What is casual attribution? Examples of casual attribution in life. Causal attribution theory. Is it so important to understand each other?

Causal attribution is the desire of people to find an explanation for what happens to them and around them. People need such explanations for various reasons.

1. When a person understands what is happening to him and around him, he is able to control what is happening and, to the extent possible, avoid unpleasant consequences and unforeseen events both for himself and for people close to him.
2. In this case, a person gets rid of the feeling of anxiety associated with a lack of understanding of what is happening.
3. Understanding what is happening allows a person to behave rationally in the current situation and choose a rational course of action.

For these reasons, a person seeks and finds for himself at least some explanation for what is happening. Even if this explanation ultimately turns out to be incorrect, it can still allow the person to solve at least one of the problems outlined above, for example, temporarily calm down and be able to solve the problem in a calm environment on a reasonable basis.

One of the variants of the theory of causal attribution was proposed by the American scientist F. Filler. It argues that one person's perception of the behavior of other people depends to a large extent on what that person perceives as the reasons for the behavior of the people he perceives.

It is assumed that there are two main types of causal attribution: interval (internal) and external (external). Internal causal attribution is the attribution of the causes of behavior to a person’s own psychological properties and characteristics, and external causal attribution is the attribution of the causes of a person’s behavior to external circumstances beyond his control. A person who is characterized by internal causal attribution, perceiving the behavior of other people, sees its reasons in their own psychology, and someone who is characterized by external causal attribution sees these reasons in the environment. Combined, internal-external attribution is also possible.

Modern attribution theory is a broader concept than causal attribution. It describes and explains all kinds of attributive processes, that is, the processes of attributing something to something or someone, for example, certain properties to some object.

The general attributive theory comes from F. Heider's idea of attribution. This theory assumes the following order of events.

1. A person observes how someone else behaves in a certain social situation.
2. From the results of his observation, a person draws a conclusion about the individual goals and intentions of the person he is observing based on the
perception and evaluation of his actions.
3. The person attributes to the observed certain psychological properties that explain the observed behavior.

When finding or explaining the causes of certain events, people are guided by certain rules, make conclusions in accordance with them, and often make mistakes.

F. Heider, the author of another well-known theory of causal attribution (along with Fiedler), came to the conclusion that all possible explanations of people are divided into two options; explanations focusing on internal, psychological or subjective reasons, and explanations in which references to external circumstances beyond people's control predominate.

Another specialist in the theory and phenomenology of causal attribution, G. Kelly, identifies three main factors that influence a person’s choice of a method of internal or external explanation of what is happening. This is the constancy of behavior, its dependence on the situation and the similarity of a given person’s behavior with the behavior of other people.

Constancy of behavior means the consistency of a person's actions in the same situation. Situation dependence of behavior involves the idea that people behave differently in different situations. The similarity of a person's behavior to the behavior of other people implies that the person whose behavior is being explained behaves in the same way as other people behave.

The choice in favor of an internal or external explanation of behavior, according to Kelly, is made as follows:

if a person concludes that a given individual behaves in the same way in the same situation, then this person attributes his behavior to the influence of the situation;
if, as a result of observing the behavior of another individual, a person comes to the conclusion that in the same situation the behavior of the observed person changes, then he explains this behavior by internal reasons;
if the observer states that in different situations the person he is assessing behaves differently, then he is inclined to conclude that the behavior of this person depends on the situation;
if an observer sees that in different situations the behavior of the person he observes remains the same, then this is the basis for the conclusion that such behavior depends on the person himself;
in the case when it is discovered that different people in the same situation behave in the same way, a conclusion is drawn in favor of the predominant influence of the situation on behavior;
If an observer discovers that different people behave differently in the same situation, then this serves as a basis for attributing such behavior to the individual characteristics of people.

It has been established that when explaining or assessing the behavior of other people, we tend to underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the impact of a person’s personal characteristics. This phenomenon is called the fundamental attribution error. This error does not always appear, but only when the probability of attributing a cause to external or internal circumstances is approximately the same. Based on Kelly's concept described above, we can state that most often the fundamental attribution error will manifest itself in conditions where the person explaining the behavior cannot make a definite decision regarding the extent to which it is constant, depends on the situation and is similar. with the behavior of other people.

