if there's one thing that i've learned from studying psychology it's that people are fascinated by it all of us want to know a little bit more about why people do the things that they do we want to be able to explain the behaviors of our friends our families partners and colleagues and even strangers in fact we already try to explain human behavior without even thinking that we're doing so have you ever tried to analyze the behavior of the guy that your friend is dating or maybe you saw someone running in public and thought he must be running from the police maybe your calling is acting strange and you think they're hiding something from me humans are meaning making creatures and while psychologists attempt to understand and explain behavior they're also attempting to understand how humans attempt to understand and explain behavior this process is called attribution the ways that people explain behavior and the mistakes that they do while making so because there are plenty of mistakes we make it might just be as insightful as the actual explanations for the behavior so i want to talk a little bit about something called attribution theory so attribution was first brought into the world of psychology in the earliest 20th century by gestalt psychologist fritz heider although he did not dive too deep into the process of attribution he did define two different types of attribution that are still commonly discussed in attribution theory today dispositional and situational attribution so dispositional attribution or internal attribution occurs when you believe that a person's behavior is driven by internal factors for example a person may cry on the subway because they're emotionally unstable or maybe because they cry easily either way it's due to that person's internal factors secondly we have situational attribution also called external attribution and it occurs when you believe a person's behavior is driven by external factors maybe you see the same person crying on the same subway but you assume that their behavior might be due to an external situation maybe they saw something traumatic or they just got broken up with by the person sitting next to them on the subway either process could give you the correct answer but attribution focuses more on how people come to these conclusions for example theories on actor observer bias suggest that we are more likely to use internal or external attribution depending on whether we are the person performing the behavior or whether we are the person observing it next i want to talk about something called correspondent inference theory some attributions theory focused specifically on dispositional attribution take for example jones and davis's correspondent inference theory jones and davis believe that we are more likely to use internal attribution under specific circumstances if a person acted freely and intentionally we may be more likely to attribute their actions to their character we say that it's just the type of person they are other factors may lead us to also make internal attributions and those include if the behavior is particularly unusual if the behavior is directed at a person or if the behavior may directly harm or help another person so let's say you're walking down the street and you hear someone harassing you it's not a usual behavior and it is directed at you it checks off two of these off the list you believe that the street harassment is done to negatively get a reaction out of people you are more likely to attribute that behavior to the harasser's character rather than some external stimuli that is driving their behavior in short this theory helps you understand if we say that a person is doing something because of who they are or because of the situation they're in next i want to talk about kelly's covariation model because attribution theory does not stop with just something called the correspondent inference theory in 1973 harold kelly created a model that is arguably one of the most well-known attribution theories kelly's covariation model suggests that there are three factors to determine if we use internal or external attribution so let's say you're at a dinner party and your friend orders a very expensive champagne during a night out with some of your other friends now you may be wondering is this because they prefer the finer things in life or is it because of external factors in the situation that they are in are motivating them to do so kelly has three specific factors that you can use to figure out the answer the first one is consensus so consensus is how everyone else is behaving in the same situation you may look at what everyone else is ordering if everyone in the table is ordering expensive drinks and caviar then consensus is high however if everyone's sticking to cheap appetizers and cheap beer consensus is low secondly we have distinctiveness now this is how your friend behaves in similar situations let's say your friend always orders the fanciest item on the menus or buys the most expensive clothes in the mall if they do distinctiveness is low but if they like to save their money buy from thrift stores or choose restaurants with cheaper prices then distinctiveness is high we're basically saying that your friend buying a very expensive bottle of champagne is distinct and third we have consistency and this is how your friend behaves every time in this situation maybe your friend always likes to buy expensive champagne whenever you're out with this particular friends group or maybe this specific restaurant and if so consistency is high but if this is the first time your friend has chosen to buy really expensive drinks for your friends we then say consistency is low and if you find that your friend's behavior is on the low side of the spectrum on all three of these you're more likely to attribute that behavior to your friend's personality you say that's just who they are they're just a flashy guy that values the finer things in life but if your friend's behavior is on the high side of the spectrum you're more likely to attribute that to external stimuli maybe your friend feels as though they made a bad impression when they first met those friends and they want to make up for it or maybe they got a raise or maybe even they were hurt by some bad news and they just want to make the evening special of course we can't always use this model with strangers as with anything in psychology if a stranger orders very expensive champagne you can't just look at every single purchase they've made or exactly who they're with and in this case kelly suggests they look past experiences and attribute necessary and sufficient causes to the person's behavior people do this all the time you might just look at a stranger's fancy suit and assume that he's just a high roller again these attributions and what we understand of attribution theory doesn't always reflect the true motives behind a person's behavior but as i end this video i want to let you know if we can understand theories of attribution we may understand how people judge other people and we may be able to refine the way that we assign causes and make our beliefs and judgments about certain behaviors so as a review we went over a little bit about the history of attribution theory i talked a little bit about the correspondent inference theory and also kelly's covariation model which is a lot of big words to basically explain that there are different ways that humans explain other humans behaviors i hope you guys learned a little bit about attribution theory in this video and if you have any questions at all feel free to leave a comment below or watch some of the other videos in my social psychology series thank you guys for watching and i hope to see you in the next video