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Relationships (1958) Which Played A Central Role in The Origination and Definition of
Relationships (1958) Which Played A Central Role in The Origination and Definition of
Relationships (1958) Which Played A Central Role in The Origination and Definition of
Attribution theory was developed overtime from the theories of Fritz Heider, Edward
Jones, Keith Davis, and Harold Kelley. All were social psychologists. Edward 'Ned'
Jones was born August 11, 1926 in Buffalo, NY. He received his doctorate degree from
Harvard University in 1953. He taught at Duke University in the psychology department
and was chair of the department from 1970-73. He was on both the National Science
Foundation and National Institute of Mental Health's advisory boards. He has written
several books including Foundations of Social Psychology.
Harold Kelley was at the University of California and most of his research involving
attribution theory was funded by the National Science Foundation. Edward Jones spent
his entire career at the Duke University.
6. Circumstances that led to model development: In the 1970s the field of social psychology
was dominated by attribution theorists and researchers. "Attribution theory came to rival
cognitive dissonance as one of the most imperialistic theories in social psychology. Attribution
theory was seen as relevant to the study of person perception, event perception, attitude change,
the acquisition of self-knowledge, therapeutic interventions, and much more" (Ross and Fletcher,
1986). Attribution theory emerged from Heider's (1958) "naïve" or "lay" psychology and
subsequent reformulations by Jones and Davis (1965) and Kelley (1967). Heider postulated a set
of rules of inference by which the ordinary person might attribute responsibility to another
person (an "actor") for an action. Heider distinguished between internal and external attributions,
arguing that both personal forces and environmental factors operate on the "actor," and the
balance of these determines the attribution of responsibility (Lewis and Daltroy, 1990). Kelley
(1967) advanced Heider's theory by adding hypotheses about the factors that affect the formation
of attributions: consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus.
7. Key terms:
1. Attributions - the causes individuals generate to make sense of their world.
2. Consistency - the degree to which the actor performs that same behavior toward an object
on different occasions.
3. Distinctiveness - the degree to which the actor performs different behaviors with different
objects.
4. Consensus - the degree to which other actors perform the same behavior with the same
object.
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References
Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal. Relations. New York: Wiley.
Jones, E. E. and Davis, K. E. (1965). "From Acts to Dispositions: The Attribution Process in
Person Perception." In L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 2,
Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution in social psychology. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 15,
192-238.
Kelley, H. H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28, 107-128.
Lewis, F. M. and Daltroy, L. H. (1990). "How Causal Explanations Influence Health Behavior:
Attribution Theory." In Glanz, K., Lewis, F.M. and Rimer, B.K. (eds.) Health Education and
Health Behavior: Theory , Research. and Practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers,
Inc.
Ross, M. and Fletcher, G. J. O. (1985). "Attribution and Social Perception." In G. Lindsey & E.
Aronson (eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, 73-114.
Bibliography
Boruchovitch, E. (1993, August). Causal attributions for health and illness: A cross-cultural
contribution. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological
Association, Toronto, Canada.
Boutsen, F. R. (1991). Single-parent college students' attributions toward academic success.
Psychology in the Schools, 28(4), 360-64.
Fiedler, K. (1995). Actor-observer bias in close relationships: The role of self-knowledge and
self-related language. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(5), 525-38.
Fullen, C., & Mills, B. D. (1995, July). Attribution theory in sport: Problems and solutions. ERIC
microfiche.
Kilbride, M. P. (1989). Effectiveness of inservice attribution training of teachers. Unpublished
master's thesis, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Magnusson, J., & Perry, R. P. (1992). Academic help-seeking in the university setting: The
effects of motivational set, attributional style, and help source characteristics. Research in Higher
Education, 33(2), 227-45.
Wallace, S. R. & Thompson, T. E. (1995, October). Preservice teachers' changing attributions for
elementary students success of failure. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mid-West
Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
Yan, W., & Gaier, E. L. (1994). Causal attributions for college success and failure: An Asian-
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Annotated Bibliography
Baron, L. (May 1993). Narcissism, interpersonal adjustment, and coping in children of
holocaust survivors. The Journal of Psychology, 127(3), 257-270.
The article presents a study of children of holocaust survivors. The study utilizes several theories
to explain certain personality characteristics of children of holocaust survivors. The children of
the holocaust survivors completed a California Psychological Inventory, O'Brien Multiphasic
Narcissism Inventory, and the Hardiness Scale. The specific characteristics which were being
analyzed include the following: narcissism, interpersonal adjustment, and coping. The study
applies attribution theory to examine why some children of holocaust survivors might express
some of these personality characteristics.
McClure, J. (April 1993). Discounting attributions and multiple determinants. The Journal
of General Psychology, 120(2), 99-123.
The author of this article is a well known social psychologist. He relates in this article the
discounting principle in attribution theory and the changes that have occurred with respect to this
principle. The article mentions the discrepancies among the empirical and theoretical basis of the
discounting principle. Recent research presents the new tendency of individuals to prefer
multiple explanations rather than just one for a situation. The article also includes the aspect that
in discounting, isolated causes and other associated causes exist. Then, the theories of Multiple
Causation are explained and implemented to the case. Finally, two different case studies are
presented, analyzed, and discussed.
Scott, C. (June 1997). Gender and attribution of control over health and physical size.
Journal of Social Psychology, (137) 387-389.
The article presents a study of the differences of attribution attitudes between men and women.
The study analyzed the discrepancies of genders attributing styles. The patterns of attribution by
men and women of their personal success or failure is assessed. For example, the attribution of
men and women to their success or failure in weight control. The study utilized a two-way
analysis of variance, weight being the dependent variable. The conclusion of the short article
suggests that the results of the study have implications for developing public health education
campaigns.