Introduction

There is an old joke that when your partner gives you chocolates and flowers for no reason, there’s a reason. The point behind this joke is that it is practically impossible for humans not to seek and see reason, intentions, purposes and causes in people’s behaviour and circumstances. We are often completely unaware of this process and yet it can have a profound effect on the way we respond. There is a branch of psychology that deals with this process, known as Attribution Theory, and it is one of the most important theories that is largely neglected in social work.

An Introduction to Attribution Theory

The name Attribution Theory comes from the idea that humans attribute causes to events. Humans appear to have a powerful, almost overwhelming, desire to know why things happen the way they do.

In 1999 the group Travis performed at Glastonbury Music Festival. That year it had been dry for the whole weekend, however just as they opened their set with their latest song, “Why Does It Always Rain on Me”, it began to rain. Although we know that this was purely a coincidence, it is hard not to see some meaning or cause in it starting raining just as a group sing a song about why it always rains on them.

Although we know that this was purely a coincidence, it is hard not to see some meaning or cause in it starting raining just as a group sing a song about why it always rains on them.

When you turn to the psychology books you will find a rich and varied history of attribution theory, from Heider, in the 1950’s, to Jones, Bem, and Davis and Shachter in the 1960’s and 70’s, to Kelly, Weiner, and Seligman from the 1970’s through to today. These writers wrote about slightly different things and used different terms to describe the details of their ideas and models, but the exact use of those terms and the details of the models they developed are less important than getting to grips with the basic idea – humans tend to think of behaviour in terms of what is causing it; they tend to focus on a limited number of types of causes; and the types of causes they use affects the way they respond to behaviour.

That is the key insight from Attribution Theory.

Although different writers will use different terms and will break the attributions in different ways, I have found that for me the most helpful way to think about attributions is to see them as varying along three key dimensions: the personal/impersonal dimension; the permanent/temporary dimension, and the global/local dimension.

You, I, and practically every other person we meet will be trying to work out why people do what they do, and how to respond to that.

Types of Attributions

In general, Attribution Theory focuses on three different types of attributes, each of which falls somewhere on a spectrum.

Firstly, there are the personal-impersonal attributions. This relates to the extent to which we believe a person caused the event or behaviour, as opposed to it being caused by things beyond human control.

Secondly, there are temporary-permanent attributions. This relates to whether the cause will always be present, or whether it is something passing and will soon no longer cause the event or behaviour.

Finally, there are local-global attributions. This relates to whether the cause is more or less unique to this one specific event or behaviour, or whether this cause causes lots of other things too.

Personal Attributions

The first type of attribution we make is the personal versus the impersonal. In this context personal means that the person is doing it for a reason, either for a direct motivational reason, for example that they are trying to get some specific result, or for a personality based reason, for example they are ‘that kind of person.’ It is important to note that when seeking to example an event or situation we can apply these personal attributions to any person or entity perceived to be involved, including ourselves. Impersonal means that it was not done on purpose, it is the result of impersonal forces or pure chance.

This in effect means that when looking at a situation we can make four different types of attribution, three personal and one impersonal.

Personal – Self
It is caused by the person who is doing the explaining.

Personal – Person
It is caused by the person who did the thing or is in the situation you want to explain.

Personal – Other
It is caused by someone other than the person who did or is in the situation you want to explain.

Impersonal
It is caused by forces or factors beyond the control of any person or entity.

Example
Situation/Behaviour

Student A gets an F in an exam.

Personal-Person – “I got an F because I’m not clever enough for this subject.”
Personal-Other – “I got an F because the teacher deliberately picked things for the test that she knew I didn’t know.”
Impersonal – “I got an F because I had a bad infection.”

Although the last example is personal, in so far as the person has an infection, if the person sees the infection as ‘no-one’s fault’ then it is still impersonal.

Permanent Attributions

When we make attributions we can also vary in the extent to which we see causes as fixed and permanent or fluid and temporary. Although this is often presented as a digital choice (Permanent or Temporary) the reality is we usually see causes as varying on a sliding scale from Permanent and Impossible to Change on one side to Fleeting and Easy to Change on the other. This scale of permanency can be represented visually, as in the table below.

We can apply this to look at the example of the student getting an F in their exam.

Permanent – I’m stupid.
Long Term – I’m not a very good student
Medium Term – I didn’t ask for enough help with the subject
Short Term – I stayed up too late the day before the exam.

If you notice you will see that all four of these examples are also personal-person explanations in that the person is basically blaming themselves.

Global Attributions

They are some causes that can be used to explain a lot of different things or that affect a lot of different behaviours and situations. There are other explanations that are limited to a narrower range of things. Causal explanations that are cover lots of different things are called Global attributions; those that only explain a few things are called Local Attributions. Again, although this is often presented as a digital choice, local or global, in reality it is a sliding scale, with some things affecting everything, some most things, some a few things, and some only one thing. It is important to understand that here global and local are not used in a physical or geographical sense.
So again, applying this to the example of the student and their exam it would work like this.
Global – I am stupid.
Local – I am no good at this subject.

