly covariance model

People started talking about Kelly covariance in the 60s of the last century. It is considered to be the most popular theory of causal attribution. The scientist tried to figure out whether actions should be determined by internal motives or external factors.

The word “covariation” itself means that a person has information from several sources at once. He obtained observations at different time periods and in different situations. This helps to see both the effect itself and its causes.

According to Kelly, in the process of searching for the reasons for the behavior of people around him, a person uses 3 types of evidence:

1. Consensus. It is a measure of the extent to which people act similarly in similar circumstances. Imagine two friends. The first, going to lunch with the second, always smokes. If the second one also does this, there is a high consensus in his behavior. Otherwise, consensus is low.
2. Distinctiveness. It is also a measure of the extent to which a person's behavior does not change in similar situations. Let's go back to the friends example. If the first man smokes only in the company of friends, he has high distinctiveness. If always, then low.
3. Consistency. A degree that shows that a person behaves the same way every time he finds himself in a certain situation. If the man in the example smokes only in the presence of friends, consistency is high. Under special circumstances - low.

Let's give an example. Imagine a group of young people who have gathered to watch a comedy show. The hero's name is Andrey. He laughs at the participants' jokes. Consensus will be high if the rest of the company laughs too. Highly distinctive - Andrey likes the jokes of an individual speaker. High consistency - the hero constantly laughs at the stories of his favorite comedian.

If everyone in the company laughs at the same participant in the show as Andrey, this is external attribution. People are having fun because the comedian is performing really well. Internal attribution occurs when:

• the hero is the only one who likes the comedian;
• laughs at the jokes of all the speakers;
• constantly laughs at a certain comedian's jokes.

It turns out that Andrey just likes to have fun.

There is one caveat. It is not always possible to draw such conclusions. You may not have all the information you need to understand the root cause of a person's behavior.

Let’s say that you practically don’t know Andrey described above, but you find yourself in the same company with him. You cannot be sure of the consistency of his behavior. And in this situation, a person behaves in 2 ways. The first is that the number of reasons needed to explain someone's behavior increases. Second, the number of sufficient reasons increases.

Imagine that an athlete fails a drug test. There may be 2 reasons for this: either he accidentally took a prohibited drug, or he wanted to deceive. But we can add one more reason for what happened: the athlete himself was deceived.

Lecture “Social attribution”

Lecture 5. Social explanation

Questions:

1. Attribution as a process of explaining the causality of what is observed.
2. Basic theories of attribution.
3. Attribution errors.

1. Attribution as a process of explaining the causality of the observed

We don't just want to know how others behave; we also want to understand why they do this. Typically, we want to understand what attitudes, personality traits—sometimes what situational factors—underlie people's behavior.

The process by which we try to obtain this information is called attribution.

Attribution refers to our attempts to understand the reasons for people's behavior and, in some cases, the reasons for our own behavior.

The nature of attribution

Fritz Heider is called the father of attribution theory. In Heider's works he speaks of "naïve" or common sense psychology. In his opinion, people try to understand the behavior of others by piecing together the information they have until they come to a reasonable explanation or see the reason. Heider was interested in what and why people thought was reasonable and reasonable, and how they came to their conclusions.

One of Heider's most significant insights was a simple dichotomy: when trying to explain the behavior of others—say, figuring out why a father just cursed at his son—we can create one of two attributions in our minds.

We can create an internal attribution by deciding that the reason for the father's behavior lies in himself - in his disposition, personality, attitudes or character - such an explanation attributes the behavior to internal causes.

For example, we might decide that the father does not know how to raise children and uses poor teaching methods.

We can imagine an external attribution if we decide that the reason for the behavior was the situation itself.

For example, if the son just stepped onto the road and did not look around, this explanation attributes the father’s behavior to external causes - the actions of the child.

Therefore, our impression of the father will differ depending on the type of attribution we choose. If we interpret this person's behavior in terms of internal attribution, we will develop a negative image of him. If we are guided by external attribution, we will be able to understand only a little in the behavior of this person - after all, most parents in this situation would do the same if their child stopped obeying and went out onto the road. These are two sharply different points of view.

