Attribution theory and heuristics in human behavior analysis

Attribution Theory

Human behavior is a complex process and the attribution theories try to explain it by discussing the psychological processes going on. It discusses the causes as well as effects of the particular behavior under consideration (Attribution Theory, n.d.). The Attribution theory also tries to explain if a person behaves in a certain way due to internal or external locus of control. The types of attribution theories are common sense, correspondent inference, co-variation model of attribution and three-dimensional model of attribution.

Three-dimensional model of attribution

The Gavin's behavior is explained by three dimensional model of attribution that takes into account stable theory, locus of control and controllability. Gavin seems to have unstable behavior, external locus of control and personally uncontrollable. He has own perceptions about self and things. He forgets things and leads an undisciplined life. He has less control and emotionally not very stable. Gavin has a behavior that is confused and unfocussed. He does not remember things and forgets the planned events. He, according to attribution theory falls into three dimensional model because the model defines a behavior in terms of stability and source and intensity of control. Gavin, since he is reminded by people about the events to come and what needs to be done, has external locus of control. He did not seem to himself decide about things or to predict what future requirements of the meetings are.

Limitation of the Theory

The theory criticizes human emotional weakness by discussing him as a logical person. It does not find out why a person behaves in a particular way with involvement of his emotions. The emotions are however a human part that rule people behavior in many ways. The theory also considers that people can help themselves by understanding where they lack. However, this is not true. People have emotional weakness and affiliations that often affect their logical understanding of life. It is therefore suggested that a person's behavior may be understood in the light of attribution theory but it should be expected that the theory will help solve his behavioral issues completely.

Heuristics

Often it is not required to hire complex methodologies to explain the human psychology. There are simple yet effective psychological rules that are learned by human experience over time. These simple rules tell an individual what methods a person deploys to make decisions and how people solve problems they face in personal and work life (Neal, n.d.). However, these rules should not be handled with carelessness. There are certain types of heuristics namely representativeness, availability, false consensus effect, and anchoring heuristic. Two of them are discussed below.

Anchoring Heuristic

The anchoring heuristic is about biasness based on human cognitive experience. Humans anchor themselves and thus strongly believe in the information they came across first. Thus they often tend to make decisions based on that original information (Marsden, Veeraraghavan, and Ye, 2008). The subsequent decisions should however consider the information that is most critical to the situation. It is true that often the initial information is most critical. For example an incident of fire tells that the maintenance officer was not on the duty spot thus the fire flared up. The incident could be avoided if the officer was on the spot thus the decision is that the maintenance officer should be fired. On the other hand, the management may come to know later, before the decision was finally announced, that the fire was a case of accident and it has happened before at other spots even in the presence of the maintenance officer. This tells that the problem lies somewhere else and it should be resolved as soon as possible. It should be therefore kept in mind that while heuristic techniques are helpful, the first piece of information is not always the most critical one. The management cannot risk complex decision making situations rely on heuristics. The small decisions can be made in the light of heuristic techniques for example to work extra hours to avoid delay in supply since it happened last time, but these methods do not work all the times.