When we put all these three dimensions of the attributional style, we can see that there are 16 different main types of attributions people can make. These can be represented on the table below.

Impact of Attributions

The kinds of attributions we make have a profound effect, both in terms of how we feel and what we do, this holds true as to whether you are talking about your own behaviour, or someone else’s. The exact nature of this impact will depend first of all on the initial evaluation of the event, in particular whether we see the behaviour or circumstance as good or bad.

Attributions of Good or Positive Things

Personal
If we make personal-self attributions of own positive behaviour we are likely to feel a sense of pride in a job well done, and to feel more confident that we can cope in the future.

If we make personal-person attributions of the positive behaviour of other peoples we are likely to have confidence in them and to communicate this confidence to them.

If we make personal-other attributions of the behaviour we are seeking to explain, then our reactions may be more complex. On the positive side, when we see good things as being caused by someone else, then we are likely to be grateful and appreciate the support of other people. However, there is a danger that when we start to hold other people responsible for our success, then we can believe we can only succeed due to others. This can unintentionally foster dependency and undermine our own or other people’s coping strategies.

Permanence
If we make permanent attributions of a positive situation we are more likely to feel confident it will last, this will tend to build confidence and make future success more likely.

If we make temporary attributions we are more likely to be pessimistic about future success, seeing the current situation as something that is unlikely to last.

Globality
When the causes of good or positive things are seen as global this will also be likely to improve confidence as success in one area is likely to be seen as transferable to another area.

Local attributions of good things are likely to lead to either a degree of modesty, which is not a bad thing, or pessimism, which is a bad thing. Modesty is recognising that all our strengths are only strengths in specific times and places, and so we do not take them too seriously. Pessimism is the tendency to fail to see how strengths and resources in one area can be transferred and used in other areas.

Attributions of Bad or Negative Things

Personal
If we make personal-self attributions of our own negative behaviour or life circumstances we are likely to feel guilty as we will see them as our fault.

If we make personal-personal attributions of the negative behaviour or circumstances we are likely to be critical or hostile towards the person, blaming them for bringing things on themselves. At a low level this is not necessarily harmful as it is important for social workers to be able to hold people accountable for their own choices, as without that we may disempower people. It is however too easy for this to tip over from helping people take responsibility to what they can control to victim-blaming where we blame people for what they cannot control.

Making personal-other attribution can help us develop empathy for the impact that the behaviours of others can have on people. This is vital when we see someone being abused and we need to recognise that we need to hold those who abuse to account for their behaviour and not blame those who are abused for doing what they need to do to survive. Personal-other attributions in this way form an important part of seeking justice for the oppressed. At the same time we also need to recognise that often there are many sides to the story and we need to hold all to account and not put all the blame on one side and absolve the other sides of all blame. It can be hard to get this balance right.

Impersonal Attributions are ones that allow us most to escape from uncomfortable emotions because we can avoid guilt, by realising that it is not our fault, and we can escape anger, by realising that no-one did this, it just happened. We need to be careful we aren’t doing this to avoid responsibility, but the harsh reality is, to slightly paraphrase a rather cruder expression, stuff happens. Sometimes no-one is to blame, we just need to deal with it.

Permanence
Seeing bad events as permanent causes leaves us feeling powerless as it is impossible to change causes which are permanent. These attributions make it harder for us to work for change in the future and mean we are far more likely to give up quickly.

If however we see bad events as having temporary causes we may still sad or uncomfortable about the current position, but we experience these as temporary set-backs, not as major disasters. When causes are seen as temporary we are more likely to be persistent and work on getting things back on track.

Globality
Our response to evens which are seen as having global causes tends to be closely tied up with permanent causes as we tend to see global causes (causes which have an effect over a wide range of areas) as being more likely to be permanent. In general global attributions of negative events are more likely to be associated with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, whereas local attributions are likely to be associated with acceptance and toleration of our own and others’ human weaknesses.

Optimistic and Pessimistic Attributional Styles

Attribution theory allows us to develop a very helpful model of optimism and pessimism. Optimism can be seen as the tendency to general see positive events as having significant personal-self, permanent, and global causes, whereas negative events are seen as having causes which are more impersonal, temporary and local. It is not that an optimist thinks that bad things will never happen, it is simply that an optimist believes that there are things they can do to make bad things less likely to happen and good things more likely to happen, they believe that if something good happens they can do things to make it more likely to be repeated and when something bad happens they believe that there are things they can do to limit the damage and get things back on track.

