When social psychologists try to understand human behavior they develop reliable inferences about the causes of behavior. The concept of developing assumptions about the causes of behavior is known as attributions in social psychology. In simple words attribution refer to the process of how we explain someone or our own behavior. When we try to explain why people do what they did, we tribute their behavior with some cause. In the history of social psychology many theorists have presented the theories of attribution, these theories are about how people explain behavior of others or someone rather than how should people explain the behavior of others or someone. The object of these theories is not to provide a real insight to the causes of people behavior instead it provide reliable assumptions regarding the causes of someone behavior. Generally, many researches have categorized attribution into two basic types or forms these include, Dispositional and Situational attribution.
Dispositional Attribution
The first type of attribution is dispositional also known as internal attribution. When we explain a person behavior is caused by his personality characteristics is called dispositional or internal attribution. When we attribute an individual behavior as dispositional, it means that behavior the behavior is caused due to his or her enduring traits for instance, if you see a person playing cricket regularly in a stadium and wonder why is he playing regularly. If you draw an internal or dispositional attribution; you will say likes or loves to play cricket. Let us take another example, if you wonder why your friend is unemployed and associate with dispositional attribution; you will say because he is lazy. Being lazy is a personality trait or characteristic of a person due to which he is jobless or unemployed.
Situational Attribution
The second type of attribution is situational also known as external attribution. When we explain a person behavior is caused due to external circumstances is known as situational attribution. When a behavior is attributed as situational, it means the cause of the behavior external circumstances or social environment for instance, if you see a friend playing cricket in stadium and explain his behavior in the light of situational attribution; you will say he usually doesn’t play cricket his cousins might have insisted on to play with them. The example suggest that a person does not like to play cricket but external circumstances compelled him to play. Let’s take another example, if your brother is unemployed and you draw a situational attribution for his unemployment; you will say, he is very hard working and talented, he applied everywhere for job but, due to nepotistic culture he is still jobless. Nepotistic culture is external circumstances which is not in the control of people therefore the behavior is attributed as situational.
Written by; Khushdil Khan Kasi