...Attribution Theory The attribution theory focuses on how individuals perceive and interpret events and how they relate these events to their thinking and behavior. There are two different types of attributions: dispositional and situational. Dispositional attributions are those that play off of internal motives. They are driven by the emotions of the person. Situational attributions are those that play off of external motives, or those that can be attributed to environmental factors (Myers, 2010). Self-serving biases also play a part in the attribution theory. Most successes are attributed to the internal, dispositional nature of people while failures are attributed to the external, environmental factors. Individuals are faced with decisions that need to be made every day. In the above scenario, the woman is faced with whether or not to cheat on her husband. This woman more than likely desires an emotional connection or validation from another person, suggesting that she is not emotionally satisfied in her relationship with her husband. While she may have moral guidelines that tell her not to, there are many factors that are possible that may have attributed toward her decision making. Using the attribution theory, the factors can be divided into dispositional and situational categories. The dispositional attributes that possibly had an effect on her choice to cheat on her husband are: She feels neglected in her marriage. She may have a lack of respect for her husband...
Words: 439 - Pages: 2
...ATTRIBUTION THEORY (Attribution - to explain by indicating a cause) ATTRIBUTION THEORY - motivational theory looking at how the average person constructs the meaning of an event based on his /her motives to find a cause and his/her knowledge of the environment. Att. Theory basically looks at how people make sense of their world; what cause and effect inferences they make about the behaviors of others and of themselves. Heider states that there is a strong need in individuals to understand transient events by attributing them to the actor's disposition or to stable characteristics of the environment. The purpose behind making attributions is to achieve COGNITIVE CONTROL over one's environment by explaining and understanding the causes behind behaviors and environmental occurrences. Making attributions gives order and predictability to our lives; helps us to cope. Imagine what it would be like if you felt that you had no control over the world. (talk about later) When you make attributions you analyze the situation by making inferences (going beyond the information given) about the dispositions of others and yourself as well as inferences about the environment and how it may be causing a person to behave. Two basic kinds of attributions made: INTERNAL and EXTERNAL INTERNAL - dispositional EXTERNAL - situational Consequences of making inferences: 1) gives order and predictability; 2) inferences lead to behavior - you will...
Words: 2096 - Pages: 9
...Activity 5.1: Overcoming the Fundamental Attribution Error 1. What is the fundamental attribution error? Our human tendency to assume that other people’s behavior is due to something about their personality, while at the same time failing to consider possible situational influence. 2. Describe a situation from your own life when you made an internal attribution about someone’s behavior, potentially committing the fundamental attribution error. There are times when I make internal attributions about people, especially if I see them yelling at their children or other people. I often catch myself speaking loudly when I am upset, It is something I am aware that I do, so I try to prevent myself from doing it especially sense I think so un-highly of those that do yell. 3. What internal attribution did you make in that situation? My internal attribution to a parent yelling at a child is that they are a bad parent and can’t control their anger. 4. What three questions would you have to ask yourself to see if your internal attribution was correct? The three questions that I would have to ask myself to see if my internal attribution was correct would be; consistency, distinctiveness and consensus. Consistency is whether a particular behavior typically occurs in that situation. Distinctiveness is whether a particular behavior typically occurs in other situations. Consensus is whether other people typically exhibit this behavior in this situation. 5. To the best of...
