ADM 2336 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Fundamental Attribution Error

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Administration
• Course: ADM 2336
• Professor: Rami Asadi

Document Summary

Attribution is the process by which we assign cases or motives to explain people"s behaviour. An important goal is to determine whether some behaviour is caused by dispositional or situational factors. Dispositional attributions suggest that some personality or intellectual characteristic unique to the person is responsible for the behaviour. Situational attributions suggest that the external situation or environment in which the target person exists was responsible for the behaviour. Bad weather, good luck, proper tools or poor causes. We rely on external cues and make inferences from these cues when making attributions. Three implicit questions guide our decisions as to weather we should attribute some behaviour to dispositional or situational causes. You ask yourself as a supervisor: does the person engage in the behvaiour regularly and consistently? (consistency cues), do most people engage in the behaviour, or it is unique to this person? (consensus cues).