Health and life

The origins of attribution theory can be found in the work of Heider (1944, 1958), who argued that individuals are motivated to see their social world as predictable and controllable – that is, a need to understand causality. Kelley (1967, 1971) developed these original ideas and proposed a clearly defined attribution theory suggesting that attributions about causality were structured according to causal schemata made up of the following criteria:
■ Distinctiveness: the attribution about the cause of a behaviour is specific to the individual carrying out the behaviour.
■ Consensus: the attribution about the cause of a behaviour would be shared by others.
■ Consistency over time: the same attribution about causality would be made at any other time.
■ Consistency over modality: the same attribution would be made in a different situation.
Kelley argued that attributions are made according to these different criteria and that the type of attribution made (e.g. high distinctiveness, low consensus, low consistency over time, low consistency over modality) determines the extent to which the cause of a behaviour is regarded as a product of a characteristic internal to the individual or external (i.e. the environment or situation).
Since its original formulation, attribution theory has been developed extensively and differentiations have been made between self-attributions (i.e. attributions about one’s own behaviour) and other attributions (i.e. attributions made about the behaviour of others). In addition, the dimensions of attribution have been redefined as follows:
■ internal versus external (e.g. my failure to get a job is due to my poor performance in the interview versus the interviewer’s prejudice)
■ stable versus unstable (e.g. the cause of my failure to get a job will always be around versus was specific to that one event)
■ global versus specific (e.g. the cause of my failure to get the job influences other areas of my life versus only influenced this specific job interview)
■ controllable versus uncontrollable (e.g. the cause of my failure to get a job was controllable by me versus was uncontrollable by me).
Brickman et al. (1982) have also distinguished between attributions made about the causes of a problem and attributions made about the possible solution. For example, they claimed that whereas an alcoholic may believe that he is responsible for becoming an alcoholic due to his lack of willpower (an attribution for the cause), he may believe that the medical profession is responsible for making him well again (an attribution for the solution).