The concept of causal attribution
Definition 1
Causal attribution is a separate phenomenon of interpersonal perception, or a causal interpretation by a person of his own and other people's behavior.
Causal attribution is associated with the individual experience of the subject and arises in the course of social interaction. This phenomenon also applies to thinking, and not only to the perception of a person by a person. The essence of this phenomenon lies in the "completion" of the missing piece of information for a person to create a complete and systematic idea of any object.
an obstacle to logical thinking are emotions, therefore, the patterns of causal attribution will most clearly manifest themselves when emotions block the process of thinking according to the laws of logic. Hence, it is especially pronounced when interpreting the causes of successes and failures, both one's own and others', since the result of activity always has an emotional connotation.
The results and process of causal attribution, although they have common features, are mostly individual. The result of causal attribution is the assignment of the causes of an act to external or internal sources. Causes external events mainly attributed to the effects of circumstances, and the causes internal events attributed to the actions of people.
In addition to two types of attribution - external and internal, there is also a stable and variable causal attribution.
Remark 1
Foreign psychologists consider causal attribution as a universal mechanism of social perception. Domestic psychology believes that the need for "attribution" arises only when the observed in a non-standard situation demonstrates incomprehensible behavior.
Causal attribution, according to Russian psychologists, occurs when the behavior of a social object is unique, i.e. outside of typical behavior.
Thus, the study of causal attribution primarily covers the following questions:
- regular differences in explaining one's behavior and the behavior of others;
- deviations from the logical norms of the process of causal attribution as a result of subjective factors;
- motivational impact on human activity.
The measure and degree of “attribution” instead of actual facts presupposes the existence of such indicators as the correspondence of the action to social and role expectations, i.e. with a small amount of information, the degree of "attribution" will be greater, as well as the degree of behavior to the generally accepted norms of the culture.
The phenomenon of "attribution" is divided into three types of attribution:
- personal attribution;
- object attribution;
- circumstantial attribution.
Remark 2
Most often, the “observer from the outside” uses personal attribution, and the participant in the situation uses circumstantial attribution.
Structure of the causal attribution process
In the structure of causal attribution, there is a subject, which is called an observer, there is an object - this is observed, and there is a context, i.e. social situation affecting the process of causal attribution.
All mental processes subject - thinking, attention, memory, exert their influence on the process of causal attribution.
The external signs of the object are perceived by the subject through the prism of his own inner peace and are compared on the basis of past experience with personal characteristics - as a result, the behavior of the object and its causes are interpreted.
Within the boundaries of the psychological sphere of the subject, causal attribution unfolds, the process of which is influenced by the image of the “I” and self-esteem. These personality traits will be the psychological foundation for basing various factors that affect people's relationships.
The profession, social and perceptual skills of the subject of attribution, his age play an important role in the successful interpretation of the causes of behavior. At the time of the process, the physical and mental state of the subject of causal attribution is also important.
An integral part of causal attribution is the object, it is he who is the author of the perceptual message, which forms it in the process of communication.
The formation of a message occurs with the help of expressive means - facial expressions, distance, pantomime, eye contact, etc.
When causal attribution occurs outside of direct communication, then the perceptual message will be represented by specific actions and deeds of the attribution object.
An important point here will be the correlation of the properties of the subject and object of attribution, their similarity and difference in terms of belonging to a particular social group.
If we are talking about a person's perception and knowledge of himself, then the object and subject of causal attribution may well coincide.
To determine the internal and external causes of the object's behavior, the subject must imagine the circumstances in which the object's behavior unfolded.
This or that behavior that has arisen in any social situation can be considered from the point of view of social norms.
Remark 3
Causal attribution errors
The significance of a social event makes it possible to move from circumstantial and object attribution to personal attribution, i.e. look for the cause in the conscious actions of a particular person.
There are a number of attribution errors that G. Kelly summarized into classes:
- a class of motivational errors, including addictions to the asymmetry of positive and negative results;
- a class of fundamental errors, including cases of overestimation of personal factors and underestimation of situational factors.
Fundamental errors are manifested in the errors of "false consent" (adjusted to my opinion), in the errors of unequal opportunities for role behavior, in the errors of relying more on specific facts than on general judgments.
In order to justify errors of this type, the scheme of causality that a person possesses is analyzed.
G. Kelly puts forward 4 principles - covariance, depreciation, amplification, systematic distortion.
The principle of covariance operates in the presence of one cause, the other principles operate in the presence of many causes.
