attribution

Meaning: Attribution is how people infer the causes of their own and others' behavior. Attribution theory (Heider) sorts causes into dispositional (internal: personality, attitudes, ability, effort) and situational (external: task difficulty, luck, social pressure). Kelley's covariation model infers the cause from three cues: consensus (do other people act this way?), distinctiveness (does this person act this way only in this situation?), and consistency (does it happen repeatedly over time?). Low consensus and low distinctiveness with high consistency point to a dispositional cause. High consensus and high distinctiveness with high consistency point to a situational one.

On the MCAT: A passage describes someone explaining a success, a failure, or another person's behavior, and you name the bias or the type of attribution. Fundamental attribution error: favoring dispositional explanations for others' behavior. Actor-observer bias: explaining your own behavior situationally but others' dispositionally. Self-serving bias: crediting your successes to disposition and blaming failures on the situation. Questions may also note that individualistic cultures tend to make more dispositional attributions than collectivist cultures do.

Common confusion: Students mix up the fundamental attribution error and the actor-observer bias. The fundamental attribution error concerns judgments of other people only. The actor-observer bias compares how you explain yourself with how you explain others. Self-serving bias depends on the outcome: the attribution flips between success and failure to protect self-esteem.