Home / Concept of the Week / Attribution theory
Concept of the Week · Episode 4
The study of the explanations people give for why things happen, especially why they succeeded or failed. We tend to credit ourselves for the good results and blame circumstances for the bad ones, and the explanation we settle on shapes what we do next.
Where it comes from
Fritz Heider set it out in 1958; Bernard Weiner later showed that whether we see a cause as internal or external, stable or changeable, decides how we feel about it and whether we try again.
How Peter explained it on the show
Attribution theory, the story you tell yourself about why something went well or badly. We are all prone to a self-serving version: the good result was all me, the bad one was someone else's fault. It matters at results time because the explanation shapes what you do next. Tell yourself you aced it purely because you are cleverer than everyone, and you may coast and come unstuck later. Peter's honest version is that he did well at A-level mostly because he had nothing else to do but revise, which turns out to be a far more useful thing to believe than being a genius.
Why it mattered that week
Episode four was a practical guide to A-level results day, and this was the psychology under it. Tell yourself you aced it purely because you are cleverer than everyone, and you may coast and come unstuck later. Peter's honest version is that he did well at A-level mostly because he had nothing else to do but revise, which turns out to be a far more useful thing to believe than being a genius. Treat the result as information rather than a verdict.
Hear it in context
Results day, disappointment and Freshers' Week
A practical guide to A-level results day and the leap to university, for anyone with a teenager in the house and for the teenagers themselves.
Questions people ask
The habit of taking credit for success and shifting the blame for failure. It protects your mood in the short term and costs you in the long term, because if the bad result was never your doing there is nothing to learn from it.
The advice from the episode is to drop the I-told-you-so, love them through it, and steer the explanation towards things that can change. The result was one stepping stone, and the story your teenager tells about why it happened matters more than the grade.
Other concepts from the series
Mirror neurons · Authenticity · Confirmation bias · INUS conditions · Variable ratio reinforcement · Role exit
About the series
Concept of the Week is a regular feature of Experience, the weekly podcast in which clinical psychologist Professor Peter Kinderman and communications expert Hilary Jeffs take the news apart to see what is driving it. Peter picks a psychological idea most of us have half-remembered wrong and explains what it actually shows. New episodes every Tuesday. Where to listen.