In the cause-and-effect explanation of one's own behavior and the behavior of other people, a person acts differently. In the same way, a person explains the behavior of those people whom he likes or dislikes in different ways. There are certain patterns at work here, which, in particular, can manifest themselves in the following:

if a person has done a good deed, then he is inclined to explain it by his own merits, and not by the influence of the situation;
if an action committed by a person is bad, then he, on the contrary, is more inclined to explain it by the influence of the situation, and not by his own shortcomings.

When a person has to explain the actions of other people, he usually acts as follows.

1. If a good deed was committed by a person who is unsympathetic to this individual, such an act is explained by the influence of the situation, and not by the personal merits of the person who committed it.
2. If a good deed was performed by a person whom this individual likes, then he will be inclined to explain it by the own merits of the person who committed the deed.
3. If a bad deed is committed by a person who is antipathetic to a given individual, then it is explained by the personal shortcomings of the person who committed it.
4. If a bad act was committed by a person who is liked by the individual evaluating him, then in this case the corresponding act is explained with reference to the current situation, and not to the shortcomings of the person who committed it.

Another common error in causal attribution is that when a person explains the reasons for something, he looks for and finds them exactly where he was looking for them. This refers to the fact that if a person is set in a certain way, then this mood will inevitably manifest itself in the way he will explain what is happening.

For example, if, observing a person’s behavior, we are initially determined to justify it, then we will definitely find appropriate justifications; if from the very beginning we are determined to condemn the same behavior, then we will certainly condemn it.

This is manifested in a characteristic way, for example, in legal proceedings, which since ancient times has been focused on the presence and exclusion of subjectivity in human judgments and assessments. The prosecutor, however, is always opposed to the defendant. He accordingly looks for and finds arguments aimed at condemning him. The defense attorney, on the contrary, is initially inclined in favor of the defendant, and accordingly, he always looks for and finds compelling arguments in order to acquit the same defendant. From a psychological point of view, this practice is of interest because the above-described errors of causal attribution are clearly manifested in the attitudes and actions of the prosecutor and defense attorney.

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Even (or precisely for this reason) such a complex device as the human psyche “jumps”—it is subject to cognitive distortions. Some of them are obvious, so it’s easy to fight them; it’s enough to be aware of them. But others are confusing and you can’t figure them out quickly. One of these complex phenomena is causal attribution.

Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is considered the “father” of causal attribution, which he wrote about back in the 1920s. In his dissertation, Haider addresses the problem of information perception and how a person interprets it. After him, many scientists began to study the phenomenon in more detail. We will talk about their theories later, but first we will deal with the concept itself.

Casual attribution in psychology. Attribution Examples

This phenomenon exists because everyone wants to see the whole picture, to imagine all the events. But the problem is that the facts are not always known. And then the person begins to finish drawing, to think out the picture, bringing it to a logical conclusion. This process is carried out in accordance with existing life experience. In psychology, a diverse reaction of society to stereotypical and deviant behaviors

. Let's look at an example.

The students are waiting for a new teacher to teach them history. If you ask them to describe their history teacher, then most likely the classes will be boring and uninteresting. And if you introduce them to another teacher, having previously described his teaching style (he uses visual models, arranges skits, does everything to make the lessons interesting), then the opinion about the person will be non-standard, different from the common habitual judgment.

What is an attribute projection?

The very concept of “projection” was first described by Freud as a direction of avoiding an existing conflict within the framework of psychological defense. Projection is the direction in which information is transferred.

Attributive projection is expressed in the transfer of one’s own qualities to others.

In other words, the world is perceived through the prism of one’s own “I”. At the same time, the personality endows others with both positive and negative traits.

Projective projection is synonymous with likening others. A person perceives those around him in the light of his own experience and mindset; accordingly, all actions are interpreted by him “through himself” - as he himself would have acted.

Attributive projection is built as an element of psychological defense when an individual tries to explain and accept new facts about the people around him.

