Theories Of Attribution

Every human is guilty of automatically judging another person because of their behavior. Instead looking at the situation and actually knowing the person, they write them off as a bad person and usually dislike the person. This is called attribution. Attribution is why you think someone else acted in a particular way. For example, maybe someone was speeding because their wife was in labor and they were on the way to the hospital. You are mad because they cut you off in order to get off the correct exit, so you throw your hands up and curse at them for not knowing how to drive. You use the theory of dispositional attribution because you are saying that a person’s behavior is due to their trait. You complete ignore the situation or environment. Misattribution is a common human behavior, even though it can cause many problems. The movie, The Proposal, director by Donald Petrie portrays Margaret’s Tate’s current situation where her co-workers wrongly attribute her tough personality for being a bad person.

She is looked at as a pushy, hard, and focused boss because of her tough work ethic. People in her office feel threatened by her because they don’t want to lose her job. For example, as she enters work, everyone group messages each other to warn of her presence. “It is here”, one worker contributes to the conversation. The entire office attributes her harsh behavior to her internal traits. They use common sense attribution, using rationality to explain others behaviors, because of how tough she is on the office. They think the only reason she must be so tough is because she is a bad, mean person inside. This can be considered misattribution because they mistakenly attribute a behavior to the wrong source and don’t consider any other contributors to the