Heider's other significant contribution was his finding that we almost always prefer internal attributions over external ones. Despite the fact that any type of attribution is possible, we are more inclined to believe that the reasons for a person’s actions lie in himself, in his character. Why - we will try to answer this question during the lecture.

2. Theories of causal attribution

The first of the external attribution theories, Jones and Davis' (1965) theory of correspondent inference , examines how we use information about other people's behavior to infer that they have different personality traits or hold different attitudes.

In other words, this theory examines how we, by observing the actions of other people, determine their personality characteristics (dispositions), which manifest themselves in different situations and remain stable over time.

According to Jones and Davis's theory, we solve this problem by focusing our attention on certain types of actions—those that seem most informative to us.

First, we consider only those actions that seem to us to be freely chosen, and ignore those that were in one way or another imposed on the person we are interested in.

Secondly, we pay great attention to actions that end in an atypical, characteristic way.

Third, we pay more attention to actions that are socially undesirable or unusual for most people.

The second theory is the theory of attentional resources of Gilbert, Maloney

The concepts of social thinking we have considered generally assume that a person has limited cognitive resources—the ability to process social information. If we devote attention to one cognitive task, we have fewer resources to perform other tasks.

When we draw conclusions about a person's personality and attitudes based on his behavior, we actually perform three different tasks.

First, we define individual behavior (categorize it) - we decide what it is.

Secondly, we characterize this behavior (characterize it) - we use it in order to come to a conclusion about the specific character traits of a person.

Third, we adjust our inferences about that person's character in light of information about the situation in which we observe his behavior.

For example, suppose we see a motorist talking to a traffic policeman who is standing next to the car. We recognize this situation as a specific type of interaction between an officer and a driver who has just been pulled over. Suppose we also notice that this person behaves ingratiatingly - one might even say that he is groveling before the policeman.

Initially, you are ready to conclude that the driver is very cowardly (characteristic).

Then, realizing that the driver is trying to avoid a fine, we can make adjustments to this conclusion and abandon such a definite conclusion.

We usually have sufficient cognitive resources to perform all three tasks.

However, in some cases this is not possible: other people's behavior may be unclear, making it difficult for us to tell exactly what they are doing, or we simply do not have enough time to make the necessary adjustments. In such situations, we fully use our limited resources to solve the first two tasks - categorization and characterization; the remaining resources are not enough to correct the initial conclusions about the person. As a result, we may make mistakes.

Experimental studies have shown that if the observer has little opportunity to correct his initial conclusions, such correction will be negligible.

Kelly's covariance theory of attribution.

We want to know why other people behave the way they do, or why events end a certain way. It is important for us to know this because only if we understand the reasons for other people's actions can we hope to make sense of the social world.

It is obvious that people's behavior is determined by many reasons. Therefore, to make things easier for ourselves, we often start with a preliminary question: Is other people's behavior primarily caused by internal (their personality, motives, intentions), external factors (some factors in the social or physical world), or a combination of these?

For example, you may wonder whether you got a lower grade than you expected because you didn't prepare well enough (internal reason), because the questions were too difficult (external reason), or perhaps both factors were at play.

Kelly's theory helps us understand how this initial attribution occurs.

According to Kelly's theory, in our attempts to answer the "why" question about other people's behavior, we focus on information related to three main aspects.

First, we look at consistency—how similar the person of interest and other people's responses to certain stimuli or events are. The greater the number of people reacting in the same way, the greater the consistency.

Second, we look at consistency—how typical is the response of the person we are considering to a repeated stimulus or event.

Third, we look at differentiation—whether that person responds similarly to other stimuli or events.

According to Kelly's theory, we tend to attribute other people's behavior to internal causes when consistency and differentiation are low and consistency is high.

On the contrary, we usually attribute the behavior of others to external causes in cases where all three aspects - consistency, consistency and differentiation - are at a high level.

We attribute other people's behavior to a combination of internal and external factors when consistency is low and consistency and differentiation are high.