Attributive projection emphasizes the subjective meaning of concepts in the structure of assessment of the situation and other people. A person accepts the world not as it is, but as he would make it.

The transfer of the qualities of one’s behavior can be carried out in a positive or negative direction, while one’s own bad qualities are more often attributed to good people, and vice versa.

Types of causal attribution

Depending on the angle from which the situation is viewed, the resulting result is determined. The following types are distinguished:

Personal attribution. Attributing the causes of failure directly to the individual;
Circumstantial. Blaming the circumstances;
Object. The reason is in the object itself.

It is interesting that a person’s position determines the direction of his thinking. The participant himself most often blames the circumstances. The observer sees the motive for failure in the individual (participant). This happens because neither one nor the other imagines a completely plausible picture. It turns out that attribution is a subjective, and therefore often erroneous, opinion.

One more example. A shy guy finally decided to meet a girl. I thought about everything in advance, even rehearsed my speech. In general, he also raised his self-esteem. He meets her on the street, but for some reason she refuses the opportunity to meet her. The guy immediately builds all sorts of hypotheses. He thinks: “maybe it’s just me, maybe she doesn’t like me; maybe she’s just not in the mood,” etc. These thoughts can be either separately or come one after another.

At the same time, a correct understanding of the reasons for a person’s actions is very important for maintaining relationships between people

. Contrived motives for behavior can be very different from real motives. But it turns out that sometimes a person cannot ask, clarify some points and therefore is forced to use his imagination.

Goals and results of causal attribution research

The goal of research into the mechanisms of causal attribution is to increase the effectiveness of interaction between people and the effectiveness of personal growth. The first presupposes the most accurate determination of the motives of certain actions. And the second shows options for influencing motivation, activity, emotions, etc. What most fully helps to understand the study of this phenomenon is the indication of the moment of assigning or accepting responsibility for specific actions. And a comprehensive consideration of the current result. That is, the goal of research is to find an accurate definition of the actual motives of behavior

It is known that a person treats himself more softly when assessing than other strangers. A person attributes someone’s successes and his own failures to situational attribution. But, describing other people's failures and his own successes, he turns to personal attribution. In these cases, a person tends to consider the cause of what happened to be either the prevailing circumstances or the person himself, according to the final result.

Usually a person explains success by his hard work, willpower, and his uniqueness. But failure is always associated with the situation. And if you analyze the actions of another person, then all of the above applies in reverse order. If a person achieves success, it is because the circumstances have developed that way. And if he failed, then it is his own fault.

. And few people think differently. Few will pay attention to the situation and focus on it. After all, if you explain the result of a person’s activity in a different way, then this means recognizing it at your level, or even better. This means comparing him to yourself.

Therefore, people tend to protect their self-esteem in this way. It is easier to blame the circumstances, the object of the action, than to force yourself to work, to improve yourself. Causal attribution is applicable everywhere: in everyday life, at work, in relationships. And this principle of opposites operates everywhere.

Why do people need causal attribution?

For various reasons, people strive to find an explanation for the reasons for their actions.

Here are some of them:

Understanding what is happening around allows a person to avoid unwanted consequences;
The desire to feel safe;
Understanding what is happening is necessary to make rational decisions.

The word "causal" means "caused". Attribution is the attribution of characteristics to social objects that are not represented in the field of perception. The content of interpersonal perception depends on the characteristics of both the subject and the object of perception. The attitudes and past experiences of the subject of perception have a significant influence on the process of interpersonal perception. In everyday communication, people, not knowing the actual reasons for the behavior of another person or knowing them insufficiently, in conditions of a lack of information, begin to attribute to the other both the reasons for the behavior and sometimes the patterns of behavior themselves. Attribution is carried out either on the basis of the similarity of the behavior of the perceived person with another model existing in the past experience of the subject of perception, or on the basis of an analysis of one’s own motives assumed in a similar situation. Thus, a whole system of methods for such attribution arises, which in social psychology is called causal attribution.

Causal attribution is considered a unique psychological phenomenon that characterizes human perception of the emotions, motives and reasons for a particular behavior of another person. In the absence of a sufficient amount of necessary information about a particular person or about the situation in which he finds himself, other people have a distorted interpretation of the situation.

