The Attribution Theory tries to explain how humans explain incidents or, how this site puts it, "how they answer questions beginning with 'why?'".
It says that humans make causal explanations by evaulating three kinds of informations. These are:
- Consensus information - do all or only a few people respond to the stimulus in the same way as the target person?
- Distinctiveness information - does the target person respond in the same way to other stimuli as well?
- Consistency information - does the target person always respond in the same way to this stimulus?
Let's say, for example, that Mr. X is afraid of a certain dog and Mr. Y witnesses this incident.
- Case 1: The consensus is low, the distinctivness is high and the consistency is low
Mr. X is the only one who is afraid of that dog, he is only afraid of this dog but isn't always afraid of this dog. Conclusion: Mr. Y will probably assume that the situation (for instance the dog jumping up the unsuspecting Mr. X) is the reason that Mr. Y is afraid.
- Case 2: The consensus is high, the distinctivness is high and the consistency is low
Everyone is afraid of that dog, Mr. X is only afraid of this dog but isn't always afraid of this dog. Conclusion: Mr. Y will probably assume that the dog (for instance the dog has been turned wild by someone) is the reason that Mr. X is afraid.
- Case 3: The consensus is low, the distinctivness is low and the consistency is high
Only Mr. X is afraid of that dog, he is afraid of every dog and he is always afraid of this dog. Conclusion: Mr. Y will probably assume that the reason for Mr. X to be afraid is simply that he is frightend by dogs.
- Case 4: The consensus is high, the distinctivness is high and the consistency is high
Everyone is afraid of this dog, Mr. X is only afraid of this dog and he is always afraid of this dog. Conclusion: Mr. Y will probably assume that the dog (since everyone is afraid of it, it must be a pretty bad dog) is the reason for Mr. X to be afraid.
- And so forth...
Since nobody knows everything, false attributions are easily made. For instance, if Mr. Y in case 4 above doesn't know that everyone is afraid of this certain dog, he could as well assume, that Mr. X is afraid, because he has had a bad experience with that dog and was bitten by it.
Mr. Y would therefore attribute Mr. Y's fear of this dog to Mr. Y instead of to the dog.
Also, humans tend towards to under-emphasize the role and power of situational influences and over-emphasize dispositional factors. For instance, if a soccer player has a scoring chance but slips and doesn't score, a lot of fans attribute this failure to the player and under-emphasize situational factors like a wet and slippery ground and so on (wikipedia:Fundamental attribution error).
This is only a very short explanation of the basics of attribution theory. For further information take a look at
- Einige grundlegende Annahmen und Konzepte der Attributionstheorie by Wulf-Uwe Meyer (PDF, 30 pages,~189KB and unfortunately in german)
- Attributionstheorie bad webdesign but worth reading. also in german
- wikipedia:Attribution theory