Fritz Heider's Attribution Theory

BACKGROUND

From the theories made by a group of Social Psychologists; Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward Jones and Keith Davis, greatly contributed in the development of Attribution theory through time. Attribution theory was written in heider’s first book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships during the year 1958 that has been the main part in the origination and meaning of attribution theory. A set of rules of inference Fritz Heider hypothesized that an ordinary individual might attribute responsibility to another individual for an action. Fritz Heider also distinguished between two attributions namely the external and internal attributions. In 1965 the systematic hypotheses by Keith Davis and Edward Jones about the perception of

This is what attribution theory is concerned about. Attribution is a process by which individual explain and predict the cause of other people’s actions and who or what was responsible for that behavior or outcome. Attributing behavior can be done in few processes. First, an individual must observe either his own behavior or of that of another individual. Second, an individual or someone must determine if the behavior or action being observed id intentional. Third or lastly He or she must attribute the observed behavior.

Understanding these factors can help one analyze behavior and make an attribution to either external or internal causes. These two main ideas that were put forward became influential. When we attribute a behavior to external it is influenced by external or situational factors. External factors are those being attributed to certain factors outside of an individual being observed. These causes of behavior are being put to some situation or event outside a person 's control rather than to some internal characteristic. When we try to explain our own behavior we tend to make external attributions, such as situational or environment features. While the internal attribute is the process of putting the reason of behavior to some internal characteristic, such as personality traits that are nature of an individual. These are those factors that are being attributed to another

Consensus is high or strong if another person behaves in the same manner as the person being observed in the circumstance, while consensus is weak or low if the other person behaves differently than the person being observed in the same situation.

Consistency

When an individual being observed is acting the same when he encountered same situation, the action being observed is what you call consistent. Consistency is low, if an individual acts in a same manner facing a different situation and if the individual acts in a differently manner facing a same situation its consistency is considered low. The main question in consistency is: does the observed individual always reacts in the same way to this stimulus?

Distinctive

When a person observes another person behaving or acting the same way in a different circumstance, the observed action is determined whether an action is distinctive. If an individual acts the same in a different situation, the distinctiveness is low, while if an individual acts different in different situation, the distinctiveness is high. The question being comprehended here is does the individual being observed responds in the same way to other stimuli as