The theory of causal attribution assumes the presence of two indicators that determine the measure and degree of attribution in place of actual facts:

1. compliance of the action with social-role expectations (i.e., the less information, the less compliance, the greater the degree of attribution);
2. compliance of behavior with generally accepted cultural norms.

In accordance with the theory of causal attribution, the classification of the phenomenon of “attribution” is divided into two types of attribution:

· dispositional (a cause-and-effect relationship is attributed to the person who committed the act);
· situational (a cause-and-effect relationship is attributed to the object to which the action is directed).

According to Harold Kelly's attribution theory, whether we attribute someone's behavior to internal or external factors depends on three factors: consistency, difference, and consensus.

The reason lies in the situation if: a person always behaves in a similar way in a similar situation (consistency), behaves differently in different situations (distinction) and other people also behave in a similar way in a similar situation (consensus).

According to research, when analyzing one’s own actions, being a direct participant, a person is more inclined to interpret them by situational reasons, and when analyzing the behavior of other people, being an observer, by dispositional reasons. Thus, when explaining someone's behavior, we underestimate the influence of the situation and overestimate the degree to which the individual's traits and attitudes are manifested. This phenomenon is called the “fundamental attribution error.” Because of this error, observers often tend to overestimate the role and responsibility of the individual in what is happening. However, there are some caveats here: first, as the image of a person whom observers have seen only once fades from their memory, the role they attribute to the situation increases. And secondly, people whose attention in most situations is focused on themselves see themselves primarily in the same way as observers, that is, from the outside: they explain their behavior primarily by their personal qualities and only secondarily by the situation. All these experiments point to the reason for the attribution error: we find reasons where we look for them.

Cultural differences also influence attribution error. Thus, the Western worldview predisposes us to consider people, rather than situations, as the cause of events.

A certain dependence of “attribution” on the attitude in the process of perceiving a person by a person has been revealed. So, for example, the fragmentary information we received before contact with a person influences. If we receive various scattered information, then the ones that we consider most important to ourselves will have a greater influence on the formation of an opinion about a person. Let's say you are about to meet a girl you don't know, about whom you were told that she is “smart, fearless, lazy and sincere.” Research into how people associate such information suggests that you are likely to weigh each of these definitions in terms of their meaning to you. If you consider sincerity to be the most important quality, you will attach more importance to it; It is also likely that you will be more sensitive to negative information. This role of attribution is especially significant, as G.M. notes. Andreev, when forming a first impression of a stranger.

In addition, two effects are closely related to causal attribution: the halo effect, as well as the primacy and novelty effects.

The halo effect (halo effect) is the formation of an evaluative impression of a person in conditions of a lack of time to perceive his actions and personal qualities. The halo effect manifests itself either in the form of positive evaluative bias (positive halo) or negative evaluative bias (negative halo).

So, if the first impression of a person is generally favorable, then in the future all his behavior, traits and actions begin to be reevaluated in a positive direction. In them, only positive aspects are highlighted and exaggerated, while negative ones are underestimated or not noticed. If, due to the prevailing circumstances, the general first impression of a person turns out to be negative, then even his positive qualities and actions in the future are either not noticed at all or are underestimated against the backdrop of hypertrophied attention to shortcomings.

Effects of novelty and primacy. Closely related to the halo effect are the effects of novelty and primacy. These effects (novelty and primacy) are manifested through the significance of a certain order of presentation of information about a person to form an idea about him.

The novelty effect occurs when, in relation to a familiar person, the most significant is the latest, i.e., newer information about him.

The primacy effect occurs when, in relation to a stranger, the first information is more significant.

What is its need?

The information that can be obtained through observation is insufficient. It is not enough for a person to fully interact with what is happening. Therefore, such information needs to be “completed”.

Everything happens to predict the actions of the individual of interest in the future. Attribution can be made by a team or an individual.

It can be difficult to understand someone's behavior. For this there is not enough sensitivity, knowledge in psychology or simply information. As a result, other people's behavior is subject to speculation.

