The causal structure of situations: The generation of plausible causal attributions as a function of type of event situation

doi:10.1016/0022-1031(83)90037-9

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 19, Issue 2, March 1983, Pages 185-203

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(83)90037-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

The causal structures for each of four types of situations—interpersonal failure, noninterpersonal failure, interpersonal success, and noninterpersonal success—were explored and compared. A first group of subjects generated plausible causes for five specific situations in each of the four general types of situations. A second group of subjects provided similarity data on these causes, which were used in a cluster analysis of the causes. A third group of subjects rated the generated causes on each of six dimensions reported in the attribution literature: changeability, locus, stability, intentionality, globality, and controllability. Analyses of the clusters of causes and the ratings revealed (a) different types of causes were generated for different types of situations, (b) different types of situations led people to generate causes that differ in dimensional location, (c) the various causal dimensions were highly intercorrelated. These findings were applied to A. W. Kruglanski's (Psychological Review, 1980, 87) model of attribution processes. In addition, implications for the study of interpersonal situations and for the cognition-motivation debate over “self-serving” bias in attribution were discussed. Finally, several methodological issues were examined.

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The causal structure of situations: The generation of plausible causal attributions as a function of type of event situation

Abstract

Journal of Research in Personality

Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Motivational and performance deficits in interpersonal settings: The effect of attributional style

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Attributional style of lonely and depressed people

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

When experiences of failure promote expectations of success: The impact of attributing failure to ineffective strategies

Journal of Personality

Measuring causal attributions for success and failure

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Naive psychology and the attribution model of achievement

Journal of Personality

Cue utilization and attributional judgments for success and failure

Journal of Personality

The psychology of interpersonal relations

Hierarchical clustering schemes

Psychometrika

From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in perception

Attribution theory in social psychology

The process of causal attribution

American Psychologist