Application of Attribution Theory

In this case, a decision made by upper management becomes a subject for speculation by Jim, who has been passed over for promotion in favor of a new man in the department. Frank has been in the department for only a year, while Jim has been in the department for over five years. Two other members of the group, Maria and Janet, have been in the department for more than five years as well. Jim is concerned that he was not chosen, of course, and this leads him to ask why he has not been selected and why Frank has been selected. In analyzing the issue, Jim does so without having sufficient information. It is evident from this case that upper management has not done a good job of communicating its reasons for making a selection. It is also apparent that upper management does not provide sufficient ongoing job performance evaluations, for from the way Jim analyzes the issue, he does not seem to know how management views him or his performance.

Jim's analysis of the situation can be explained utilizing attribution theory, for much of what he assumes is true derives more from his own prejudices and attitudes in his social setting than from any evidence. This may be the fault of upper management for failing to communicate properly, but Jim is not controlling for his own prejudices and perceptions and so may not be coming to a proper and justifiable conclusion.

Attribution theory involves the way people infer the causes of behavior, and it centers on th

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reference or object. 3) Attribution is social in that it is common to the members of a society or group. It has been argued by some that we enhance our social identities when we make social attributions, and they also note that our social attributions are usually based on the social stereotypes we share with other members of our ingroups. Therefore, out social attributions may be based on ethnocentrism (Gudykunst, 1991, 85-86). Wilder and Cooper (1981) find that the environment continually presents the human observer with an overabundance of stimulation, and we impose a structure on the environment as we perceive it to maximize cognitive efficiency. We impose this structure by organizing features into meaningful clusters or categories. There are four characteristics to these categories. First, the categories reflect the actual structural organization of both man-made and natural phenomena, and recognition of this implicit structure is a consequence of observing the correlated occurrences of objects and attributes. A category is generally defined in terms of the dimensions that provide us with the greatest amount of salient information, and irrelevant or unimportant distinctions among members of a given category are ignored

Category: Psychology - A