Attribution is another way of understanding the situation and people around us. A person does not always have complete information about other people and the motives of their actions, but often tries to somehow predict their actions or explain them.

Everything unknown and unpredictable on a subconscious level is associated with anxiety, so attributive projection is a good way to overcome this anxiety by building a complete picture in conditions of lack of information.

Attribution is the main way to orient a person in:

A new unfamiliar team.
New working conditions.
Constantly changing environment.
Stressful situations and conflicts.

In many ways, it is attribution that contributes to the creation of the first impression and perception of this image. The attributive approach is actively used when creating new large teams and in educational institutions.

People in such conditions are forced to somehow draw up portraits of those present; the simplest way is to “attribute” certain qualities to them.

Types of causal attribution

Wikipedia defines the term as follows: (from Latin causa - cause, Latin attributio - attribution) - a phenomenon of interpersonal perception. It consists of interpreting, attributing reasons for another person’s actions in conditions of a lack of information about the actual reasons for his actions.

Trying to find the reasons for other people's behavior, people often fall into the traps of prejudice and error. As Fritz Heider said: “Our perception of causality is often distorted by our needs and certain cognitive distortions.”

Here are examples of cognitive distortions due to causal attribution.

Fundamental attribution error

The fundamental attribution error is the explanation of other people’s actions by internal factors (“this person is a bore” – internal disposition), and one’s own actions by external circumstances (“events unfolded in such a way that I could not have done anything differently” – external disposition). It becomes most obvious when people explain and assume the behavior of others.

Reasons for fundamental attribution:

Unequal opportunities: ignoring the characteristics determined by the role position.
False agreement: viewing one's behavior as typical and behavior that differs from it as abnormal.
More trust in facts than in judgments.
Ignoring the informational value of what did not happen: what was not done should also be the basis for evaluating behavior.

Example one: your friend failed the exam that you both took. He always seemed to have a low level of knowledge. You begin to think that he is lazy, doing everything but studying. However, it is possible that he has problems remembering information or some difficult circumstances in the family that interfere with preparing for exams.

Example two: a stranger’s car won’t start. You decide to help him by giving him some practical advice. He disagrees with them or simply ignores them. You become angry and begin to perceive this person as rude and rejecting sincere help. However, he's probably been given the same advice before and it didn't work. After all, he just knows his car better. Or he was having a bad day.

Note that we are talking about internal disposition. If we talk about external ones, then if you do not pass the exam, then, most likely, you will explain this not by the low level of your knowledge, but by bad luck - you got the most difficult ticket. And if your car doesn’t start, then the person who is trying to help/being smart, even though he wasn’t asked, will be to blame.

External disposition is not necessarily bad. This is to some extent a defense mechanism because you don’t feel guilty, don’t spoil your mood and look at the world optimistically. But it can also lead to a constant search for excuses and personality degradation.

Cultural prejudice

It occurs when someone makes assumptions about a person's behavior based on their cultural practices, background, and beliefs. For example, people from Western countries are considered to be individualists, while Asians are collectivists. Well, you’ve probably heard more than one joke about Jews, Armenian radio and representatives of many other nationalities.

Difference between participant and observer

As already noted, we tend to attribute the behavior of other people to our dispositional factors, classifying our own actions as situational. Therefore, attribution may vary from person to person depending on their role as a participant or observer - if we are the main actor, we tend to view the situation differently than when we are simply observing from the outside.

Dispositional (characteristic) attribution

It is the tendency to attribute people's behavior to their dispositions, that is, to their personality, character, and abilities. For example, when a waiter treats his customer rudely, the customer may assume that he has a bad character. There is an instant reaction: “The waiter is a bad person.”

Thus, the customer succumbed to dispositional attribution, attributing the waiter's behavior directly to his personality, without considering the situational factors that could cause this rudeness.

Self-serving attribution

When a person receives a promotion, he believes that it is due to his abilities, skills and competence. And if he doesn’t get it, then he thinks that the boss doesn’t like him (an external, uncontrollable factor).

Initially, researchers thought that the person wanted to protect their self-esteem in this way. However, later it was believed that when results meet expectations, people tend to attribute this to internal factors.

