Questions: Attribution Theory

Question 1

During a meeting, a colleague snaps angrily at a coworker. You immediately think 'she's just an aggressive person.' According to attribution theory, what error have you most likely committed?

• A. The fundamental attribution error — overweighting her dispositional traits and underweighting situational factors like stress or provocation
• B. The self-serving bias — you're attributing her behavior to protect your own self-esteem
• C. A consensus error — you failed to ask whether others also behave this way in similar situations
• D. Correct reasoning — overt behavior is the most reliable indicator of stable personality

Answer: (A)

The fundamental attribution error is the systematic tendency to overweight dispositional (internal) causes and underweight situational factors when explaining others' behavior. You observe one instance of anger and jump to a stable trait — 'she's aggressive' — without considering that she might be facing a family crisis, a failed project, or a provocation you didn't witness. The situation is invisible to you, so you anchor on the most salient available data: her behavior. This is the error's predictable direction — not random, but systematically toward disposition.

Question 2

According to Kelley's covariation model, under which combination of observations would you make a situational (external) attribution for a person's behavior?

• A. Low consensus, high consistency, low distinctiveness — the person behaves this way always and everywhere
• B. High consensus, high consistency, high distinctiveness — everyone behaves this way here, the person always does, and only in this situation
• C. Low consensus, low consistency, high distinctiveness — the behavior is rare and specific to this situation
• D. High consensus, low consistency, high distinctiveness — others do it, but the person doesn't usually

Answer: (B)

Kelley's logic: high consensus (others also do it here) means the behavior is not unique to this person; high consistency (they always do it in this situation) means the behavior is reliable; high distinctiveness (they only do it here, not in other situations) means the situation is specifically eliciting it. Together these three point to the situation as the cause. Low consensus + high consistency + low distinctiveness (option A) points to the person as the cause — they do it, others don't, and they do it everywhere.

Question 3

A person who succeeds at a difficult task is more likely to attribute the success to their own effort or ability (internal) than to luck or task ease (external), demonstrating the self-serving bias.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Correct. The self-serving bias describes the asymmetric pattern where people tend to make internal attributions for successes ('I worked hard and I'm skilled') and external attributions for failures ('the test was unfair,' 'I had bad luck'). This protects and enhances self-esteem. It is the reverse of the fundamental attribution error — which applies to explaining others' behavior — and both are systematic, not random deviations from Kelley's rational covariation logic.

Question 4

According to Kelley's covariation model, people making attributions function like detectives — gathering most available consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness information before reaching any conclusion about cause.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Kelley's model is a normative description of how attributions *should* be made if the person were a fully rational 'naive scientist.' In practice, most attributions are fast, automatic, and made with incomplete information — often on the basis of a single observation with no consensus or consistency data at all. The model describes the logic of attribution, not the psychological reality. Real attributers frequently bypass the covariation analysis and rely on cognitive shortcuts, producing systematic biases like the fundamental attribution error.

Question 5

Explain the difference between internal and external attributions, and describe one systematic bias that causes people to deviate from rational covariation logic in a predictable direction.

Model answer: An internal (dispositional) attribution locates the cause of behavior inside the person — their personality, ability, effort, or character. An external (situational) attribution locates the cause outside the person — task difficulty, luck, social pressure, or circumstance. The fundamental attribution error is a systematic bias toward internal attributions when explaining others' behavior: people consistently overweight dispositional causes and underweight situational ones, even when situational information is available. This is not random error but a predictable directional bias driven by the salience of the person vs. the invisibility of the situation.

The bias has real consequences: it shapes blame (attributing poverty to laziness rather than structural barriers), empathy (dismissing others' suffering as character flaws), and legal judgment. Understanding attribution as systematically biased — not merely imperfect — is the key insight attribution theory contributes to social psychology.