The essence of covariance is the coincidence in time, i.e. the effect is attributed to the cause, coinciding in time.
In interpreting many causes, a person is guided by the principle of amplification, the principle of depreciation, or the principle of systematic distortion.
The “effects” that arise when perceiving each other can distort the true picture of what is perceived - this is the projection effect, the average error effect, the “halo” effect, the effect of novelty and primacy, the effect of stereotyping.
The projection effect lies in the fact that the pleasant interlocutor is credited with his own merits, and the unpleasant one gets his own shortcomings.
The mean error effect means softening the assessment of the bright features of a person towards the average.
The effect of a logical error is falseness, for example, courtesy, good nature, empathy, kindness, etc.
The "halo" effect occurs when the perception of each other in conditions of lack of information. The first impression of a person can form the “halo” effect - a general favorable impression leads to positive assessments and vice versa.
The effects of "primacy" and "novelty" are associated with the "halo" effect.
The effect of a social stereotype is understood as a stable image of a person or phenomenon. Ethnic stereotypes are among the most persistent stereotypes.
Introduction
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
this work is devoted to causal attribution as a socio-psychological phenomenon.
The relevance of this topic is explained by the fact that causal attribution determines social behavior, is included in the structure of many socio-psychological processes, and therefore its study acquires significant theoretical and practical significance. Theoretical aspect is that now social psychology there is a need to create a unified scientific theory, which explains the features and mechanisms of social perception, and one of the mechanisms of social perception is causal attribution. In addition, the study of causal attribution is also of practical importance, since for optimization joint activities And interpersonal relationships it is necessary, among other things, to take into account causal attribution as one of the main mechanisms of social perception.
The purpose of the work is to consider causal attribution as a socio-psychological phenomenon.
Object of study: the process of social cognition.
Subject of study: causal attribution as a socio-psychological phenomenon.
casual attribution social psychological
1. Causal attribution as a socio-psychological phenomenon
Causal attribution (from Latin causa - reason + attribuo - I give, endow) is a phenomenon of social perception, a person's interpretation of the causes of another person's behavior, as well as his own.
The phenomenon of causal attribution takes place when people interpret the causes of another person's behavior in conditions of insufficient information about these causes, that is, a kind of completion of information is carried out. At the same time, "the scope of attribution becomes much wider - the reasons are attributed not only to the behavior of an individual, but in general to various social phenomena" and the meaning of the phenomenon of causal attribution is reduced to "giving meaning to the surroundings."
2. Theories of causal attribution by F. Haider and G. Kelly
2.1 F. Haider's theory of causal attribution
F. Haider is the founder of the research on attributive processes. In the concept he proposed, a person strives to form a consistent and coherent picture of the world, and in the process of this desire, he “developed a “worldly psychology” as a result of attempts to explain to himself the reasons for the behavior of another person and, above all, the motives that caused him” . At the same time, it is important “whether we explain this or that phenomenon by factors localized inside a person or outside of him” (for example, a person’s mistake can be explained by his low abilities, which will be an internal reason, or the difficulty of the task, which will be an external reason). Moreover, the nature of the explanation "in each individual case is determined not only by the level of development of the subject, his own motives, but also by the need to maintain a cognitive balance" . An example is that when the expected actions and reactions coming from a familiar person do not coincide, the cognitive balance is disturbed, and the cognizer's psychological forces come into play, seeking to restore it.
Many provisions of the concept of F. Haider were tested and confirmed experimentally, he himself refers to the experiment of M. Zillig, conducted back in 1928. "In this experiment, two groups of children - popular and unpopular - performed in front of their classmates with gymnastic exercises. Although the "popular" made mistakes on purpose, and the "unpopular" performed flawlessly, the audience later said the opposite.
2.2 G. Kelly's theory of causal attribution
The theory of the attributive process proposed by G. Kelly answers the question of where the causes attributed to the object of perception come from. This theory deals with two cases:
When the perceiver draws information from many sources and has the ability to combine the behavior of the object and its causes in various ways, choosing one of them, there are repeated observations.
When the perceiver has a single observation and yet must somehow explain the cause of the event,
which may be several.
For each of these two cases, a special section of G. Kelly's theory is intended: the first case is considered in the "variation analysis model" (ANOVA), the second - in the theory of causal schemes.