For example, imagine that a student in one of his classes suddenly stands up, angrily shouts at the teacher and then throws a large ripe tomato at him. Why did the student behave this way? Was he driven by external or internal reasons? Is this student a person with a wild temperament and oddities? Or is it due to an external reason - did he react to something the teacher did or said?

According to Kelly's theory, your decision (as an observer of the scene) will depend on information regarding the three factors listed above.

First, assume that the following conditions hold.

1. No other student shouts or throws tomatoes (low consistency).

2. You have seen this student fly into a rage in these classes under other circumstances (high level consistency).

3. You have seen this student get angry outside of class—for example, in response to slow waiters or traffic jams (low-level differentiation).

Thus, in this case, Kelly's theory suggests that the student exploded due to internal reasons: he is violent, ill-mannered and does not belong here.

Now suppose that the conditions were as follows.

1. Several other students also shouted at the teacher (high level of agreement).

2. You have seen this student fly into a rage in these classes under other circumstances (high level consistency).

3. You have not seen this student lose his temper outside of class (high level differentiation).

Under these conditions, the student's behavior can be attributed to external causes - perhaps the arrogant or unreasonable behavior of the teacher.

However, Kelly's theory has its limitations.

When is the analysis Kelly describes typically used?

First of all, under two conditions:

1) when people are faced with unexpected events - those that they cannot explain using the information they already have about a particular situation or person,

2) when they encounter unpleasant results or events.

Thus, Kelly's theory appears to be an accurate account of causal attributions as they occur. It may not describe people's behavior in many situations, simply because people don't try to.

3. Basic attribution errors.

Attribution provides the basis for certain biases—tendencies that can lead us to make more serious mistakes about the causes of other people's behavior. Let's look at these errors.

1. Correspondence error: overestimation of the role of dispositional (personal) reasons.

Let's imagine that you witnessed the following scene. A man comes to a meeting an hour late. As he enters, he drops his papers on the floor. When he tries to collect them, his glasses fall and break. Later he spills coffee on his tie.

How could you explain these events?

It is likely that you will conclude: “This person is disorganized and clumsy.”

Is this attribution accurate? Maybe; but there is also the possibility that this person was late due to the inevitable traffic jams, dropped his papers because they were printed on slippery paper, and spilled his coffee because the cup was too hot.

The fact that you are less likely to consider potential external causes illustrates what Jones (1979) called the correspondence bias—the tendency to explain other people's actions as consistent with their character even in the presence of situational causes.

This bias has been found in so many different situations that many social psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error—we tend to perceive other people's behavior based on what "type of person" they are, rather than according to the many external factors that influence them. which could influence their behavior.

Causes of Compliance Error.

1. When we observe the behavior of another person, we usually focus our attention on his actions, and the context of the behavior often fades into the background. As a result, it seems to us that it is a person’s mood that explains his behavior, and not the situation.

2. We notice situational reasons, but do not pay enough attention to them during attribution - lack of attention - time.

3. People often make mistakes about possible situational causes of behavior due to limited information processing capacity. Understanding situational causes requires large cognitive resources, and people are accustomed to making inferences about the personal characteristics or social attitudes of other people with minimal or even no effort.

In general, the process of forming attributions consists of two stages. First, people form internal attributions and think that a person's behavior is caused by himself.

They then try to reconcile this attribution with the person's situation. People often weakly adjust their opinions at this second stage.

This fact suggests an interesting conclusion: if people are distracted or busy when trying to explain the behavior of another person to themselves, they sometimes do not move to the second stage and thus form an even more radical version of internal attribution. Why? Because the first step (formation of internal attribution) occurs quickly and spontaneously, and the second step (coordination with the situation) requires effort and conscious attention from the person

Thus, distracted or cognitively busy observers are more likely to make the fundamental attribution error because they stop at the first step—forming a dispositional attribution—and do not move on to the next, second, more effortful step—searching for possible situational explanations.

This error is of great importance.

For example, even knowing the existence of situational forces that influenced the fact that a person ended up in a group of homeless people (insufficient educational opportunities, broken family life, etc.), people still continue to perceive representatives of these groups as “bad”, “ lazy" or "stupid" and therefore guilty of their situation.

