Dear Phil, A rejoinder on attribution theory: Theories of attribution
has a pretty long history in social psychology. These are theories about
how ordinary people make causal attribution about social events. Heider,
whose reference appeared in the last email, was often credited to be a
pioneer in the systematic investigation as to how ordinary people make
attributions. In a sense, he proposed that ordinary people make causal
attribution in a way similar to what scientists would/should by
observing empirical evidence and make logical evidence. Hence he used
the term "naive scientist" to refer to ordinary people way of making
causal inference. From then, in the 1950's, on, many studies have been
published on that premise.
The dichotomy of internal and external attribution, I think was first
mentioned in Rotter, J. B., (1971) publication on "generalized
expectancies about interpersonal events. In this context, internal
refers to "within the self" and external refers to "outside of the
self". This dichotomy has been used in education, especially where
students' attribution about success and failure are concerned.
Supposedly, making internal or external attribution has its consequences
on:(1) subsequent approach to the learning task and (2) the student's
emotional wellbeing. More recently, the internal-external debate has
been introduced into the arena of cross-cultural studies with many
recent publications in such varied topics as (1) personality and
self-construction, (2) construction of the concept of self-efficacy and
the sense of agency, (3) the concept of justice in the legal and
community domains....etc.
Well I probably have been unduly long winded on this. First message in
the morning on our side fo the globe!
Weining
-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Chappell [mailto:phil_chappell@access.inet.co.th]
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 7:55 PM
To: XMCA
Subject: Attribution Theory
Hi All,
I'm in the middle of a conference on Research in English
Language Teaching and sat through a paper presentation which used
attribution theory to help interpret learners' introspections on their
"failures" in a course. It seems that learners' responses are classified
into external or internal attributions (explanations??) I haven't come
across this theory before, and when I did a quick search of references
provided by the presenter, I noted that its application appears to be
frequently associated with behaviour modification. Does anyone have any
experience with this?
Thanks,
Phil
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