Attribution Theory

Search for Causes of Events and Outcomes

People aspire to understand why different events and outcomes occur. This aspiration is motivated by humans’ innate desire to both understand their environment and to use this understanding to effectively manage their lives. To this end, people often engage in attempts to explain to themselves and to others why an event or outcome came about.

Because the understanding of the reasons for an outcome or event helps people manage their lives, is has important emotional and behavioral consequences. For example, a student who failed an exam may come to the conclusion that this failure was caused by insufficient efforts to study for the exam. In consequence, the student may feel guilty and decide to invest more effort when studying for a future exam. By contrast, if the student thinks that the failure was caused by a lack of ability, this student is likely to feel shame and may decide to quit studies or move to a different field of study. As this example suggests, the cause the student attributes to the outcome determines which emotions are likely to arise and what type of behavior may result from it.

More generally, causal beliefs give rise to emotional reactions and to a variety of inferences, both in the actors who attribute their good or poor performance or situation to various causes and in the involved observers of this performance. Thus, it is not only students who may react to their poor outcome as a function of what they think caused the failure but also, for example, a teacher who also holds a certain belief about what caused this performance. If the teacher thinks that low effort caused the failure, the teacher may react with anger and punish the student. If, on the other hand, the failure is attributed to low ability, then the teacher is more likely to react with pity. This teacher may also infer that the student is lazy or unintelligent, as a function of each respective attribution. Thus, the way people explain events and outcomes determines how they respond to them. This is true for all domains of life, not only for achievements.

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