In this case, the fundamental attributional error can have serious social consequences, which we will discuss in Chapter 6.

Interestingly, our tendency to attribute dispositional reasons to other people's actions usually weakens with time after the action has taken place.

For example, Berger and Pavelich's (1993) study found that explanations for election results change over time: In the days following the election, approximately two-thirds of explanations for election results were personal in nature. However, after two to three years the situation changes: two-thirds of the explanations were based on situational factors.

That is, over time, the underlying attribution error disappeared. Ultimately, it turns out that our attributions often change over time, and as a result, the tendency to explain other people's actions in terms of internal causes may disappear altogether over time. Such changes can be considered useful when such changes lead us to more accurate conclusions about the causes of other people's behavior.

The Role of Culture in the Fundamental Error

Miller, 1984: asked representatives of two cultures - Indians and Americans to present various examples of behavior and actions performed by their acquaintances and explain the reason. American participants tended to evaluate behavior dispositionally because of its nature, without considering the context of the situation. On the contrary, Indians preferred to explain the actions of their acquaintances in terms of the situation.

Thus, Western culture's emphasis on democracy and individual freedom encourages us to exaggerate the role of dispositional attributions and downplay the importance of the situation. Eastern culture emphasizes group membership, interdependence, and conformity to group norms.

One recent study by Fiona Lee, Mark Hallahan, and Thaddeus Herzog (1996) compared attributions made in newspaper articles in the United States and Hong Kong. As in previous experiments, the researchers hypothesized that articles in American newspapers would interpret events from a dispositional perspective, while articles in Hong Kong newspapers would explain the same events from a situational perspective. At the same time, psychologists compared different types of articles - editorial notes and sports news reviews.

Psychologists have hypothesized that writing editorial notes will require more effort than reviewing sports events for the following reasons: Compared to sports commentators, editors deal with more vague and controversial topics; their themes can be interpreted from different perspectives; and they are directly or personally responsible for the thoughts they express.

Second, because editorial notes are particularly difficult, the researchers hypothesized that the second step in the two-step attribution process was relevant primarily to the authors of editorial notes.

Thus, the initial tendency toward a dispositional approach in the United States and a situational approach in Hong Kong should be less pronounced in editorial notes because journalists in America spent more energy thinking about situational reasons, while writers in Hong Kong had more difficulty imagining possible dispositional reasons.

The hypothesis was confirmed. Simple sports reviews revealed cultural biases: authors from the United States wrote about football, forming dispositional attributions, while authors from Hong Kong were prone to situational attributions, characterizing events from the football life of the country. However, when the editorials were examined, it became apparent that authors from both countries had taken a second step in forming attributions. They adjusted their original tendency (for the authors from the USA - dispositional; for the authors from Hong Kong - situational) and also included the opposite type of attribution. Editorial authors from the United States tended to make less dispositional assessments, while authors from Hong Kong were less willing to interpret events from a situational perspective.

Thus, culture influences observers' approach—whether it is overtly dispositional (that is, the observer will commit a fundamental attribution error) or overtly situational. However, cognitive efforts can bring such radical attributions to a more moderate, mixed level, then we see the second stage of the attribution process, which is cross-cultural.

2. Observer error or the “actor-observer” effect: you fell yourself; I was pushed.

The attribution error refers to our tendency to attribute the causes of our own behavior to situational factors and the causes of other people's behavior to dispositional (internal) factors.

That is, when we see a person trip and fall, we usually attribute the incident to his clumsiness. If we ourselves fall, we are more likely to attribute it to situational reasons: ice on the sidewalk or slippery shoes. This “skew” in attribution is known as the actor-observer effect.

In a series of five experiments, Malle and Knobe (1997) showed that the actor-observer distinction arises depending on the type of behavior people are trying to explain. Their systematic research suggests that, as agents, people tend to explain unintentional or unobservable behavior. In short, our own intentional and public behavior intuitively seems rational to us because we ourselves are the cause of it, but our unintentional and private actions force us to wonder what exactly caused them.

In their role as observers, people typically have to explain the intended and observed actions of others. Their thoughts and reasoning disappear from our field of vision.

