Attributions as Behaviour Explanations: Towards a New Theory

Attribution theory is a hallmark of social-psychological thinking. Thousands of articles have been published in over forty years of research, and textbooks and handbooks of social psychology typically devote a chapter or a large section to attribution phenomena. This body of research can be usefully divided into a general attributional approach to social-psychological phenomena and theories of specific attribution phenomena, such as Kelley’s (1967) theory of explanation or Jones and Davis’s (1965) theory of dispositional inference. The general attributional approach recognizes that humans try to make sense of themselves and their surroundings and that this sensemaking activity (explanations, finding meaning, creating stories) is an integral part of the social phenomena under investigation. This approach has made countless contributions to the literature, shedding light on achievement motivation, responsibility judgements, helplessness, sleep disturbance, obesity, depression, emotion and well-being research (e.g., Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Jones, Kanouse, Kelley, Nisbett, Valins, & Weiner, 1972; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Weiner, 1995). Attribution theories, by contrast, are theories of the phenomenon of attribution itself. Unfortunately, at least two distinct phenomena have been referred to using the term attribution (Hamilton, 1998; Hilton, Smith, & Kin, 1995; Malle, 2004). According to one common meaning, forming an attribution is giving an explanation (especially of behaviour); according to another, forming an attribution is making a dispositional (trait) inference from behaviour. Even though explanations and trait inferences are occasionally related, they are distinct in many ways. For example, explanations sometimes refer to traits but often do not; trait inferences can be explanatory but usually are not; traits can be inferred from any behaviour, whereas explanations are triggered only by surprising or confusing behaviour; explanations are answers to “why” questions, and trait inferences are not. My focus in this chapter is on the phenomenon of behaviour explanations.1 In particular, I discuss a new theory of explanation that provides an alternative to the traditional attribution theory that dominates the textbooks and handbooks, which is typically a version of Kelley’s (1967) model of attribution as covariation detection. I begin with a brief critique of the traditional theory and then, out of this critique, develop a list of requirements that an improved theory has to meet. I then introduce the new theory, report supporting empirical data and apply it to a number of psychological phenomena. I conclude with an assessment of how much progress we have made in understanding behaviour explanations and what has yet to be learned.