ATTRIBUTION THEORY

 

ATTRIBUTION THEORY

Attribution means assigning cause to an event.

Attribution theory is an attempt to determine whether an individual’s behavior is internally or externally caused. Internal causes are under the control of the person while external cause are beyond his control.

According to attribution theory there are 3 factors that influence internal or external determination.

1.      DISTINCTIVENESS

2.      CONSENSUS

3.      CONSISTENCY

1.      DISTINCTIVENESS- The degree to which a person shows consistent behavior in different situations. If it is high the behavior in termed as internally cause and vice-versa.

Example- If an employee has poor performance with bad machine as well as with a good machine, his behavior is termed as Internally caused. If his performance improves with the good machine his behavior is termed as Externally caused.

2.      CONSENSUS- The degree to which various persons behave similarly in a given situation. If the degree is high the behavior is treated as externally caused.

Example- If most of the employees show poor performance with bad machine, the poor performance is treated as Externally Caused.

3.      CONSISTENCY- The degree to which a person shows the some behavior over time. If it is high, the behavior is treated as Internally caused.

Example- If an employee is coming late to office consistently, his behavior is treated as internally caused but if he is late occasionally his behavior is treated as eternally caused.

 

In this theory 2 types of errors occurs-

v  Fundamental attribution error- is the tendency to underestimate in influence of situational factors and to overestimate the influence of the personal factor in evaluating the behavior of a person. Thus the cause of poor work performance is perceiver as his own fault.

v  Self serving bias- works in reverse direction in which the perceiver assigns the cause of his poor performance as external while cause of good performance as internal.