As a result, we are quite aware of many situational factors that influence our own behavior, but we are less aware of such factors when it comes to the actions of other people.

Thus, we tend to perceive our own behavior as stemming primarily from situational causes and the behavior of other people as stemming primarily from their personality traits, or dispositions.

The error of self-justification: “I am capable; lucky you".

Let's assume that you are writing a final test paper for one of the courses you took. When you get it back, you find the following comment from the teacher: “Excellent work - one of the best I have seen in several years. 10+". To what do you attribute this success?

If you're like most people, you'll attribute it to internal reasons—your high level of ability, the effort you put into writing the paper, and so on.

Now imagine that when you got your job back, it said this: “Terrible job—one of the worst I've seen in years. 1-". How will you interpret this result?

It is likely that you will try to focus on external (situational) factors - the difficulty of the assignment, your teacher's inability to understand what you were trying to say, the fact that your teacher has prejudices against you, etc.

This tendency to attribute our own positive results to internal causes and negative ones to external factors is called the self-justification fallacy; it is general in its manifestations and effective in its results.

Richard Lau and Dan Ra (1980) analyzed the explanations given by professional athletes and coaches for why they or their team won or failed. Explaining their victory, athletes and coaches attached special weight to the quality of the team and players' performance. 80% of the attributions they made reflected the intrinsic quality factors of the athletes. Failures and defeats, as a rule, were attributed to extraneous factors.

Why does this shift in attribution occur?

Several explanations have been put forward, most of which fall into two categories: cognitive and motivational.

The cognitive model (Ross, 1977) suggests that the self-justification bias is based primarily on different ways of social processing: we attribute positive outcomes to internal causes and negative outcomes to external causes because we expect to succeed and therefore tend to attribute expected outcomes to internal rather than internal causes. not external reasons.

The motivational explanation suggests that the self-justification bias arises from the need to protect and enhance self-esteem or the related desire to look good in the eyes of others ( Greenberg & Solomon, 1982).

Whatever the reasons for the self-justification bias, it can lead to interpersonal disagreements.

It often causes people working in a team to believe that they, and not their partners, made the greatest contribution to the work. Likewise, this tendency causes people to believe that while their own success is internally caused and well deserved, the success of others is externally caused and less deserved.

Thus,

1) we usually tend to take credit for success to ourselves, rather than to others, and blame others rather than ourselves for failure.

2) many people perceive their own negative actions as reasonable and forgivable, and similar actions on the part of others as irrational and undeserving of forgiveness.

Consider a specific example of attribution: blaming innocent rape victims.

It has been found that a rape occurs every 11 minutes in the United States. In a national survey, approximately 15% of female students reported that they had been assaulted, most by someone they knew.

Of course, these statistics are scary. What may be even more alarming, however, is the strong tendency among many people to place the blame for this crime on rape victims themselves.

"She must have seduced him." “What was she doing at this hour of the night in a bar or on the street? She was looking for trouble herself!”

Such comments are often heard in conversations regarding media reports of rape. Thus, from the perspective of attribution theory, blame is often attributed to victims even more than to perpetrators. As you might imagine, men are more likely to make this attribution than women, but women are also often inclined to attribute responsibility for rape to its victims.

How can this be explained?

One possible explanation has to do with what has been called deserved world belief —our desire to believe that the world is inherently fair (Lerner, 1980).

According to this assumption, if a woman is sexually assaulted, then she “must” have done something to deserve it; the assumption to the contrary - that the woman was a completely innocent victim - is too dangerous for some people's worldview to accept.

On the other hand, the idea that a completely innocent person suffered such humiliation is so frightening that some people find it more convenient to believe that the victims of violence were not innocent and somehow provoked the attack.

The results of many studies have important implications for rape prevention.

First, it has been found that victims of rape committed by intimates often become objects of blame for other people. This is probably why many women who have been assaulted by someone they dated are reluctant to report the crime.