Words: 523 - Pages: 3
...Application of Theories Vignette #2 Social Cognition – Psych 6201-2 December 28, 2013 The two attributions theories I have chosen for this paper are Heider’s “Naive Psychology Theory” And Kelley’s “Covariation Model.” The vignette I chosen is number two, James, 35-year-old African-American male. Heider’s Attribution Theory: The Naive Psychology of Traits. Heider founded the study of how ordinary people think about each other. In 1958 Heider contributed to two central ideas in which the idea of studying how regular people make sense of each other. The first study is how people think about other people which can keep these two meaningful data for scientific analysis. We shall make use of the unformulated or half –formulated knowledge of interpersonal relations as it is expressed in our everyday language and experience -- this source shall be referred to as common -sense or naïve psychology (Heider). Heider made a suggestion that we should listen to what people say about how they think about other people during gathering, peoples every day theories. In order to be able to do that one must talk to ordinary people which are a good source of information. Heider had a very great deal of respect for ordinary people, even to the fact that Heider invented the term naïve psychology. Heider’s second major proposal argued that psychologists have to customize every data from people’s everyday experience, making them more precise, coherent, and scientific (Fiske, 2012). Heider’s...
Words: 882 - Pages: 4
...Attribution Theory is concerned with the ways in which people perceive and think about the behaviors of themselves or others, exploring how people attempt to make inferences about the causes of observed behavior. The tendency to overestimate the role of personal factors while underestimating the impact of situational factors when attempting to understand or explain the behavior or others is referred to as Fundamental Attribution Error (e.g., a person cuts me off and I immediately assume they are a jerk without considering situational factors, such as disruptive children or car problems). While the focus is more on personal attributions when explaining the behavior of others, we are more likely to make situational attributions when explaining our own behavior (referred to as the Actor-Observer Effect). While the actor-observer effect tends to hold true when explaining personal failures, successful behaviors usually lead to a Self-serving bias, whereby one is more likely to make dispositional (personal) rather than situational attributions. The 3 original and 2 additional dimensions to Weiner's taxonomy in his Attributional Theory of Motivation and Emotion are as follows: Original: internal/external, stable/unstable,...
Words: 514 - Pages: 3
...Review Author(s): Susan H. Gray Review by: Susan H. Gray Source: Teaching Sociology, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 416-418 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1318129 Accessed: 09-09-2015 19:22 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Teaching Sociology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 197.220.150.185 on Wed, 09 Sep 2015 19:22:08 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 416 TEACHING SOCIOLOGY place of a consultant.Yet if the user does not have the statistical language necessary to answer the questions Ex-Sample asks, the program cannot reduce itself to a lower level, as a consultantcan. I believe that this latter point is a serious one, especially in using the programwith undergraduate students. On the other hand, if students have a strong background in statistics and if the research or statisticsclass includes a lab, the programmight...
Words: 2080 - Pages: 9
...Topic: Attribution theory. I chose this topic because it interests me a lot. I have always had many difficulties when giving feedback to my students, writing reports is the most difficult thing for me to do. I never find the appropriate words, I don´t know how to motivate my students and how to tell them to improve without hurting their feelings. In unit 2 we talked about different topics but this is the one that called my attention. I would like first to summarize what this theory is about. It is widely know that people perceive events in different ways, not only at school but in their everyday lives, when something bad happens to us we generally blame someone or something else for the outcomes but when we do something right or something good happens to us we usually say it is because we for example put a lot of effort in the task, because we are lucky and so on. But, to what do we attribute our failures and success? Many theorists state that we attribute them to four factors, effort, ability, luck and task difficulty. The former factors are said to be internal and the latter external. On the other hand we can categorize them according to stability, in that case effort and luck are unstable and ability and task difficulty are stable. But what does internal, external, stable and stable mean? Internal means from within a person, external the opposite. Stable means that we can control it and unstable means the opposite. For example, a student is sad because he failed in an...
Words: 820 - Pages: 4
...Perceptions and Attributions Please respond to the following: • Analyze the way you perceive your coworkers or classmates and the perceptual or attribution errors you are likely to make, and discuss what steps you could take to address those errors. Provide specific examples to support your response. Being in accounting and based on my years of experience, I have developed my own style of working and require things to be done in a certain way. But when I saw that they are not getting done in the way that I want them to, I would get annoyed and uneasy even when people around me were doing things in a more efficient way than I was used to doing. I always believed that I was a perfectionist and expected people to be at par with me when they worked with me. I always had bias over people who had similar traits like mine, though they might not have been the brightest among the pack (similarity error). But with time and education, I have realized that many things have changed with time and I have to adapt to the new ways of doing things even if it meant that I had to put in a lot of effort to learn these new skills. I now have a different view when I see and work with people around me and try to acknowledge good and efficient work when I see one. When I interviewed and selected people to work in my organization, during orientation of the employees, I would give examples of people whose work I had liked and would make recommendations to the new employees to follow in their footsteps...