Defensive attribution hypothesis

The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term that refers to a set of beliefs that a person holds in order to protect themselves from anxiety. To put it simply: “I am not the cause of my failure.”

Defensive attributions can also be made towards other people. Let's put it in the phrase: "Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people." We believe this so we don't feel vulnerable in situations where we have no control over them.

In this case, everything goes to the extreme. When a person hears that someone was killed in a car accident, he may assume that the driver was drunk or bought a license, but this will certainly never happen to him personally.

All of the above examples of causal attribution are very similar to the state of mental discomfort of a person caused by a collision in his mind of conflicting ideas: beliefs, ideas, emotional reactions and values. This theory was proposed by Leon Festinger. He formulates two hypotheses for this phenomenon:

When a person experiences dissonance, he strives with all his might to reduce the degree of discrepancy between two attitudes in order to achieve consonance, that is, correspondence. This way he gets rid of discomfort.
The person will avoid situations in which this discomfort may increase.

Since you got a D in the exam, why should you feel discomfort because you didn’t prepare at all, right? Not true. To understand this, let's talk about locus of control.

Standard attribution models

By default, Google Analytics offers us to use several models: First Click, Last Click, Last Non Direct Click. Over time, additional models appeared:

“Linear”—each point along the conversion path is assigned equal shares of the conversion value (25% each).
“Taking into account the recency of interactions” - the largest share of value goes to touchpoints that are closest in time to a sale or conversion.
"Position-based" - 40% of the value is assigned to the first and last interactions, and the remaining 20% is equally distributed among the others.

However, all of these models have their drawbacks. For example, First Click and Last Click take into account the first and last channel, while all other channels remain underestimated. The Time Decay Model works like this: the closer a channel is to the final conversion, the higher its value. However, this may not be entirely correct, because channels in longer but effective chains will look worse than the same channels in short chains. Moreover, the importance of the first or last touch often greatly depends on the scope of a particular business, and it may not be entirely correct to underestimate them either.

What other attribution models can there be? Konstantin Yurevich told us about an attribution model developed based on machine learning.

Causal attribution and locus of control

It should be said that causal attribution is closely related to.

Locus of control is the characteristic ability of an individual to attribute his successes or failures only to internal or only to external factors.

In the case of causal attribution, there is a double standard. Whereas locus of control shows that a person chooses his own reaction. Having received a bad mark on an exam, he can manifest this locus in two different ways:

It's my own fault that I got a bad grade. I didn’t prepare much, I walked around, I thought about absolutely the wrong things. I'll fix it and start right now.
The ticket, the difficult subject, or the teacher are to blame. If it weren't for this, I would get what I deserve.

The difference between causal attribution and locus of control is the presence of willpower in the second case.

To change your locus of control, you must first get rid of the victim syndrome. Take full responsibility even if external factors really greatly influenced the result.

Stages

The attribution process goes through several stages. The first is called observational. During this phase, a minimum amount of information is obtained from which they will build upon in further analysis.

This can be a dialogue or a visual inspection (facial expressions, gestures, posture, and so on).

This is followed by a stage of analysis and logical reasoning.

Here personal experience, subconscious and intuition are involved, the influence of various factors is assessed.

The final stage is the formation of a finished image with the properties assigned to it.

Causal attribution and learned helplessness

Causal attribution, interestingly enough, is often used to understand the phenomenon of learned helplessness.

Learned/acquired helplessness is a state of a person in which he does not make attempts to improve his condition (does not try to receive positive stimuli or avoid negative ones), although he has such an opportunity. This happens when he has tried several times to change the situation but failed. And now I’m used to my helplessness.

The father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, demonstrated in his experiments that people put less effort into solving a “solvable” problem after they had suffered a series of failures at “unsolvable” problems.

Seligman believes that people, having received unsatisfactory results, begin to think that further attempts will also not lead to anything good. But the theory of causal attribution says that people do not try to redouble their efforts in order not to lower their self-esteem, because otherwise they will attribute failure to their internal personal characteristics. If you don’t try, it’s much easier to blame external factors for everything.

Causal attribution theories

The most popular are two of them.