Second, the fact that men are generally more likely than women to blame those who have been raped is consistent with recent evidence indicating that men—especially those who are sexually violent—often misinterpret women's behavior. They are suspicious and distrustful of a woman's attitude towards sex and therefore do not trust a woman's sincerity when she says no. Obviously, such misperceptions can play a decisive role in some cases of intimate rape: the woman rejects sex in a way that seems clear and unambiguous to her, but her refusal is misinterpreted by her partner.

It is these provisions that are currently the focus of violence prevention programs that focus on improving understanding between men and women regarding sexual issues.

Goals and results of causal attribution research

The goal of research into the mechanisms of causal attribution is to increase the effectiveness of interaction between people and the effectiveness of personal growth. The first presupposes the most accurate determination of the motives of certain actions. And the second shows options for influencing motivation, activity, emotions, etc. What most fully helps to understand the study of this phenomenon is the indication of the moment of assigning or accepting responsibility for specific actions. And a comprehensive consideration of the current result. That is, the goal of research is to find an accurate definition of the actual motives of behavior.

Errors of perception

It is known that a person treats himself more softly when assessing than other strangers. A person attributes someone’s successes and his own failures to situational attribution. But, describing other people's failures and his own successes, he turns to personal attribution. In these cases, a person tends to consider the cause of what happened to be either the prevailing circumstances or the person himself, according to the final result.

Usually a person explains success by his hard work, willpower, and his uniqueness. But failure is always associated with the situation. And if you analyze the actions of another person, then all of the above applies in reverse order. If a person achieves success, it is because the circumstances have developed that way. And if he failed, then it was his own fault. And few people think differently

Few will pay attention to the situation and focus on it. After all, if you explain the result of a person’s activity in a different way, then this means recognizing it at your level, or even better

This means comparing him to yourself.

Therefore, people tend to protect their self-esteem in this way. It is easier to blame the circumstances, the object of the action, than to force yourself to work, to improve yourself. Causal attribution is applicable everywhere: in everyday life, at work, in relationships. And this principle of opposites operates everywhere.

Attribution for executives

If managers are asked to determine their ineffectiveness, then the majority chooses a lack of support, that is, an external situational factor. This is due to the tendency of bosses at various levels to deny their responsibility in the situation. This approach is also notable for taking responsibility for success. Attribution in psychology is a characteristic that manifests itself in managers’ assessment of their own performance.

There was an increase in their work efficiency with improved levels of support. They did not believe that their ability, as well as their desire to work hard, were significant factors. But in relation to subordinates they insisted on the importance of these aspects.

But people with a developed sense of empathy quickly understand the feelings of others. In addition, they tend to consider such behavior as their own.

That is, attribution is the inference of someone’s behavior in the absence of additional information. We all try to get as much insight as possible about the interlocutor or team based on some data. But when there is not enough of them, an attribution arises that may correspond to reality or contradict it. Points like these should be taken into account.

Causal attribution and locus of control

It should be said that causal attribution is closely related to locus of control.

Locus of control is the characteristic ability of an individual to attribute his successes or failures only to internal or only to external factors.

In the case of causal attribution, there is a double standard. Whereas locus of control shows that a person chooses his own reaction. Having received a bad mark on an exam, he can manifest this locus in two different ways:

1. It's my own fault that I got a bad grade. I didn’t prepare much, I walked around, I thought about absolutely the wrong things. I'll fix it and start right now.
2. The ticket, the difficult subject, or the teacher are to blame. If it weren't for this, I would get what I deserve.

The difference between causal attribution and locus of control is the presence of willpower in the second case.

To change your locus of control, you must first get rid of the victim syndrome. Take full responsibility even if external factors really greatly influenced the result.

Causal attribution and learned helplessness

Causal attribution, interestingly enough, is often used to understand the phenomenon of learned helplessness.

Learned/acquired helplessness is a state of a person in which he does not make attempts to improve his condition (does not try to receive positive stimuli or avoid negative ones), although he has such an opportunity. This happens when he has tried several times to change the situation but failed. And now I’m used to my helplessness.

The father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, demonstrated in his experiments that people put less effort into solving a “solvable” problem after they had suffered a series of failures at “unsolvable” problems.