Words: 775 - Pages: 4
...Article 1 - Perception/Attribution: Narcissists Look Like Good Leaders. But Are They? (Jones, 2011) In this article, the author discusses a study done on "narcissistic" leaders within small groups. A selection process (for a job candidate) was carried out in groups of 3, and one of the 3 members is selected as the leader. At the end of the selection process, the narcissistic tendencies of the leader are evaluated, to see how much it affects the results. Strangely enough, it was discovered that the leaders who were the most narcissistic were the ones voted most successful by their teammates. Not only that, but it was noted that the ones with the most narcissistic leaders made the worst decisions (with regards to the groups' selection task). I believe that this experiment reinforces the fact that people's perceptions of other people are very powerful. If a person can project a very confident image (as is often the case with narcissists), people will attribute many other qualities to them as well, even though the person themselves does not possess these qualities. In this case, we could say the "halo effect" is in play here - "our evaluation of others is dominated by only one of their traits" (Osland et al, 2009, p. 224). In this case - their own self-belief/self-confidence causes team members to bestow them with all the other qualities that a good leader possesses. Another perceptual distortion that could also be in effect here is that of the perceptual...
Words: 347 - Pages: 2
...and leads to incorrect judgments. Attribution theory illustrates the different causes of behaviour. Applying attribution theory in any work place reduces some passive managerial outcomes which could lead to high absences and turnover. Additionally, a good awareness of attribution theory helps in achieving goal oriented organizational behaviour such as increasing the levels of productivity and achieving appropriate perception, job satisfaction, motivation and organizational citizenship among employees. Through this essay an example of a salesperson who is recently shifted from the warehouse department to the sales department and fails in achieving his monthly target will be applied. Heider who was the founder of attribution theory concentrated on internal and external causes of behaviour (Martinko, Harvey & Douglas, 2007; Harvey & Martinko, 2009). Accordingly, the internal causes of the salesperson’s failure to achieve his monthly target could be his laziness, his absence or failure to target the right customers, while the external reasons behind failing could be national economic status, the product failure to cover the customers’ needs or that product was competing with a new one. Moreover, another important behavioral cause is relational attribution which means that the cause of a situation can be analyzed by the relationship between the individual and another one (Eberly, Holley, Johnson & Mitchell, 2011). This causal attribution means that there was no communication...
Words: 399 - Pages: 2
...Deindividuation and Attribution Theory Southern Illinois University Carbondale Deindividuation and Attribution Theory Theory One of social psychology theories that describe human behaviors is attribution theory. Attribution theory is the theory of how individuals explain others’ behaviors (Myers, 2008). Deindividuation is the situation where anti-normative behavior is released in groups in which individuals are not recognized as individuals (Festinger, 1952). Many people are a part of this deindividuation process and don’t even realize it. Many people fall into deindividuation because they don’t want to ridiculed or be consider an outcast. Something that is an example of deindividuation is a cult. In a cult people are no longer an individual and there is no uniqueness to them. They become just like everyone else in the group. Another example of this is a fraternity or sorority. They go from being an individual person to becoming a part of a group where they are considered one big group versus being their own person. Being in the military is also an example of deindividuation. They are to fight and defend themselves against anyone who is considered a threat. They also have a uniformed look. Everyone has to go through training and every guy has to shave his hair. Social Issue Deindividuation can be both desirable and undesirable depending on the circumstances (Spivey & Prentice-Dunn, 1990;...
