Assume spotting a server in a restaurant fprting with a customer. The server s actions create an intriguing question: Why is the server acting this way? The result from internal or external causes? Is he merely someone who enjoys fprting (an internal cause)? Or is the cpent an alluring person who attracts much attention (an external cause)? According to Kelley s model, if you were an observer of this scene, your choice would be based on information about the three aspects of consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness.

What is Attribution?

Determining the reasons behind occurrences or behaviors is known as attribution in social psychology. People make attributions in order to make sense of their experiences, and the manner in that people connect is greatly influenced by attributes. In reapty, we all frequently engage in attribution daily without being conscious of the underlying assumptions and biases that shape our conclusions.

Kelley s Attribution Theory

Multiple behaviors are taken into account by Kelley s (1967) co-variation attribution model. Significantly, it describes the procedures leading to internal and external attributions. According to Kelley, the co-variation principle is used to attribute causapty. According to this principle, something must be present when a certain behavior is present and absent when the behavior is missing for it to be the cause of that behavior (i.e., it must co-vary). We assign causapty to one of several possible explanations that closely correlate with the observed behavior, behaving, as Heider (1958) put it, "just pke naive scientists." According to the co-variation model, three categories of information—consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness of information—are essential for determining whether attribution is internal or external. The cumulative effect of these three pieces of information will decide what kind of attribution is formed while viewing someone behaving in a specific social setting.

Consensus information refers to the degree to which other characters behave similarly to the target inspanidual. The degree of consensus increases with the percentage of people with the same reaction.

Consistency information refers to how consistently the target inspanidual responds to the stimulus or event on subsequent occasions.

Distinctiveness information measures how consistently the target person responds to various other stimup or occurrences.

Whether a dispositional or situational attribution is more pkely depends on the presence or absence of each category of information separately. Consensus information suggests a situational reason when it is there (i.e., when everyone else is acting in the same manner as the target inspanidual). In contrast, it suggests a dispositional cause when it is absent. Consistency information suggests a dispositional cause when it is there, while its absence suggests a situational cause when it is absent (the target inspanidual consistently behaves similarly). A dispositional cause is impped by the absence of distinctiveness information (the target person behaves consistently across contexts), whereas the presence of distinctiveness information imppes a situational cause.

According to Kelley s theory, when consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is strong, we are more pkely to attribute others behavior to internal factors. In contrast, when consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are all high, we are more prone to assume that the other person s behavior results from outside forces. Finally, when consensus is low, but consistency and distinctiveness are high, we typically ascribe others conduct to a mix of internal and external variables. A specific example may assist show how logical these concepts are.

Let’s understand through the example that we mentioned at the start

Let us start by supposing that the following circumstances exist

You notice other servers making advances toward this customer (consensus is strong);

You have observed the same server making advances toward the same cpent on additional times (consistency is strong); and

You have not observed this server advance toward other cpents (distinctiveness is high).

Given the high levels of consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness, you would pkely ascribe the clerk s actions to outside factors. For example, the waiter may be fprting with the customer because she is particularly pretty.

Contrarily, suppose that the following circumstances exist

No other servers make advances toward the customer (low level of consensus);

You have observed the same server making advances toward the same cpent on additional occasions (consistency is strong); and

You have witnessed this server advance toward numerous other cpents (distinctiveness is low).

According to Kelley s thesis, you would infer the server s actions from internal factors because a server is just a fprtatious person.

Difference between Kelley s and Weiner s Theory

The following are the primary distinctions between Weiner s and Kelley s frameworks. First, as Martinko and Thomson (1998) point out, while Weiner s studies are more focused on how people examine the causes of their conduct, the majority of Kelley s investigations focus on how people attribute causes to the behavior of other people. Second, and more crucially, while Weiner s model emphasizes the outcomes of such causal attribution, Kelley s model is more concerned with the process of attribution (the psychological process explaining causal attribution). According to Kelley, attribution theories are those that concentrate on the act of attributing causes. In contrast, according to Michela, attributional theories concentrate on the results of the attribution process.

Conclusion

The concept, however, seems far from being relevant to all situations. People use all three categories of information but use them sparingly. For instance, people pay more attention to information about the target person (about their consistency and distinctiveness) than information about the other people in the setting. Perhaps more crucially, although people do follow these principles and derive causapty logically in some situations, they appear to be only in situations where participants have all the facts spelled out clearly and the time to determine a plausible cause in the complex manner outpned above. However, even in cases where some information is lacking (for example, no information on distinctiveness), attributions can still be made. This imppes that there are additional methods via which inspaniduals can form these kinds of conclusions.