Attribution Theory Research Paper

Attribution Theory

Human behavior is a complex process and the attribution theories try to explain it by discussing the psychological processes going on. It discusses the causes as well as effects of the particular behavior under consideration (Attribution Theory, n.d.). The Attribution theory also tries to explain if a person behaves in a certain way due to internal or external locus of control. The types of attribution theories are common sense, correspondent inference, co-variation model of attribution and three-dimensional model of attribution.

Three-dimensional model of attribution

The Gavin's behavior is explained by three dimensional model of attribution that takes into account stable theory, locus of control and controllability. Gavin seems to have unstable behavior, external locus of control and personally uncontrollable. He has own perceptions about self and things. He forgets things and leads an undisciplined life. He has less control and emotionally not very stable. Gavin has a behavior that is confused and unfocussed. He does not remember things and forgets the planned events. He, according to attribution theory falls into three dimensional model because the model defines a behavior in terms of stability and source and intensity of control. Gavin, since he is reminded by people about the events to come and what needs to be done, has external locus of control. He did not seem to himself decide about things or to predict what future requirements of the meetings are.

Limitation of the Theory

The theory criticizes human emotional weakness by discussing him as a logical person.It does not find out why a person behaves in a particular way with involvement of his emotions. The emotions are however a human part that rule people behavior in many ways. The theory also considers that people can help themselves by understanding where they lack. However, this is not true. People have emotional weakness and affiliations that often affect their logical understanding of life. It is therefore suggested that a person's behavior may be understood in the light of attribution theory but it should be expected that the theory will help solve his behavioral issues completely.

Heuristics

Often it is not required to hire complex methodologies to explain the human psychology. There are simple yet effective psychological rules that are learned by human experience over time. These simple rules tell an individual what methods a person deploys to make decisions and how people solve problems they face in personal and work life (Neal, n.d.). However, these rules should not be handled with carelessness. There are certain types of heuristics namely representativeness, availability, false consensus effect, and anchoring heuristic. Two of them are discussed below.

Representativeness

In decision making, the representativeness heuristic helps make decisions regarding the likelihood of an event to occur (Marsden, Veeraraghavan, and Ye, 2008). The rule tells how much an event resembles to another event of main category and how this event can or cannot repeat itself. However,….....