Jane also has two job offers both of them in advertising but one is for the garden furniture store the other is for a homeless charity.
In the case of Jane it is hard to make a person attribution as there are many non common effect whereas in the case of Jane it is easier to make a person attribution because if choose to work for the charity it will show that she caring and like working for the less fortunate. When there are few non-common effects there is greater likelihood of making a person attribution.
The advantages of this theory are that all of the evidences are based on experimental work. They offer hard evidence for their claim that the observer draws on a number of principles to check observer’s behaviour against interference of the actors underlying character. The disadvantage is that not all-correspondent inference is not always applied by the limited set of principles. The observer often jumps to the conclusion about the cause of other people behaviour without doing all the analysis that Jones and Davis has suggested. For example when someone is clumsy we usually make a person attribution even though we know that it not the person but the situation.
Another theory of attribution is Wieners achievement attribution theory.
Wieners work (1979,1986) explored the kind of attribution observers make to explain the cause of success or failure, the theory states that in some task, such as examination or sports match individual either has a positive or negative emotional reaction. They then make an attribution based around four factors-ability, effort, task and luck. Any one of these attribution can either reinforce or alter the individual expectations about how they may perform in the future if there low expectation mean they have low motivation and if they have high motivation then they may do really well in the future. Attribution about a person success or failure can be made by themselves or by others. Weiner suggested that there are three related dimensions that are used to make attribution for achievement.
Internal /external this is where for example a person fail an exam the may say it was because they didn’t have the ability (internal) or they mat say it because of the exam hall was noisy so they got distracted (external).
Stability/instability this is where if a person failed an exam the could say it was due to the fact they didn’t have the ability this is stable as a result of this would that they would fail future exams. If failure was due to noise in the examination this would be seen as unstable and I wouldn’t affect any future exam.
Controllable/uncontrollable this is where for example if a person failed an exam and they didn’t revised this would be seen as controllable as they can revise thought the next time, if the failed the exam and they did revise this is uncontrollable because someone cant just increase there intelligence,
When a person tries to explain their success or failure they always chose attributions, which places them in the best light. For example if a person did brilliantly in an exam they probably make an internal attribution that goes for the same as if they did really bad they are more likely to make an external attribution.
The advantages of this theory is that this theory is well supported by evidence of empirical studies also Weiner made a connection between the attribution process and motivation, it show that a person attribution may have a long term effect on future behaviour, it also show that there emotion in the attribution process unlike Kelley, Jones and Davis where attribution are mental calculations.
The disadvantage to Weiner theory is that most of the evidence come from the laboratory and are artificial so can these result be generalised beyond the laboratory therefore has low ecological validity. Lastly these finding are not the same in every culture although his theory can be applied to most cultures. For example, Indian participant made more external, unstable and uncontrollable attribution. This is probably because individual powers to control events are limited. Also westerner tend to use person attribution to explain success whereas the Japanese are more like to explain success by situational factor so they’re fore culture plays a big role in how people think.
