The Leading Body For Attribution Theory - 1502 Words

This essay will discuss the work of Fritz Heider (1958), the leading body for attribution theory and Harold Kelley (1972) and Bernard Weiner (1986), who along with many other psychologists have since attempted to further explain why and how we make attributions. Research to support and contradict their findings will also be covered throughout the text. The term attribution refers to how we as human beings attach meaning to our own, and other people s behaviour. It has been suggested by Fiske and Taylor (1991) that the attribution theory explains ways a social perceiver manages evidence to arrive at causal explanations of occasions. Fritz Heider (1958) is known as the founding father of the attribution theory. Heider proposed that people†¦show more content†¦Rothman et al s study focuses on how easy it is to elicit internal attribution, they did this through the words you and your doctor . Two hundred and fifty women were randomly selected and assigned to one of three information conditions. All participants then took part in a session on mammography and breast cancer. The control condition group received the material without attribution control, in the external attribution condition the participants were told the information instead with the term your doctor and finally the internal attribution condition were given the information with the word you . Examples of some of the phrases used are: â€Å"A/ your doctor will look at the/ you will ask if the... mammogram can reveal very small masses that aren’t detectable by a self exam.† (Rothman et al, 2003). The findings of this study w ere that the women participating in the internal attribution condition were more probable to get a mammogram within the next 12 months. This has been put down to the fact that the line you puts the responsibility with the participant. Therefore Heider s work has ecological validity as it can be seen to work in a real life setting. There are also some weaknesses of Heider s work and of the supporting evidence used. Heider tries to explain behaviour with such a broken down complex by only using the two attributions, making it reductionist. This means that its not holistic as it isn’t taking into account different