How useful is Attribution Theory?
… emphasizing upon the usefulness of the theory itself. Three types of attribution theories will be discussed: theories that focus on antecedents of people’s perception of the cause of events in their social environment; theories that are based on the assumption that people have preconceptions about causality leading to bias in their attribution; and finally, theories that concentrate on the consequences of attributions. Heider (1958), Jones and Davis (1965), and Kelley (1967) have provided the major theoretical contributions to attribution theory. “Attribution theory is usually traced to Fritz Heider and his attempts to describe and explain ‘nave’ psychology” (Eiser & Pligt, 1988; p. 46). Heider’s major role in relation to attribution theory would be the division of potential sources of action into personal and environmental types (Hewstone M. et al., 2000). Heider believed that people act on basis of their beliefs. Upon inspection, people form beliefs or theories about what …
