Dispositional attribution ''(or internal attribution)'' is a phrase in
personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include:
* construction of a ...
that refers to the tendency to assign responsibility for others' behaviors due to their inherent characteristics, such as their motives, beliefs or personality, rather than the external (situational) influences, such as the individual's
environment
Environment most often refers to:
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* Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally
* Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...
or
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these grou ...
.
Attributions refer to inferences made regarding causal relationships or the qualities of someone or something. When a person uses internal attributions, they infer that a person is behaving in a certain way or that an event is occurring due to factors related to the person's character more than their situational context. Internal attribution is defined as the act of placing blame on some type of factor or criteria that could be controlled by an individual for the cause of a certain event. When making an internal attribution, people attempt to explain the cause of a situation or event to personal factors, often in a generalized sense.
[SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2014. .]
See also
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Attribution bias
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Attribution theory
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Fundamental attribution error
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Nature and nurture
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Stanford prison experiment
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in the summer of 1971. It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behav ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dispositional Attribution
Social psychology