Jones and Davis Correspondence Theory

Scientists Jones and Davis presented a theory in 1965 that suggested that people pay special attention to intentional behavior (as opposed to random or mindless behavior).

This theory helps to understand the process of internal attribution. Scientists believed that a person is prone to making this error when he perceives inconsistencies between motive and behavior. For example, he believes that if someone behaves friendly, then he is friendly.

Dispositional (i.e. internal) attributes provide us with information from which we can make predictions about a person's future behavior. Davis used the term "correspondent inference" to refer to the case when an observer thinks that a person's behavior is consistent with his personality.

So what leads us to draw a correspondent conclusion? Jones and Davis say that we use five sources of information:

Choice
: When behavior is freely chosen, it is said to be driven by internal (dispositional) factors.
Random or intentional behavior
: Behavior that is intentional is more likely to be related to the person's personality, while random behavior is more likely to be related to the situation or external causes.
Social desirability
: You observe someone sitting on the floor, even though there are empty chairs. This behavior has low social desirability (nonconformity) and is likely to be consistent with the individual's personality.
Hedonic relevance
: when another person's behavior is directly intended to benefit or harm us.
Personalism
: When another person's behavior seems likely to affect us, we assume that it is "personal" and not simply a by-product of the situation in which we find ourselves.

Kelly covariance model

Kelly's (1967) covariance model is the most famous attribution theory. Kelly developed a logic model for assessing whether a particular action should be attributed to a characteristic (intrinsic) motive or to the environment (extrinsic factor).

The term covariance simply means that a person has information from multiple observations at different times and in different situations and can perceive covariance between the observed effect and its causes.

He argues that in trying to discover the causes of behavior, people act like scientists. In particular, they consider three types of evidence.

Consensus
: the degree to which other people behave similarly in a similar situation. For example, Alexander smokes a cigarette when he goes to lunch with his friend. If his friend also smokes, his behavior has a high consensus. If only Alexander smokes, then he is low.
Distinctiveness
: The degree to which a person behaves similarly in similar situations. If Alexander smokes only when socializing with friends, his behavior is highly distinctive. If in any place and at any time, then it is low.
Consistency
: The extent to which a person behaves in a manner each time a situation occurs. If Alexander smokes only when socializing with friends, consistency is high. If only on special occasions, then it is low.

Let's look at an example to help understand this attribution theory. Our subject is Alexey. His behavior is laughter. Alexey laughs at a comedian’s stand-up performance with his friends.

If everyone in the room laughs, consensus is high. If only Alexey, then low.
If Alexey only laughs at the jokes of a particular comedian, the distinctiveness is high. If she is above everyone and everything, then she is low.
If Alexey only laughs at the jokes of a particular comedian, consistency is high. If he rarely laughs at this comedian's jokes, she is low.

Now if:

everyone laughs at this comedian’s jokes;
and will not laugh at the jokes of the next comedian, given that they usually laugh;

then we are dealing with external attribution, that is, we assume that Alexei laughs because the comedian is very funny.

On the other hand, if Alexey is a person who:

the only one who laughs at this comedian's jokes;
laughs at the jokes of all comedians;
always laughs at the jokes of a particular comedian;

then we are dealing with internal attribution, that is, we assume that Alexey is the kind of person who likes to laugh.

So there are people who attribute causation to correlation. That is, they see two situations following each other and therefore assume that one causes the other.

One problem, however, is that we may not have enough information to make such a decision. For example, if we don't know Alexey very well, we won't necessarily know for sure whether his behavior will be consistent over time. So what should you do?

According to Kelly, we go back to past experiences and:

We repeatedly increase the number of necessary reasons
. For example, we see an athlete winning a marathon and we think that he must be a very strong athlete, train hard and be motivated. After all, all this is necessary to win.
Or we increase the number of sufficient reasons
. For example, we see that an athlete has failed a doping test and we assume that he was either trying to deceive everyone or accidentally took a prohibited substance. Or maybe he was completely deceived. One reason would be enough.

If your English level is above average, you can watch the following video, in which a teacher from Khan Academy explains the term “covariation” in simple words.