Dispositional Attribution

Attribution is the concept of how people interpret and explain causal relationships in the social world. People do not observe their own and other’s actions passively, rather, they try to conclude what caused them. Attribution can be split into two different factors, dispositional and situational. Dispositional attribution is where the action directly reflects an individual. For example, when a person yells at someone, a person is most likely going to correlate the man yelling as an aggressive person who has a short temper. In contrast, situational attribution is where the action of a person is influenced by external factors. For example, a person blaming social pressures for misconduct in a certain situation. While attribution is a quick

way to conclude details about certain individuals, there are errors and biases to create false conclusions. This can be identified as attribution bias; the idea that people make conclusions about one’s or other’s behaviours that are not always made in a logical manner but become distorted or biased. This occurs due to three major factors; people tend to avoid exerting a lot of mental strength when trying to make conclusions so they often find shortcuts. The information required to make a logical assumption of someone’s behaviour may be insufficient. Lastly, the information available may be used to maximise its potential, which in turn allows individuals to predict future behaviour as well as maintain self esteem. Two of the three most common errors and biases are the fundamental attribution error and the self serving bias.