

Choice: If a behavior is freely chosen it is believed to be due to internal (dispositional) factors.So what leads us to make a correspondent inference? Jones and Davis say we draw on five sources of information: It is an alternative term to dispositional attribution.

The correspondent inference theory describes the conditions under which we make dispositional attributes to the behavior we perceive as intentional.ĭavis used the term correspondent inference to refer to an occasion when an observer infers that a person’s behavior matches or corresponds with their personality. For example, when we see a correspondence between someone behaving in a friendly way and being a friendly person.ĭispositional (i.e., internal) attributions provide us with information from which we can make predictions about a person’s future behavior. They say that we tend to do this when we see a correspondence between motive and behavior. Jones and Davis’ theory helps us understand the process of making an internal attribution. Jones and Davis (1965) thought that people pay particular attention to intentional behavior (as opposed to accidental or unthinking behavior). Jones & Davis Correspondent Inference Theory When we try to explain our own behavior we tend to make external attributions, such as situational or environment features. The process of assigning the cause of behavior to some situation or event outside a person's control rather than to some internal characteristic. There were two main ideas that he put forward that became influential: dispositional (internal cause) vs situational (external cause) attributions. Heider didn’t so much develop a theory himself as emphasize certain themes that others took up. People tend to see cause and effect relationships, even where there is none! Heider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to make sense of the social world. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal judgment”. “Attribution theory deals with how the social perceiver uses information to arrive at causal explanations for events. For example, is someone angry because they are bad-tempered or because something bad happened?Ī formal definition is provided by Fiske and Taylor (1991, p. Attribution theory is concerned with how ordinary people explain the causes of behavior and events.
