General Attribution model: a meta-analysis

As noted by Taylor, Peplau and Sears (1996), in general, attribution refers to the process by which people attempt to infer the cause of events in our world; in other words, attribution theory deals with the "rules" people follow as they make their inferences regarding causal factors. Aronson, Wilson and Akert (1998) note that attributions can be of two types: external or internal.

According to the authors, the external attribution assigns causality for a given event or behavior (either one's own or another's behavior) to an outside agent or force (e.g., "The devil made me, him or her do it."). The internal attribution, on the other hand, makes the claim that the causal factor for the event or behavior lies within the person (e.g., "I, he, or she did it by practicing and working hard." In other words, in internal attribu-tions it is factors internal or characteristic of a person and not a situation or force,

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and outgroup members. And the third is studies exploring ethnocentric attributions about differences between groups and the social position of groups. Regarding ethnocentric attributions for positive and negative outcomes, studies have generally confirmed people's tendencies to favor internal attributions for positive behavior and external explanations for negative behavior; and that they tend to make these kinds of attributions significantly more often for their own ethnic/racial/cultural group than for a different racial/ethnic/ cultural group (e.g., Duncan, 1976; Stephan, 1977; Taylor & Jaggi, 1974). However, this research also indicates that this ethno-centric pattern is not always present (Hewstone & Ward, 1985). In general, Hewstone (1990) reports that the small body of studies in this area are both methodologically and conceptually problematic, and that strong confidence in the degree to which they support ultimate attribution error must await additional research. Ethnocentric patterns of attribution have also been observed in studies of success and failure. Noting that the findings of success/failure studies tend to show outgroup success and ingroup failures explained in terms of self-serving or ethnocentric patterns th
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