In the second half of the chapter I introduce an alternative theory of behavior explanations that overcomes these shortcomings. I then highlight historical misunderstandings and shortcomings of these theories that have not been adequately addressed. The discussion begin with the work of undisputed founder of attribution, Fritz Heider, then briefly visit Jones and Davis’s contribution, and move on to Harold Kelley’s theoretical model. This chapter focuses on attribution as behavior explanation because it is a far-reaching cognitive and social phenomenon that is embedded in the larger human search for meaning. Despite the connection between these phenomena, they have distinct psychological characteristics. What the two meanings have in common is a process of assigning: in attribution as explanation, a behavior is assigned to its cause in attribution as inference, a quality or attribute is assigned to the agent on the basis of an observed behavior. The first refers to explanations of behavior (i.e., answers to why questions) the second refers to inferences or ascriptions (e.g., inferring traits from behavior, ascribing blame to a person). For example, if you and a classmate both fail an exam, you may think that your failure was due to the difficulty of the questions, while your classmate’s was due to poor preparation. In social psychology, the term attribution has two primary meanings. Actorobserver bias is the tendency to attribute our actions to external factors and other people’s actions to internal ones. In light of these results, I summarize the theoretical and empirical reasons to give up these three dogmas of attribution theory: that behaviors are like all other events, that explaining behavior is choosing between person and situation causes, and that such choices are driven by covariation detection. I then apply the theory to a core attributional phenomenon-actor– observer asymmetries in explanation-and chart two additional applications. To introduce the theory, I first map out this folk-conceptual framework, provide evidence for its core elements, and develop the cognitive and social features of behavior explanations, with a focus on the unique properties of intentional action explanation. The theory is grounded in the framework of folk concepts children and adults use to make sense of human behavior, a framework that was already anticipated by Fritz Heider. The goal here is to present a theory that can. Unfortunately, this theory (a version of attribution as covariation detection) cannot account for people’s ordinary explanations of behavior. Attribution research has held a prominent place in social psychology for 50 years, and the dominant theory of attribution has been the same for all this time.
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