The variation analysis model includes such structural elements of the attributive process as: Personality, Stimulus (object), Circumstances. "Accordingly, three types of causes are named (and not two, as in Haider): personal, stimulus (or object) and circumstantial" , while "three types of elements and three types of causes make up the" causal space ", which is depicted using a cube, where the parties indicate the types of attribution", and the essence of the process of attributing causes is to "find adequate options for combining causes and effects in each specific situation". In this case, "when the perceiver has the opportunity to use the data of many rather than one observation, he "chooses" the cause to those factors with which, as it seems to him, the result will covariate" . It is important to note that this scheme cannot be considered as an absolute one, since in some cases "an individual can demonstrate the choice of complex reasons, for example, "personal-objective"" .
The essence of the configuration principle is that "if in real situations a person does not have any information about the reactions of the subject to similar stimuli or about the reactions of other people to the same stimulus (i.e., cannot use the criteria of similarity, difference and correspondence), then he must outline for himself the entire configuration possible causes and choose one of them", and to facilitate this process, it is proposed to take into account the following possible characteristics of the causes: a) depreciation (the subject discards those reasons that have an alternative due to their "depreciation"), b) amplification (more often a cause is attributed that somehow intensifies: for example, it seems more likely because it encounters an obstacle), c) systematic distortion of information (attribution errors), which together form "configuration principles" .
3. Errors in causal attribution
3.1 Fundamental errors of causal attribution
In general, fundamental errors are "the tendency of people to ignore the situational causes of actions and their results in favor of dispositional ones", that is, their nature is an overestimation of personal and underestimation of circumstantial reasons.L. Ross, who calls this phenomenon "overattribution", outlines the conditions for such errors to occur:
"False consent" is expressed in the fact that the perceiver accepts his point of view as "normal" and therefore believes that others must have the same point of view, otherwise the blame falls on the "personality" of the perceived.
"Unequal opportunities" are noted in role behavior: in certain roles, one's own positive qualities are more easily manifested, and the appeal is made precisely to them, that is, also to the personality of a person, but in this case, having a role that allows him to express himself to a greater extent, which leads to a reassessment of the personal causes of behavior without taking into account the role position actor.
"More trust in facts in general than in judgments" is manifested in the fact that the first glance is always turned to the individual.
"The ease of constructing false correlations" consists in the fact that a naive observer arbitrarily connects any two personality traits as necessarily accompanying each other, thereby automatically attributing the cause of the observed personality's behavior through an arbitrary "bundle" of traits and causes.
3.2 Motivational fallacies of causal attribution
Motivational errors are "represented by various "defenses", addictions that the subject of the attributive process includes in his actions" . Initially, these errors were identified in situations where the subjects sought to maintain their self-esteem in the course of attributing the causes of another person's behavior. The magnitude of self-esteem depended to a large extent on whether success or failure is attributed to oneself or to another. . A significant development of this problem belongs to B. Weiner, who proposed to consider three dimensions in each cause:
internal - external;
stable - unstable;
controlled - uncontrolled.
So various combinations of these measurements give eight models - possible sets of causes. Weiner suggested that the choice of each combination is due to a different motivation.
When considering all experiments concerning the use of the first two pairs of causes (the most studied), then "the result is unambiguous everywhere: in case of success, internal causes are attributed to oneself, in case of failure, external (circumstances) are attributed; on the contrary, when explaining the causes of the behavior of another, different variants", described by B. Weiner.
Conclusion
In the course of this work, the socio-psychological phenomenon of causal attribution was considered, for which an idea was made of the origin and essence of such a concept as causal attribution in social psychology, the most significant theories of causal attribution were considered, and the types and essence of causal attribution errors were identified. From all of the above, the following conclusions can be drawn.
The attributive process is a phenomenon of social perception, which is motivated by the desire of the individual to understand the causes and consequences of the actions of other people, that is, the meaning of human relations, as well as the need to predict the further course of these relations, which are essential condition orientation of a person in the social world around him.
The most significant theories on this topic include the theory of causal attribution by F. Haider, the theory of correspondent inference by E. Jones and K. Davis, and the theory of causal attribution by G. Kelly. But all these theories, despite interesting findings in the description of attributive processes, consider them outside the social context, which leads to numerous disagreements. This omission is trying to overcome the theory of social attribution, where attribution is considered taking into account the belonging of the cognizing and cognized individuals to a certain social group.
Causal attribution errors include fundamental (overestimation of personal and underestimation of circumstantial reasons) and motivational (represented by various "defenses", addictions that the subject of the attributive process includes in his actions) and are more likely not "mistakes", but a distortion of the perceived.