Seligman believes that people, having received unsatisfactory results, begin to think that further attempts will also not lead to anything good. But the theory of causal attribution says that people do not try to redouble their efforts in order not to lower their self-esteem, because otherwise they will attribute failure to their internal personal characteristics. If you don’t try, it’s much easier to blame external factors for everything.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Attribution Models

Let's look at the pros and cons of each type of model.

Rule-based models

Pros:

+ Easy to interpret and use. Everything is clear: the first-click model will always give the conversion to the first source, the last-click model will always give the conversion to the last.

+ Does not require a lot of data. If you have 10 conversions, they distribute 10 conversions.

+ Free. Just go to Google Analytics and use it.

+ Have an algorithm. You always know what to expect from them.

Minuses:

- They are not objective. Rule-based models will always underestimate some channel. Because if this is the last click, then previous sources will always be underestimated. If it's a linear model, it will underestimate everyone a little bit.

- Not universal. Not suitable for everyone and not for all tasks.

“They only evaluate the past.” To draw conclusions, you need to accumulate conversions and then analyze and use all this.

Algorithmic models

Pros:

+ Fairly evaluate the contribution of each channel to the result.

+ Universal, you can use one attribution model for different channels.

+ Often available for free (Data Driven Google Ads).

Minuses:

— The calculation algorithm is not always easy to understand. Not everyone can explain to themselves why this is so. Sometimes it’s enough for someone to see the result and believe it, make a decision and that’s it. And someone wants to get to the bottom of it, but it’s not always easy.

— Often they are not free and require regular support and investment. If you are Data driven in Google Analytics, you need to buy Google Analytics 360.

- They only evaluate the past. You accumulate conversions, distribute value, draw conclusions, redistribute the budget of advertising campaigns and again in a circle: again accumulate conversions, draw conclusions, change the budget.

Depends on how quickly you accumulate data. If there are not many conversions, then we set up algorithmic models for a small number of conversions. You will be collecting statistics for a long time to draw any conclusions.

Predictive models

Pros:

+ Fairly evaluate the contribution of each channel to the result.

+ Versatile. You can use one MA for different channels.

+ Allows you to make decisions faster and predict the future.

The most important advantage: you don't have to wait. Having launched an advertising campaign and collected a certain number of conversions that have not yet been completed, you can already draw conclusions which of the chains will end in conversion and which will not, which channels are the most successful and where it is worth increasing the budget.

Minuses:

— The calculation algorithm is a “black box” (Machine Learning). Even if you developed it yourself and know all the features on which the model is trained, this means nothing.

- Costs money (sometimes a lot).

— Requires a large amount of data for training or retraining.

Predictive models are suitable for large businesses that have already evolved from rules-based MA, worked with algorithmic models, and now their goal is speed. They want to run faster than the market, be more efficient, and here predicting the future is an important advantage of predictive models.

I think that such models will gain more and more popularity and will appear more often in our lives. Even if you don't need to use them right now, it's good to just be aware of them.

There are no wrong attribution models. There are those that are not suitable for you at the current moment in time. This is the main thesis about attribution. A lot of businesses are looking for the perfect MA, like the holy grail. But there is no such thing.

MA cannot be perfect. It may or may not be suitable at the current time. Or it may be suitable today, but not suitable tomorrow. Three attribution models may be suitable for different purposes.

Is it so important to understand each other?

Explaining the reasons for one’s own and others’ behavior is the key to the most important questions of social existence: who am I? who's near me? Can I trust others? What determines actions: personal properties or situations?

Knowing the correct answers to these questions allows you to:

• get rid of unnecessary negativity: anxiety, suspicion, panic;
• protect yourself from betrayal, meanness, manipulation;
• manage different situations;
• make rational decisions;
• predict behavioral patterns of others.

Comprehension of another person's experience, as he himself understands it, is the main goal of interpersonal interaction. This is an indispensable guideline when choosing:

• qualified specialists;
• candidates for political office;
• business partners;
• life partners.

It is not surprising that the study of attribution has long gone beyond the scope of social psychology. Today, the art of understanding is relevant for teachers, athletes, managers, for each of us. It allows us to adequately evaluate each other, interact effectively, get along with a variety of people, count on leniency and sympathy.