Table 2

Person Explanation Situation Explanation

He is impatient He had to go home
He is clumsy The ground was muddy
He is forgetful It was raining so they couldn’t play
He is industrious Somebody made him work hard
He is helpful The teacher asked him to open the door
He is a responsible person His friend asked him to give it back

Table 2 is the differences of two persons from two different cultures, one would be the
African American and the other one would be a white American. This conversation was
recorded and being analyzed as table two.

According to this table, the ethnocentric attribution effects most clearly for the
Chicanos and the Blacks while the positive action was performed by a member of their own
ethnic group. Chicanos and Blacks were far more likely to explain the action in terms of
personal characteristics while the negative behavior on the other hand was explained
primarily in terms of the situation.

Although Anglos did not show ethnocentric attribution, but according to Stefen, he did
find out that Anglos tended in general to invoke personal explanations more freq1uently than
situational explanations, and that their choice of personal attributions was much higher than
that of Blacks or Chicanos.

Cultures may differ in explanations that they prioritize and certain explanations may be
far more predominant and more plausible in a particular culture than another.

Additional Information

According to Trope (1986)’s two step model, it specifically assumes that the initial
stage of attribution inference is called the identification which represents the information
contained in a behavioral episode in terms of attribution relevant categories, for example, a
person, a situation and a behavior category. The subsequent inference stage evaluates
explanations of the identified behavior in terms of personal factors (For example: Bill reacted
anxiously because he is an anxious person) or a situational factor (for example: Bill reacted
anxiously because this is a scary situation).

Both of this identification and inference stage relates to the representations of a person,
situation and a behavior. However, the processes that relate these representations at the two
stages are different. Associative processes are more likely to relate person, situation and
behavior representations in the initial identification stage while analytic rule-based processes
are more likely to relate these representations in the subsequent inference stage.
 In the initial stage, the three representations are assimilated to each other through
associative processes. As a result, person and situation representations may disambiguate the
behavior, and vice versa. Adding on, more analytic stage and attribution inference is
computed by comparing the consistency of the identified behavior with a focal (Person or
situation) cause to the consistency of the behavior with alternative causes (Lieberman, Gaunt,
Gilbert & Trope, 2002).

Reference:
Title: Theory Construction in Social Personality Psychology: Personal Experiences and
Lessons Learned
Author: Arie W. Kruglanski and E. Tory Higgins
Year Published: 2004
Page of Reference: 195
Link: http://books.google.com/books?
id=xaCw1OuS87cC&pg=PA195&dq=personal+explanations+and+situational+e
xplanations+%22Attribution+Theory
%22&hl=en&ei=ESPVTMiXEIOmvQOIxcGKCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&
resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=personal%20explanations
%20and%20situational%20explanations%20%22Attribution%20Theory
%22&f=false