Bibliography
1.Andreeva G.M. Psychology of social cognition: Proc. allowance for students of higher educational institutions. - Ed. 2nd, revised. and additional - M.: Aspect Press, 2000. - 288 p. [Electronic resource]. URL: #"justify">2. Pochebut L.G., Meizhys I.A. Social Psychology. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2010. - 672 p. [Electronic resource]. URL: #"justify">. Semechkin N.I. Social psychology at the turn of the century: stories, theory, research: Part 1. - Vladivostok: Publishing house Far Eastern University, 2001. - 152 p. [Electronic resource]. URL: #"justify">. Modern foreign social psychology. Texts / Under the editorship of G.M. Andreeva, N.N. Bogomolova, L.A. Petrovskaya. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1984. - 256 p. [Electronic resource]. URL: #"justify">. Stepanov S.S. Popular psychological encyclopedia. - M.: Publishing house "Eksmo", 2005. - 672 p. .Yurevich A.V. To the analysis of studies of causal attribution in foreign social psychology / A.V. Yurevich // Questions of psychology. - 1986. - No. 5. - S. 168-175.
(from lat. cause- cause and at-tribuo- I give, I give). This is a mechanism of explanation, interpretation by the subject of perception of the causes and motives of the behavior of other people.
F. Haider is considered the father of causal attribution. His main conclusion was as follows: a person behaves in a certain way either because of the characteristics of his personality, character, attitudes (internal attribution), or because of the current situation, when, as expected, most people would have acted in exactly the same way (external attribution).
Naturally, the perception and evaluation of the act of a person will be different depending on the type of attribution we have chosen. If we believe that the reason for a person's negative behavior is his own desires and motives, we have a negative idea of him. With external attribution, we tend to justify a person.
Haider made another important finding, according to which people tend to prefer internal rather than external attributions. This often leads to the formation of incorrect ideas that do not correspond to reality.
Overestimation of the importance of a person's personal qualities and underestimation of the role of the situation in explaining behavior has been called the "fundamental attribution error". The term was coined by social psychologist Lee Ross.
A striking example of a fundamental attribution error is the assessment by the British people and the press of the behavior of the royal family in connection with the death in a car accident of Princess Diana on August 31, 1997.
It is known that immediately after the death of Diana, the royal family, having moved to Scotland, to Bolmoral Castle, did not communicate with the press and people for a week. This gave the British public a reason to openly accuse Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles of being callous and uncommunicative. They were accused of the fact that the death of the princess did not touch them, that they did not share the deep sadness of the people. The mainstream newspapers ran headlines such as "Where is our queen?", "Your people are suffering, speak to us", "Show love", etc. Thus, public opinion it boiled down to the fact that the queen is a cold, insensitive woman, she never loved Diana and is not saddened by her death.
Hit to the ground by such harsh criticism, the royal family has taken an unprecedented retaliatory step. The Royal Spokesman issued an official statement: "The Royal Family is offended by the suggestion that its members are indifferent to the grief that has befallen the country and to the tragic death of the Princess of Wales." Then Queen Elizabeth went on television and addressed the people of Britain with assurances that she, too, mourns the death of the princess.
The Royal Court offered a situational explanation for why the Queen was in Scotland and absent from London: “Prince William and Prince Henry themselves wished to retire with their father and grandparents. The Queen comforted the princes, her grandchildren, and helped them cope with their sense of loss."
Thus, the queen was not in London, not because she is a cold and insensitive person who does not care about the death of the princess and the problems of the people (internal attribution), but because she was necessary for her grandchildren who needed privacy and did not want to communicate with journalists , i.e. due to circumstances (external attribution).
Of course, the explanation of a person's behavior by his personal characteristics is far from always erroneous. In fact, people often act this way and not otherwise because of their nature. However, according to experts in the field of social psychology, it is situations and life circumstances that have a great influence on behavior.
As the authors of the book “Social Psychology. Psychological laws of human behavior in society”, “we pay more attention to people, and not to the situation around them, because situations are difficult to recognize or understand; we underestimate or even forget the impact of the situation when we interpret human behavior, although the person himself is just a part of the event.
The same authors note that the fundamental attribution error is more often made by representatives of Western culture, which gives great importance individual freedom and autonomy of the individual, who is responsible for his actions. Representatives of Eastern cultures, on the contrary, consider the situation to be the main factor determining human behavior.
