PSYC 308 Chapter 5: Ch. 5 Readings
Document Summary
Attribution theory, the study of how people understand the causes of events - a set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of people"s causal assessments. From acts to dispositions: inferring the causes of behaviour. Causal attribution is the construal process people use to explain both their own and others" behavior. Causal attribution is central to much of social life, ranging from off-the- cuff speculation to formal decision-making situations, such as a trial. Often, the core question the jury must answer is what caused a given event or series of events. Explanatory style refers to a person"s habitual way of explaining events, and it"s assessed along three dimen- sions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific. An explanation that mentions an internal cause implicates the self ( there i go again ), but an external cause does not ( at was the pickiest set of questions i"ve ever seen ).
