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Attribution Theory

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Research on attribution theory shows that people tend to attribute their own behavior more to the specific situation, while they more often attribute the behavior of others to personality traits. What implications does this fact have for how society functions?

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Solution Summary

This solution describes how based on the Attribution theory, individuals appply their own characterisitics and/or behavior to situaitons and others.

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When certain characteristics are attributed to specific groups in ways that are negative and demeaning, the attributional theory can be misapplied in error, or biased. For example, minorities are often characterized based upon dispositional traits and attributes that are generated through negative biases. Research suggests that within views based on the attribution theory that implications exist for prejudice and discrimination. As Hegarty and Golden (2008) note, the Attribution theory argues that causal attributions leads to prejudice that is developed within beliefs of stigmata. They define stigmata "as deeply discrediting traits that can reduce a "whole and usual person to a tainted discredited one" (Goffman, 1963 as cited in Hegarty & Golden, 2008, p. 1021).

According to Hegarty and Golden (2008), relative to ...

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