/ Causal attribution as interpersonal communication.

Causal attribution as interpersonal communication.

Surely everyone faced a situation wheredue to the lack of information, misinterpretation of other people's emotions and feelings, a person misinterprets one or another act of another. Most often, these conclusions are based on our own conjectures or the prevailing opinion about a person.

History and study of the phenomenon in psychology

The founder of the term "causal attribution" inPsychology became a researcher F. Haider in the middle of the twentieth century. For the first time, he voiced schemes showing the reasons why a person creates an opinion about an event or person. Haider's idea was immediately picked up by other psychologists, in particular, Lee Ross and George Kelly.

Causal attribution in psychology
Tremendous work in understanding the causes of behaviorKelly did, expanding the range of research to the grounds of attributing emotions and feelings. The more one person recognizes another, the more he is embraced by the desire to know the motive of his actions. In the process of cognition, a person relies on data already known to him, but sometimes there are too few of them to create a holistic picture of behavior and explain actions. The question can not remain unresolved, because of a lack of information a person begins to think out what he could not explain. That is, ignorance of the causes of other people's actions gives a person a reason to invent them himself, based on his own observations of the behavior of another person. This phenomenon is described in psychology as "causal attribution".

Criteria for attributing reasons for behavior to Kelly.

A significant step in the development of psychology has helpedmake causal attribution as a phenomenon of interpersonal communication. In his theory, Kelly tried to establish what criteria a person uses when trying to explain the reasons for someone else's behavior. During the research, 3 criteria were established:

  • this behavior is constant for a person (constancy criterion);

  • a person differs from others in such behavior (criterion of exclusivity);

  • ordinary behavior (criterion of consensus).

Causal attribution errors
If a problem has arisen, a person solves it in the same way asprevious, then his behavior is constant. When answering an obvious question a person answers in a completely different way, the conclusion about the principle of exclusivity arises. "In this situation, many behave like this" - a direct proof of the usual. In searching for reasons for explaining someone else's behavior, a person fits into this scheme to a greater or lesser degree. It gives only general characteristics, and the set of reasons for each is individual. The question remains that causal attribution has not yet been able to answer: to use each of the criteria in what situation will the person resort to?

The manifestation of causal attribution in relation to themselves and others

Causal attribution

A feature of this phenomenon is thata person applies to himself completely different motives of behavior. Errors of causal attribution consist in the fact that a person substantiates other people's actions with personal qualities. But he explains his actions by external circumstances - of course, because we are more lenient towards ourselves. In a situation when the other person did not fulfill the task entrusted to him, we give him the title of a lazy and irresponsible person. If I did not complete the task, it means that the weather prevented me, loud music behind the wall, feeling unwell, etc. The reason for this view is that we consider our behavior to be normal, and we treat behavior that is different from ours as abnormal.