What is externally caused behavior?

Difference between internal and external attributions is an interesting subject area in social psychology. In social psychology, we often use a concept referred to as attribution when speaking of how people understand the world around them. This can be defined as the explanations that people give to situations and behaviour as a means of understanding them. This is how people make sense of the surrounding environment. By coming up with causes to explain other’s behavior, it becomes easier to make inferences. Attribution can be categorized as internal attribution and external attribution. This article attempts to highlight the difference that exists between the two, the internal attribution and external attribution, while providing a more elaborate picture of each attribution.

What is Internal Attribution?

Internal attribution is also known as dispositional attribution. When making inferences if people use personal characteristics as causes for behaviour, it is considered internal attribution. Personal traits, feelings, temperaments, abilities can be considered the cause in this category. Let us try to understand this through an example.

One of the workers comes to work with a cup of coffee in hand and all of a sudden he slips and the coffee spills all over his shirt. A person who observes this incident says, ‘Jack is so clumsy, look at that coffee stain all over his shirt’

This is an example of making an internal attribution. The observer does not pay attention to any of the situational factors such as whether there was a step or else whether the floor was slippery. The inference is based on the personal factors of the individual, in this case Jack. The observer explains the incident through a personal trait of Jack, which is clumsiness.

However, it is interesting to note that most of our inferences are rather biased. When something negative occurs to another, we usually consider it as an internal attribution and tend to blame the individual for carelessness, irresponsibility, stupidity, etc. However, when a similar incident happens to us, we focus on situational factors, such as traffic, heavy rain, etc.

What is External Attribution?

Unlike internal attribution, which highlights on personal factors as the cause of behaviour, external attribution stresses on the situational factors that contribute to the cause of behaviour. Let us understand this through the same example.

Imagine you see Jack, who accidentally spills coffee on his shirt. Then, you comment on it as ‘ No wonder Jack spill the coffee on his shirt, the floors are very slippery.’

In such a situation, we are using external attribution because the cause of behaviour is ascribed to situational factors; in this case, the slippery floors.

How did the coffee spill? Because of Jack’s clumsiness? or because of the slippery floor?

What is the difference between Internal and External Attributions?

Attribution can be defined as the explanations that people give to situations and events as a means of understanding them. It can be categorized as internal attribution and external attribution. The differences between internal attribution and external attribution can be summarized as follows.

• Internal attribution is when making inferences through the use of personal characteristics as causes of behaviour.

• External attribution is when making inferences through situational factors as the cause of behaviour.

• So the main difference is that while internal attribution highlights personal factors, external attribution highlights situational factors when making inferences.

Images Courtesy: Spilt coffee by Josh Parrish (CC BY 2.0)

In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. In real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences.

For example, over the course of a typical day, you probably make numerous attributions about your own behavior as well as that of the people around you.

When you get a poor grade on a quiz, you might blame the teacher for not adequately explaining the material, completely dismissing the fact that you didn't study. When a classmate gets a great grade on the same quiz, you might attribute their good performance to luck, neglecting the fact that they have excellent study habits.

What impact do attributions for behavior really have on your life? The attributions you make each and every day have an important influence on your feelings as well as how you think and relate to other people.

Why do we make internal attributions for some things while making external attributions for others? Part of this has to do with the type of attribution we are likely to use in a particular situation. Cognitive biases often play major roles as well.

The main types of attributions you may use in daily life include the following.

When telling a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you are likely to tell the story in a way that places you in the best possible light.

We also tend to attribute things in ways that allow us to make future predictions. If your car was vandalized, you might attribute the crime to the fact that you parked in a particular parking garage. As a result, you may avoid that parking garage in the future.

We use explanatory attributions to help us make sense of the world around us. Some people have an optimistic explanatory style, while others tend to be more pessimistic.

People with an optimistic style attribute positive events to stable, internal, and global causes and negative events to unstable, external, and specific causes. Those with a pessimistic style attribute negative events to internal, stable, and global causes and positive events to external, stable, and specific causes.

Psychologists have also introduced a number of different theories to help further understand how the attribution process works.

In 1965, Edward Jones and Keith Davis suggested that people make inferences about others in cases where actions are intentional rather than accidental. When people see others acting in certain ways, they look for a correspondence between the person's motives and their behaviors. The inferences people then make are based on the degree of choice, the expectedness of the behavior, and the effects of that behavior.

In his 1958 book, "The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations," Fritz Heider suggested that people observe others, analyze their behavior, and come up with their own common-sense explanations for their actions.

Heider groups these explanations into either external attributions or internal attributions. External attributions are those that are blamed on situational forces, while internal attributions are blamed on individual characteristics and traits.

The following biases and errors can also influence attribution.

Interestingly, when it comes to explaining our own behavior, we tend to have the opposite bias of the fundamental attribution error. When something happens, we are more likely to blame external forces than our personal characteristics. In psychology, this tendency is known as the actor-observer bias.

How can we explain this tendency? One possible reason is that we simply have more information about our own situation than we do about other people's. When it comes to explaining your own actions, you have more information about yourself and the situational variables at play. When you're trying to explain another person's behavior, you are at a bit of a disadvantage; you only have the information that is readily observable.

Not surprisingly, people are less likely to fall victim to the actor-observer discrepancy with people that they know very well. Because you know more about the personality and behavior of people you're close to, you are better able to take their point of view and more likely to be aware of possible situational causes for their behaviors.

When it comes to other people, we tend to attribute causes to internal factors such as personality characteristics and ignore or minimize external variables. This phenomenon tends to be very widespread, particularly among individualistic cultures.

Psychologists refer to this tendency as the fundamental attribution error; even though situational variables are very likely present, we automatically attribute the cause to internal characteristics.

The fundamental attribution error explains why people often blame other people for things over which they usually have no control. The term blaming the victim is often used by social psychologists to describe a phenomenon in which people blame innocent victims of crimes for their misfortune.

In such cases, people may accuse the victim of failing to protect themselves from the event by behaving in a certain manner or not taking specific precautionary steps to avoid or prevent the event.

Examples of this include accusing survivors of rape, domestic violence, and kidnapping of behaving in a manner that somehow provoked their attackers. Researchers suggest that hindsight bias causes people to mistakenly believe that victims should have been able to predict future events and therefore take steps to avoid them.

Think about the last time you received a good grade on an exam. Chances are that you attributed your success to internal factors, such as "I did well because I am smart" or "I did well because I studied and was well-prepared."

What happens when you receive a poor grade, though? Social psychologists have found that in this situation, you are more likely to attribute your failure to external forces, such as "I failed because the teacher included trick questions" or "The classroom was so hot that I couldn't concentrate." Notice that both of these explanations lay the blame on outside forces rather than accepting personal responsibility.

Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the self-serving bias. So why are we more likely to attribute our success to our personal characteristics and blame outside variables for our failures? Researchers believe that blaming external factors for failures and disappointments helps protect self-esteem.