Someone with a pessimistic attributional style will find that they do the opposite; when something good happens they will see it as not having any personal-self causes and being largely temporary and local, whereas when something bad happens they will experience this as being their fault (personal-self), and going to last forever (permanent) and as affecting every area of their lives (global).

In general any work that involves empowering people to change is likely to be helped if the worker can help people develop a more optimistic attributional style, that is in the worker’s ability to help others see problems as temporary, local, and multi-factorial, and to see strengths and successes as permanent, global, and personal to themselves. This means that workers need to pay close attention to their own attributional styles and if they find that are consistently developing a negative attributional style then they need to get support to help overcome this.

At the same time workers need to be mindful of Lord Laming’s comments about ‘respectful uncertainty.’ Those we work with will lie, they will have ulterior motives, they will do things for selfish reasons, and may cause serious harm to themselves or others. Davis et al (2002) stress the need for ‘quiet optimism’, a balance between belief that change is possible and an empathic understanding of how difficult things are for those who are experiencing problems. It is also important for workers to understand the dangers of the ‘rule of optimism’, this is the insistence that only the most optimistic interpretation of events should be allowed. As a result I think it is vital for workers to maintain both an optimistic stance (as this greatly increases the chances for successful work) we must also be sceptical and base our assessments on evidence, not assumptions. To do that it is important to be aware of at least some of the cognitive biases and attributional errors that can interfere with our thinking about causes.

Attributional Errors and Biases

Given the complexity and chaotic nature of human behaviour and social systems it is practically a given that at best our causal explanations of events and behaviour are at best partial, and at worst wrong.

In the old folk tale, Prince Llewellyn had a dog called Gelert. One day, after returning from the hunt, Llewellyn entered his hall and saw his son’s upturn cot. He also saw that Gelert’s mouth covered in blood. Convinced that his dog had killed his son the Llewellyn drew his sword and killed his dog. Only then, when Gelert was dead at this feet, did he hear the sounds of whimpering coming from under the upturned cot. Turning over the cot, Llewellyn found his son, alive and well. Looking further. Llewellyn also discovered the body of a dead wolf; the wolf that had got into the hall and tried to kill his son; the wolf that the faithful Gelert had killed to protected his beloved master; the master who had jumped to conclusions about the meaning of what he saw in front of him.

We are all prone to making attribution errors, at jumping to conclusions, to mis-reading the things we see, hear and do. The more we are aware of these the more we are able to counter them and avoid making mistakes.

Confirmation Errors

The first type of error to be aware of is that of confirmation errors. If we are aspiring to make good judgements we should gather the evidence, analyse it, arrive at a provisional conclusion, and then carefully check this conclusion against all the best available data to try and improve it or abandon it and replace it if it turns out we are wrong. However this is rarely what happens. We generally reach a conclusion early on a mix of limited evidence and assumptions, and then seek evidence which will prove us right.

I suspect that in the case of Peter Connolly, known as Baby P, we might have seen this phenomena in action. In December 2006 a decision was made to remove Peter from his mother’s care and place him with a family friend following concerns about injuries to Peter. Some weeks later the decision was made that things were safe enough for him to be returned to his mother’s care. Less than 8 months later he died as a result of physical assaults injuries caused either by his mother or his mother’s boyfriend. Many chances to save his life were missed, probably because once the decision had been made to return Peter to his mother’s care the professionals involved actively looked for evidence to prove that this was the right decision, instead of doing what would have been better, which is keeping an open mind and considering evidence both for and against his safety.

Once you are aware of this error you are equipped with a key tool, that is asking yourself, what would let me know that I’m wrong? It is not enough to simply ask that, you have to actively look for evidence both for and against what you thing is the case. If you find evidence you are wrong, or at least partially wrong, then change your mind, if you try your best to find evidence that proves you wrong, and you can’t find it, then you can be more confident that you are right, but always allowing for the fact that you might be wrong.

Fundamental Attribution Error

As this name suggests this is considered to be one of the most basic attribution errors. What it suggests is that when we are seeking to explain our own ‘misbehaviour’ we tend to over-estimate the role of situational and external causes, and under-estimate the role of internal, personal factors, and yet when we are seeking to explain the misbehaviour of others we do the opposite.
As an example if I am driving and I cut-in in-front of someone I am likely to see this as a result of a momentary distraction, or tiredness, or being in a hurry. If on the other hand someone cuts me up I am likely to see them as a selfish, irresponsible driver who shouldn’t be allowed on the road.

When we work with people we tend to assume very quickly that their behaviour is caused by personal factors, often of a permanent and global nature. So if someone is angry we assume that they are an angry, unreasonable person who we can expect no less from. It is not whether this is right or wrong that matters, what matters is that such attribution make it far harder to do change work with people. Having said that it is also rarely as simply a case as someone being angry because they are an angry person, people feel angry for a complex mix of personal and situational, permanent and temporary, and local and global factors.

