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The Attribution Theory In The Psychology Of Interpersonal Relations

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The attribution theory is a method that can be used to assess how people perceive the behaviour of himself and other people. The attribution theory refers to how people generate causal explanations. In the book "The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations” Heider stated that all behaviour is considered to be determined by internal or external factors. In external attribution the causality is assigned to a factor, an agent or an external force. External factors go out of control. In internal attribution the causality is assigned to a factor, an agent or an inner strength. The internal factors fall within their own control (FRIEDKIN, 2010, pp. 196-213). An attitude is a mental and neurological status with resilience, organized by the experience …show more content…

People who believe that the development of certain task depends on them have an internal locus of control, while convinced that the successful development of the task depends on external factors have an external locus of control. The two ends of locus of control are internal and external, according to the following definitions: Internal locus of control: perception of the subject which events occur mainly as a result of their own actions, i.e. the perception that he controls his life. Such a person appreciates the effort, skill and personal responsibility. External locus of control: perception of the subject that events occur as a result of chance, fate, luck or power and decisions of others. Thus, the external LC is the perception that events are unrelated to the performance itself, i.e. that events cannot be controlled by its own effort and dedication. Such a person is characterized by mainly attributed merits and responsibilities to others. Although the effort and ability are important, often there are factors beyond the control of the individual that determine success. For example, if your boss criticizes the way you rushed through a presentation, it is possible that the time you have allotted dropped at the last minute, making haste was necessary. If you have a strong internal locus of control, will you refuse to accept that this was a factor beyond your control, and instead, rebuke yourself for not being prepared with a shorter version of the presentation. When these situations occur repeatedly, diminish your self-esteem and can lead to depression (HANSON, 2013, pp.

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As a Psychology major, I am taught to analyze people in an objective and holistic way. More than once, all humans tend to fall into the trap of the fundamental attribution error. The FAE is the claim that, in contrast to interpretations of their own behavior, people place undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person’s behavior. This means that people tend to accuse a person's errors on internal factors, instead of how external factors can lead to errors. As I was reading “I’d

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The SSB supposes that we satisfy ourselves by applying our positive behaviour to dispositional factors and our negative behaviour to situational factors. An example of when this occurs could be when you do an exam. If you do well, you like to think that it is thanks to the fact that you studied hard, but when you fail, you like to think that it is because your teacher did not teach the topic well enough. Regardless of the situation, SSB seems to occur in order to boost our self-esteem, which also means that it is more prevalent in cultures where self-image is of importance. So once again, we should take precaution when considering the occurrence of this attribution error, if it seems to show up in a culture where it is not common, you may have misread the

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The Environment Can Control In times of difficulty, individuals tend to change who they are. For example, when one tends to grow up and go through the stages of adulthood, they change their ways in which they act or think. Situations and environment are able to control and manipulate an individual. Situations can become so severe that they can lead to savagery in one’s individual environment.

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External Locus of Control. There is a great deal of research showing that people who are anxious or depressed have an "external locus of control. " That is, the person believes that something outside of him- or herself determines what will happen. Persons with social anxiety disorder believe that other, more capable and competent people control what will happen. Take the example of a man asking a woman to accompany him to a movie.

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Physical Development Watson (2012) defines physical development as the process that starts in human infancy and continues into late adolescent concentrating on fine and gross motor development. Fine motor development involves more finely tuned movements such as grasping, building bricks and gross motor development involves larger movements such as walking, climbing, climbing stairs and riding bicycles. In the movie “Yours, Mine and Ours”, when analysing Ethan Beardsley who is four years old, the youngest child of Frank Beardsley; a single father of eight children, Ethan’s fine motor development such as when he was using a chalk when he and Helen North’s youngest were scribbling on Frank’s “Operation Light House” board, he grasped the chalk with ease as the chalk was big. This proves he has acquired the fine motor skill of grasping.

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People might forget what they are pursuing for. However, if people have comprehensive cognition of themselves, they will make correct actions in their lives, but, people who are unaware of them are more easily lose their true selves through the process of psychological immune systems. In addition, people who have own opinions and thoughts are approaching successful because the psychological immune systems cause people mispredict the environment they face. Gilbert also assures “Ignorance of our psychological immune systems causes us to mispredict the circumstances under which we will blame others, but it also causes us to mispredict the circumstances under which we will blame ourselves” (134). The immune system makes people neglect what they truly feel, because when they face

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In the movie, Philadelphia, psychologists are able to apply: attribution theory, self-verification theory, social identity theory, cognitive dissonance, and drive theory to explain the behavior of some people. The attribution theory explains the cause of someone’s behavior by associating it to their personality or situation. In the movie, it is applied when Andrew is fired. The law firm claimed that they fired Andrew because of his incompetence, which is a fundamental attribution error because they were blaming him for the reason they fired him.

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Finally, the fundamental attribution error occurs when a person fails to notice situational factors and assume that a behavior or specific actions are due to an individual’s personality or character traits (Harman, 1999).

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Relationships are a lot like flying a plane, you need a pilot, a co-pilot, and incredible focus for it to not crash and burn. My relationship with my friend Adrianne was a lot like that. Meeting in middle school through mutual friends; our relationship lasted until the end of my junior year (her senior year) of high school. Throughout that time, she and I had been the best and the worst of friends. My relationship with Adrianne reaches all ten stages of Knapp’s Theory, and therefore changes the way I see my other relationships.

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Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior The roles of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior could be explained using the attribution theory where attribution is the process of interpreting and explaining behavior and how people try to use these factors to do this . Situational factors refer to external influences such as who you surround yourself with, social norms, the situation and the weather while dispositional factors are about internal factors such as your personality, attitude and beliefs . In explaining behavior these factors can either be combined as one explanation or used separately to determine the cause of one’s actions.

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The internal world is our mind, which we have complete control over. We don’t have control over external things which are beyond our control. We can only influence external world, but not control it completely. We suffer because we don’t distinguish what is in our control and what is not in our control.

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No one knows for sure why we commit the fundamental attribution error, but one likely culprit is the fact that we’re rarely aware of all of the situational factors impinging on others’ behavior at a given moment. Contrarily, we’re less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error if we’ve been in the same situation ourselves or been encouraged to feel empathic toward those we’re

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This theory was made by Michael Argyle (1925- 2002), who was a social psychologist. In the late 1960s he studied social skills, body language, non-verbal communication and interpersonal behaviour. In this study, he found that non-verbal signals can be much more important and useful than verbal communication when trying to trigger peoples’ attitudes and feelings. His research showed and found that the stronger the relationship between the people communicating so with close friends for example the much better eye contact. However, when the relationship is not very strong so when speaking to a stranger people don’t have very good eye contact and they tend to look away when talking.

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Lastly, those with an internal locus of control are said to cope well with stress. Dr. Brennan is constantly working on time-sensitive high profile cases that could induce great amounts of stress;

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Therefore, attribution is an important component of human cognitive process, as well as an important influence on the formation of self-concepts. Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Heider(1958) in the early part of the 20th century, subsequently developed by others such as Jones(1965), Davis(1965), Kelley(1967) and Weiner(1974). 2.1.1 The Attribution Theory Heider (1958) put forward the Attribution Theory in the book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which pioneered the modern field of social cognition. As one part of the larger and more complex Heiderian account of social

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