When studying causal attribution, researchers discovered such a phenomenon as difference effect between the actor and the observer. Its meaning lies in the fact that we consider the behavior of other people due to their character, i.e. internal reasons, and we explain our behavior by a situation that we consider more important than the features of our own personality.
This means that we make the fundamental attribution error more often as an observer, when we evaluate the behavior of other people, than when, as an actor, we explain our own actions.
There is another aspect of the fundamental attribution error that needs to be taken into account when communicating. He got the name "Attribution in favor of my own, I" Many studies have shown that people more often attribute success to themselves (create internal attributions), and attribute failures to circumstances (create external attributions).
- Aronson E., Wilson T., Eikert R. Social psychology. Psychological laws of human behavior in society. St. Petersburg: Prime-Evroznak, 2002, pp. 130-131.
- Aronson E., Wilson T., Eikert R. Decree. op. S. 133.
Causal attribution - the process of attributing to another person the reasons for his behavior in the case when there is no information about these reasons. The need to understand the reasons for the interaction partner's behavior arises in connection with the desire to interpret his actions. Attribution is carried out either on the basis of the similarity of the perceived person's behavior with some other pattern that was in the past experience of the subject of perception, or on the basis of an analysis of one's own motives, assumed in a similar situation (in this case, the identification mechanism may operate).
The measure and degree of attribution in the process of interpersonal perception depends on two indicators: on the degree of uniqueness or typicality of an act and on the degree of its social “desirability” or “undesirability”. Typical and desirable behavior lends itself to an unambiguous interpretation, undesirable and unique behavior allows for many different interpretations and, therefore, gives scope for attributing its causes and characteristics.
The nature of attributions also depends on whether the subject of perception is himself a participant in an event or its observer. In these two different cases, a different type of attribution is chosen. G. Kelly singled out three such types: personal attribution (when the reason is attributed to the person who performs the act), object attribution (when the reason is attributed to the object on which the action is directed) and circumstantial attribution (when the cause of the action is attributed to circumstances). When attributing reasons for success And failures: the participant of the action “blames” mainly the circumstances for the failure, while the observer “blames” the performer himself for the failure.
Attribution errors:
Fundamental error (one! The rest is its manifestation) attribution. Attribute the cause of the action to the person's personality. Restrictions: 1) if a person considers another from an internal locus of control, then he argues like that. Same with the outside. 2) people - a participant or observer of this process. The observer, unlike the participant, does not know the background. Another point: people do not take into account what did not happen, although it may have become the cause.
Motivational attribution errors. We attribute behavior to people based on our passions and motivations.
19. Interpersonal attraction
Methods for determining the accuracy of perception ( from the lecture ):
Expert review
GOAL (Group Personality Assessment)
Attraction (attractiveness, attraction) is an emotional component of interpersonal perception.
Accuracy of interpersonal perception. Personality tests, but, firstly, there are no tests to identify and measure all the characteristics of a person (therefore, comparison, if possible, is only for those characteristics for which there are tests); secondly, as already noted, tests cannot be considered as the only tool for studying personality, since they have certain limitations.
A similar problem arises when the method of expert assessments is used. As experts, people are selected who know well the person who is the object of perception. Their judgments about it (“expert assessments”) are compared with the data of the subject of perception. But even in this case, we essentially again have two series of subjective judgments: the subject of perception and the expert (who also acts as the subject of perception, and, therefore, his judgments by no means exclude the element of evaluation).
In experiments on interpersonal perception, four groups of factors are established: a) variables, with the help of which the subject of perception describes himself; b) previously known personalities; c) the relationship between oneself and the object of perception, and finally d) the situational context in which the process of interpersonal perception is carried out. By correlating these four groups of factors, one can at least determine in which direction perception tends to shift in each particular case.
Arbitrary ideas about the relationship of various characteristics of people were called "illusory correlations." These peculiar "stereotypes" are based not only on "life" experience", but often on scraps of knowledge, information about various psychological concepts that were widespread in the past (for example, Kretschmer's ideas about the relationship between human constitution types and traits of his character, ideas of physiognomy about the correspondence of facial features to certain psychological characteristics, etc.). A.A. Bodalev received very interesting data in this regard: out of 72 people he interviewed regarding how they perceive the external features of other people, 9 answered that a square chin is a sign of strong will, 17 - that a large forehead is a sign of intelligence, 3 identify coarse hair with rebellious character, 16 - fullness with good nature, for two thick lips - a symbol of sexuality, for five short stature - evidence of authority, for one person, eyes close to each other mean irascibility, and for five others beauty is a sign of stupidity (Bodalev, 1982, p. 118). No training can fully remove these worldly generalizations, but it can at least puzzle people on the issue of the “unconditionality” of their judgments about other people.
interpersonal attraction. The area of research related to the identification of the mechanisms of formation of various emotional attitudes towards the perceived person was called the study of attraction. Attraction is both the process of forming the attractiveness of some person for the perceiver, and the product of this process, i.e. some kind of relationship.