Words: 773 - Pages: 4
...INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR Chapter 1 People are the basic building blocks of organisation Organisations do well when people work hard…. Individually And Collectively Creating success in organisation requires Respect for their needs, talents, and aspirations What Managers Do Managerial Activities • Make decisions • Allocate resources • Direct activities of others to attain goals Where Managers Work Management Functions Planning Organizing Management Functions Controlling Leading Management Functions (cont’d) Management Functions (cont’d) Management Functions (cont’d) Management Functions (cont’d) Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles (cont’d) Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles (cont’d) Management Skills Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities (Luthans) 1. Traditional management • Decision making, planning, and controlling 2. Communications • Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork 3. Human resource management • Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training 4. Networking • Socializing, politicking, and interacting with others Allocation of Activities by Time Enter Organizational Behavior Organisational Behaviour… is the study of individuals and groups in organisation Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (cont’d) Contributing Disciplines...
Words: 284 - Pages: 2
...concept that deals with the upbringing of people. Fundamental attribution error deals with why people sometimes think differently. Lastly the concept of defense mechanisms has to do with the way people cope with events in their life. Nature vs nurture is an ongoing concept being discussed in the psychological community. It is an ongoing debate on whether nature or nurture is what causes a person to act and behave how they do. The nature part of this concept refers to the genes passes from parent to child. The nurture part of the concept refers to the environment the people are exposed to at early ages. A good example of this concept being applied is with homosexuality. People who support the nature side of the argument believe homosexuality is something passed on through genes. People who...
Words: 586 - Pages: 3
...Germany Ulf Andresen* Regulations Provide Further Guidance on the Application of the Authorized OECD Approach to the Attribution of Profit to Permanent Establishments The author considers the recently issued Regulations on the application of the authorized OECD approach under existing German tax treaties, specifically for the allocation of profit to permanent establishments. 1. Permanent Establishment Profit Attribution Regulations Issued On 13 October 2014, the Upper House (Bundesrat) adopted the “Regulations on the Application of the Arm’ s Length Principle on Permanent Establishments in accordance with section 1(5) of the Foreign Tax Act (Aussensteuergesetz)” (Permanent Establishment (PE) Profit Attribution Regulations) (the Regulations).1 These Regulations were drafted by the Ministry of Finance and were adopted by the Upper House based on the delegated power in section 1(6) of the Foreign Tax Act granted by the parliament (Bundestag). The Regulations have the quality of law and, thus, are binding on taxpayers, the tax administration and the tax courts in Germany. They provide the long-awaited guidance for taxpayers on how they should apply, in practice, the authorized OECD approach under section 1(5) of the Foreign Tax Act, which is effective in Germany for all financial years commencing after 31 December 2012. The rules in the Regulations are effective for financial years starting after 31 December 2014. For taxpayers, this means that they...
Words: 6508 - Pages: 27
...Perception and Attribution Theory Understanding how people form perceptions and attributions is a necessary skill in order to succeed in communications and long lasting business relationships. In the study of social psychology person perception is defined as the process in which humans form impressions of one another which encompasses the perceptions and judgments people develop every day. A new acquaintance is encountered everyday especially when one works in the business arena and impressions are created due the persons attire, language, body language, and especially how well they communicate. Based on all these characterisis conclusions are drawn even tough not much is known about the other. Learning how people can form perceptions of one another can prevent a business professional from having their customers from forming negative impressions which may jepordize future relationships or even prevent a business transaction from occurring. Attributions the keys in understanding how an individual perceives the cause of events and behaviors of others. A persons actions are questioned at times and often times explications are necessary. Negative events and behaviors are associated with negative perceptions of an individual. For example when a person answers his cellphone during a meeting with an important client he is automatically perceived as a person who is irresponsible and disrespectful, even though his close friends and coworkers see otherwise. People often try to related...
Words: 474 - Pages: 2