Once you are aware of this bias you can notice when you are making judgements about a person on the basis of their behaviour or circumstances, and ask yourself, ‘what am I not considering?’ A useful test here is to ask yourself “If I was in their situation, and had had everything happen to me that’s happened to them, and I thought the way they did, might I do what they did?” If the answer is not then chances are you haven’t yet gathered enough information to make a thorough assessment.

Self-Interested Bias

The final bias I will discuss here is the self-interested. We often choose an attribution that works for us, perhaps because it makes life easier or because makes us look good, or because we would simply prefer not to ask too many awkward questions. We can consider this my thinking about a situation where a student gets a poor grade. For the student the option of taking a Personal-Other attribution is more convenient that a Personal-Self one, therefore they are more likely to attribute their lack of success to things like having a poor teacher, or being too busy with the demands of other people. For the teacher the bias works the other way. It would be embarrassing, even humiliating to admit that their teaching was poor, so the teacher is far more likely to blame the student for being too lazy to study hard enough.

When faced with several different ways of explaining events, some of which demand no actions from us and fit the way we see ourselves, and others that demand that we change or take action, and that we change the way we see ourselves, we are far more likely to choose an explanation from the former than the latter, even if this will block our long-term growth and development. This will be especially true when working or living under pressure as stress has a powerful tendency to limit our cognitive flexibility, so we fall back on what is easiest, most available and least demanding.

The key point here is to always aspire to reflect on whether you believe something because that’s where the evidence points, or you believe it because it’s what will make your life easier. Where this can get very messy in a modern professional context is that organisations are also prone to a self-interested bias. The current climate of managerialism, with its emphasis on targets means that workers come under serious pressure to create explanations that will allow the organisation to meet the targets, and not necessarily to ask awkward question. Standing up to both internal and external pressure to use self-interested biased is not easy, but the key here is to get good support from people you trust, good friends and good colleagues who will act as a sounding board to check if you are being honest with yourself or simply going with what is most convenient. It is important to remember that this takes real trust as very few people will be completely honest with you, but if you have friends and colleagues who will do that they are a major asset.
These are just a handful of the cognitive biases that affect our thinking about why people do what they do. Learning more about them and practicing seeing them in yourself is extremely helpful in terms of creating ethical and effective assessments of people’s behaviour and circumstances, but it is important to remember it is usually easier to spot biases in other people’s reasoning than in our own. There is a proverb about three thousand years old that says “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death.” Our own sense of ‘rightness’ of being ‘correct’ is a very poor judge of whether our beliefs about that is causing a behaviour or an situation are really accurate.

Making Sound Judgments

Making judgments about people’s behaviour and their circumstances is central to the role of social work. That process is, as this chapter has argued, not a simple or easy process. We are all prone to making mistakes, jumping to conclusions, and acting on faulty data or illogical reasoning, so in concluding this chapter I would like to point the way to improve our ability to develop and use our own theories in our social work practice.

Firstly, we need to clearly differentiate data from opinion, or even from rumour. Data is what we can be sure of. When assessing behaviour we have to be clear on what our data is. As an example of this I remember writing in a report once that “The hospital doctor stated that the children had not increased in weight between the ages of 6 and 12 weeks.” The family argued with this and said that this was wrong and that their baby had put weight on, but that the hospital scales were inaccurate. I held by my data as what I said was that “the doctor stated” this, and that is a fact, in that case not open to dispute. We could have argued about whether what the doctor said was accurate, or about what it would mean whether it was accurate or not, but there was no argument that the doctor had said it.

Secondly, you need to be clear on the meaning you are attributing to any specific piece of behaviour, and how that relates to the purposes of your role. This is important as actions such as making or avoiding eye-contact have very different meanings in different contexts. I have seen behaviour that I have seen as perfectly reasonable in the circumstances used as evidence that someone has a major problem, and I’ve seen things that I think are a major problem being dismissed as nothing. This doesn’t prove who was right or wrong, only that we need to be careful about assuming that a certain thing has a certain meaning.

Finally, in your work strive to be cautiously optimistic. We need to recognise that no matter how bad a situation is, no matter how entrenched a problem seems to be, change is always a possibility, and at the same time be aware that sometimes people choose not to change, or circumstances make significant change too slow, or that sometimes the protection of a vulnerable person means that you cannot wait for the change, you have to step in and take action.

All of this takes time and effort, but the more you develop the ability to create and use your theories of human behaviour and social systems the easier and more effective your work will become.

Having explored something of your basics of this website and looked at your own theories, it is important to relate this to your wide course and career goals. We need to have a sound understanding of what social work is. You can find more details on the next page.

Created by M. Allenby. Last updated by M. Allenby on 22.8.16