Attraction can be viewed as a special kind of social attitude towards another person, in which the emotional component predominates (Gozman, 1987), when this “other” is evaluated mainly in categories characteristic of affective assessments. In particular, the question of the role of the similarity of the characteristics of the subject and the object of perception in the process of formation of attraction, the role of "ecological" characteristics of the communication process (the proximity of communication partners, the frequency of meetings, etc.) is being studied. Different levels of attraction are distinguished: sympathy, friendship, love. There are even two mutually exclusive theories of love: a pessimistic one, which claims the negative impact of love on personality development (the emergence of dependence on a loved one), and an optimistic one, which claims that love helps to relieve anxiety, more complete self-actualization of the individual. Love styles: passion, play, friendship, reflection, obsession, selfless dedication.
Often we try to understand the reasons for the actions of others. At the same time, the assessment of behavior can be associated both with circumstances and with the personal characteristics of a particular person. This evaluation is called "causal attribution". What is the theory of causal attribution is a question requiring detailed consideration.
What is causal attribution?
Experts in the field of psychiatry say that causal attribution is a separate phenomenon of interpersonal perception, which consists in interpreting, attributing the causes of the actions of another person with a lack of information about the real reasons for his behavior. This term was formed in Western social psychology and general idea was able to obtain in the attribution theory developed by the researchers.
Causal attribution - types and errors
Causal attribution in psychology shows various patterns leading to misperceptions. People can explain their own failures and the success of others using situational attribution. Often we all try to be more loyal and gentler to ourselves than to the people around us. Personal attribution is used to analyze one's own successes and the failures of others. An interesting fact is that the reason for success is often associated with one's merits, and failures can be blamed on circumstances. This is the peculiarity of the human psyche.
Types of causal attribution
In saying what causal attribution implies, it is important to keep in mind its types. Psychologists name three types of causal attribution:
- Object causal attribution - a causal relationship is attributed to the object on which the action refers.
- Personal - attributed to the person who committed the act.
- circumstantial - attributed to circumstances
Causal attribution errors
Allocate typical mistakes causal attribution:
- The tendency to overestimate the role of personal factors and the ability to underestimate the influence of the situation, circumstances. This error is characteristic of those who can be called observers. Assessing the behavior of another person, you can often see a certain pattern. So, with failures, they say that someone did not try very hard, or that people do not have enough abilities. When the result of the activity is successful, we can say that they are lucky. If we are talking about self-attribution, then we can observe the opposite trend, since its main goal is to maintain a positive .
- False consent fallacy - it is common for a person to interpret their own behavior as typical, which is characteristic of many people.
- Mistake of different possibilities of role behavior - different social roles may suggest different behavior. For this reason, during attribution, the perceiver interprets the behavior of others according to their social roles.
- Ignoring the informational value of what did not happen is a tendency to take into account exclusively obvious facts.
Causal attribution and interpersonal attraction
In psychology, interpersonal attraction is understood as sympathy, affection, and. Each of us not only perceives others, but also forms our own attitude towards them. At the same time, it will be individual for each. This attraction affects the very phenomenon of causal attribution. In other words, when the attitude towards a person is positive, then both the explanation of the reason for actions and the behavior can be softer and more loyal. When a person is openly unsympathetic, the reasons for the person's actions can be mercilessly criticized.
Causal attribution in communication
To understand what the concept of causal attribution means, it is important to know when it occurs. It appears when unexpected obstacles arise in the way of joint activities - in the event of difficulties and conflicts, a clash of interests and views. At the moment when all this happens, people apply causal attribution. In other words, we attribute the causes of behavior to other people, and the more complex the interaction, the more serious we approach the search for the cause.
An example of a causal attribution would be being late for a meeting with friends. Some of those waiting are sure that this may be due to the weather, another believes that a friend is late due to frivolity, and the third even doubts whether the latecomer was informed about the meeting place. So all friends have different ideas about the reasons for being late: circumstances, features and, the reason is in itself.
