Attribution theory is about how observers explain behaviour, and the unit tests three names with three distinct contributions. Keep them separated by author.
Heider, 1958
Fritz Heider is the undisputed founder of attribution work. His distinction is between personal causality, instances in which a person causes an outcome intentionally, and impersonal causality, covering unintentional behaviour and physical events.
Intention is the dividing line. Heider is not the source of the stable-unstable distinction and not the source of consensus and distinctiveness; both came later.
Kelley
Kelley's covariation model asks the perceiver to assess three types of information in order to arrive at a plausible explanation of behaviour:
- Consensus — do others behave this way in the same situation?
- Distinctiveness — does this person behave this way only here?
- Consistency — does this person behave this way over time?
The distractor sets are all real triads from elsewhere: expectancy, instrumentality and valence (expectancy theory); stability, controllability and locus (Weiner); autonomy, competence and relatedness (self-determination theory). If the stem says covariation, the answer is consensus, distinctiveness, consistency.
Weiner
Beyond the internal-external distinction, Weiner added stability, complementing the externality-internality dimension, and later focused on controllability.
His finding about failure is counter-intuitive and is the trap in this unit. People who failed because of lack of effort, an unstable internal cause, were evaluated more negatively than those who failed because of inability, a stable internal cause. One distractor states the same two dimensions and then reverses the finding, so read to the end of the option before choosing.
Why it matters at work
A manager explaining a performance shortfall is making an attribution, and these frameworks say which evidence that explanation should rest on. Kelley's three questions are what separate a judgement about the person from a judgement about the situation.
Carry in: Heider intentional versus unintentional, Kelley's three criteria, Weiner's stability and controllability with effort punished more harshly than inability.