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JOHN D. DELAMATERATTRIBUTION THEORY
Attribution is a cognitive process that entails link-
ing an event to its causes. Attribution is one of a
variety of cognitive inferences that are included
within social cognition, which is one of several
theoretical models within social psychology. Social
cognition has been the most dominant social psy-
chological perspective within psychology since the
1960s, and this is evident in the popularity of
research on attribution. In the mid-1970s, as much
as 50 percent of the articles in major social psy-
chology journals concerned attributional process-
es, in part because attribution theory is relevant to
the study of person perception, event perception,
attitude change, the acquisition of self-knowledge,
and a host of applied topics including therapeutic
interventions, close relationships, legal and medi-
cal decision making, and so forth. Although the
proportion of published research that focused on
this topic declined during the 1980s, attribution
remains one of the more popular fields of social
psychological research.
DEFINITIONAn attribution is an inference about why an event
occurred. More generally, ‘‘attribution is a process
that begins with social perception, progresses
through a causal judgment and social inference,
and ends with behavioral consequences’’ (Crittenden
1983, p. 426). Although most theories of and
research on attribution focus on causal inference,
empirical research has dealt with attributions not
only of cause but also of blame and responsibility.
Although these types of attributions are closely
related, they are not conceptually identical. Fur-
thermore, because personality characteristics con-
stitute a major category of potential causes of
behavior, attributions about individuals’ traits (both
one’s own traits and those of others) have received
explicit theoretical attention.MAJOR THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTIONEven though attribution has been one of the most
popular social psychological research topics in the
social sciences, only a few theories of attribution
have been developed. The study of attribution
began with Fritz Heider’s (1958) original attempt
to provide a systematic, conceptual explanation of
‘‘naive’’ psychology. Heider maintained that peo-
ple strive to understand, predict, and control events
in their everyday lives in much the same way as
scientists do in their professional lives. On the
basis of observation, individuals form theories
about their social worlds, and new observations
then serve to support, refute, or modify these
theories. Because people act on the basis of their
beliefs, Heider argued that it is important to un-
derstand this layperson’s psychology. Although
Heider did not develop an explicit theory of attri-
bution, he did assert several principles that have
guided all subsequent theorizing on this topic.Primary among these principles is the notion
that people are inclined to attribute actions to
stable or enduring causes rather than to transitory
factors. Heider also stressed the importance of
distinguishing unintentional from intentional be-
havior, a distinction that has been particularly
influential in theories of the attribution of respon-
sibility. He identified environmental and personal
factors as two general classes of factors that pro-
duce action and hypothesized that an inverse rela-
tionship exists between these two sets of causes.
He also suggested that the ‘‘covariational princi-
ple’’ is fundamental to attribution: An effect is
attributed to a factor that is present when the
effect is present and to a factor that is absent when
the effect is absent. Heider’s early analyses of
social perception represent a general conceptual
framework about common sense, implicit theories
people use in understanding events in their daily
lives. The two most influential theories of attribu-
tion are based on Heider’s work but go beyond it