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1. Malle, B. F., and Korman, J. (in press). Attribution theory. In B. S. Turner (Ed.), Wiley-Blackwell
encyclopedia of social theory. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
Attribution Theory
Bertram F. Malle and Joanna Korman
Brown University
bfmalle@brown.edu
1008 words
Abstract
Attribution theory aims to elucidate how ordinary people make sense of human behavior. It has
followed two lines of research. One examines attribution as explanation: how people explain why
a person performed a certain behavior. This research shows that people offer reasons for
intentional behaviors and causes for unintentional behaviors. The other line of research examines
how people infer unobservable states revealed in behavior. Inference and explanation are
importantly connected, as inferences of unobservable states suggest plausible ways to explain a
person’s behavior. But only explanations are also communicative acts that help people create
social meaning from behavior.
Attribution theory in social psychology is a research tradition that explores how ordinary people
make sense of human behavior (Hilton, 2007; Malle, 2004). The term attribution, however, has
two meanings: attribution as explanation and attribution as inference.
Attribution as explanation provides answers to “why” questions: For example, why did
the old man suddenly cross the street? To answer this question, the social perceiver selects an
explanation from several plausible options—did he want to go to the convenience store on the
other side, or did he try to avoid the group of teenagers in his path? Heider (1958) argued that
people seek two very different types of explanation depending on what kind of behavior they
encounter: Purposeful, intentional behaviors (such as crossing the street) are explained with
reasons—what the agent likely had in mind when forming the intention to act (e.g., wanting to
buy milk, or thinking that the teenagers may be aggressive). Unintentional behaviors (e.g.,
stubbing one’s toe) are instead explained with causes (e.g., being distracted, a floor cluttered
with boxes). Much of the early work on attribution as explanation focused on conditions under
which people select “internal” causes (within the person) or “external” causes (in the situation)
(Kelley, 1967). Extensive debate and accumulated evidence, however, showed that this kind of
selection is only a minor part of behavior explanation (Buss, 1978; Malle, 2004). Far more
prominent are the tasks of determining whether a behavior is intentional and, if it is, what the
agent’s reasons were for performing it (Malle, 1999).
While the study of attribution as explanation focuses on people’s attempts to answer
why-questions, the study of attribution as inference focuses on people’s attempts to determine
the unobservable properties revealed in other people’s behavior. Jones and Davis (1965)
highlighted inferences of stable properties such as attitudes and personality traits, and subsequent
research suggested that social perceivers too readily, and thus often inaccurately, infer traits from
single behaviors. More recently, debates have emerged over the centrality of personality traits

2. and their inaccuracy as inferences. This recent work emphasizes inferences of more temporary
properties, such as intentions, thoughts, and emotions (Epley & Waytz, 2010). Because these
properties are more directly expressed in the agent’s specific behaviors, people make these
inferences rather quickly and accurately, apparently relying on brain systems that selectively
process information about another person’s thoughts and intentions (Saxe & Kanwisher 2003).
The two forms of attribution — explanation and inference — are importantly connected,
as inferences of unobservable properties such as thoughts or emotions often deliver plausible
explanations for a person’s behavior. Explanations, however, take a critical step beyond the
cognitive inferences that inform them: they are also social, communicative acts (Hilton, 1990).
A speaker may explain her own behavior to avert an interlocutor’s confusion (“I just mention
this because you weren’t there”) or manage the moral status of another person’s behavior (“She
hit him because he threatened her”). Although such motivations can distort the selected
explanations, the selections will be constrained by observable facts, by people’s fundamental
conceptual framework of human action (e.g., that an agent’s reasons must have been plausibly on
her mind when she decided to act), and by cultural norms of reasonable grounds for acting. For
example, it is acceptable for a person to explain that he was late for work by offering the reason
that he had to take his sick child to the doctor (if that was true), but it is not acceptable to explain
it by citing his personality disorder.
Drawing inferences and communicating explanations to others are two ways that people
fulfill the fundamental human need to construct meaning (Schütz, 1967). Future research must
examine the mutual influence of these cognitive and communicative processes. When does
communication facilitate meaning making and when does it cloud the accuracy of inferences?
How much do people base their explanations on actual inferences and how much on
communicated social expectations? Attribution research presents a pivot point in human
psychology, at which inference, explanation, and communication converge on the meaning
people construct—a point where the cognitive meets the social.
SEE ALSO: Social psychology; Explanation; Schütz, Alfred; Social Cognition; Symbolic
Interactionism
References
Buss, A. R. 1978. “Causes and Reasons in Attribution Theory: A Conceptual Critique.” Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 36: 1311–21.
Epley, N., and A. Waytz. 2010. “Mind Perception.” In Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by
Susan T. Fiske, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Gardner Lindzey, 5th ed., 498–541. Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley.
Heider, Fritz. 1958. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley.
Hilton, Denis J. 1990. “Conversational Processes and Causal Explanation.” Psychological
Bulletin 107: 65–81.
———. 2007. “Causal Explanation: From Social Perception to Knowledge-Based Causal
Attribution.” In Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, edited by Arie W.
Kruglanski and E. Tory Higgins, 2nd ed., 232–53. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

3. Jones, Edward E., and Keith E. Davis. 1965. “From Acts to Dispositions: The Attribution
Process in Person Perception.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, edited by
Leonard Berkowitz, 2:219–66. New York: Academic Press.
Kelley, H. H. 1967. “Attribution Theory in Social Psychology.” In Nebraska Symposium on
Motivation, edited by D. Levine, 15:192–240. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Malle, Bertram F. 1999. “How People Explain Behavior: A New Theoretical Framework.”
Personality and Social Psychology Review 3 (1): 23–48.
———. 2004. How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social
Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Saxe, Rebecca, and Nancy Kanwisher. 2003. “People Thinking about Thinking People. The Role
of the Temporo-Parietal Junction in ‘Theory of Mind.’” NeuroImage 19 (4): 1835–42.
Schütz, Alfred. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press.
Further Readings
Bruner, Jerome S. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Higgins, E. Tory, and Thane S. Pittman. 2008. “Motives of the Human Animal: Comprehending,
Managing, and Sharing Inner States.” Annual Review of Psychology 59: 361–85.
Ross, Michael, and Garth J. O. Fletcher. 1985. “Attribution and Social Perception.” In The
Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, 2:73–114.
New York, NY: Random House.