Here, people always attribute causes to actions and happenings, with the belief that everything has an explanation only if we could look deeper enough (Changing Minds, 2011). This theory serves to show how people have very different perspectives to happenings or events in the daily lives, and these varying views can easily stray into power imbalance, prejudice and such like vices ultimately affecting the communication process. Under attribution theory, there exist two possible justifications or explanations that are normally forwarded concerning a behavior hence acting as noise to communication. The first is the intrinsic or internal justification; this gives explanation for an event as having been internally motivated. The internal motivations include personality, abilities, and traits that are displayed or observed in the individual. For instance, in our scenario above, I blamed the character of the partner, the jealousy within her, for the lack of consideration for my request. As a result, that also built a grudge within me that never allowed me to be keen on any communication between her and I.

On the other hand, in a case where the environment, other situations or extrinsic factors are believed to be behind the actions (or lack of action) by an individual, then this is referred to as the external attribution. In our scenario above, the lack of effective relaying of communication between the administration and me was based on the grudge held between my colleague and I, which is purely an external force taking into account the administration has nothing to do with our grudges down here.

Therefore, the attribution error is the tendency for the observer of a behavior to attribute the cause of the behaviors of an individual to an internal factor and in the process downplay the real causes of the behavior or the situational causes and affect communication or understanding of the message as intended by the parties within the communication cycle (Gilbert T. & Melone P., 1995). Attribution error can also be said to be the exaggeration...

There are other factors that can be observed to have intervened in the situation for instance the lack of interpersonal good relation affecting the larger communication sphere, there is also the possibility that the intercultural communication was a major force in the communication breakdown since the difference in gender is enough intercultural communication barrier to affect the communication process. Intrapersonal communication was also a major player in the breakdown in communication since I never took time to understand the reasons that the individual had, I also never allowed the situation to remain in the particular scenario it happened but carried it forward to other scenarios in the future days.
The factors affecting communication mentioned above are always interconnected and affect each other in the process. This means that the factors do no operate in isolation as it is seen one factor leads to the introduction of the other and so on. In one communication instance, there can be several communication theories seen to be applicable and more theories can come into play as .the situation develops or changes from one part to another.

References

Dimbleby, R. & Burton, G. (1998). More than Words: An Introduction to Communication, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.

Heath, R.H. & Bryant, J. (2000). Human Communication Theory and Research: Concepts,

Contexts, and Challenges, 2nd ed. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Gilbert, D.T., & Malone, P.S., (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117,

21-38.

Changing Minds, (2011). Attribution Theory. Retrieved November 13, 2012 from http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/attribution_theory.htm