Читать книгу The Interpersonal Communication Playbook - Teri Kwal Gamble - Страница 122

Perception is a mixture of external stimulation and a person’s internal state. We actively participate by controlling our responses to stimuli. We are both the cause of perception and its controlling force. The result is how we make sense of the world and relate to others.

Attribution theory helps us understand our response to social experience. It also speaks to the fact that we like to be able to explain why others behave as they do.³¹ We assign meaning to the others’ behavior by ascribing motives and causes for their actions. When we attribute behavior to something in the disposition of the people involved, we assume it to have an internal cause—that is, we believe it is caused by their characteristics. When we attribute it to something about the situation or environment, we identify an external cause—that is, we believe the behavior to be caused by something outside of them.

The terrorist attack of 9/11 is the most memorable TV event of the past 50 years. But do we remember it as it happened?

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Let’s say, for example, that your date arrives to pick you up early, and you want to figure out why. An internal attribution might be that he was eager to see you or that he did not want you to have to wait for him. Each of these reasons points to an internal characteristic of your date as the cause of the behavior. External attributions might be that the traffic was much lighter than it usually is or that he was able to leave work early. Each of these point to something in the external environment as causing the behavior.

Analyze This: The Deceptiveness of Appearance

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In “Childhood,” by Frances Cornford, a child’s initial perception of old age matures:

 I used to think that grown-up people chose

 To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,

 And veins like small fat snakes on either hand,

 On purpose to be grand.

 Till through the banisters I watched one day

 My grand-aunt Etty’s friend who was going away.

 And how her onyx beads had come unstrung.

 I saw her grope to find them as they rolled;

 And then I knew that she was helplessly old,

 As I was helplessly young.

How do you account for the change in the child’s perception? Why is it possible to perceive a person, situation, or event one way at one point in time and differently at another? What happened that led the child to discover that what she or he saw at one point in time did not tell the entire story?

Identify challenges that stand in the way of your accurately evaluating people, situations, or events. What steps can you take personally to ensure that what you see in a person, situation, or event is not limited to what you are looking for?

Source: Frances Cornford, “Childhood,” in Frances Cornford: Selected Poems, ed. Jane Dowson. London: Enitharmon Press, 1996. Reprinted by permission.

We use four principles as guides when attributing behavior to a particular cause: consensus, consistency, distinctiveness, and controllability. With consensus, we consider commonalities of behavior. For instance, we might ask a question such as “Do the friends of my friend also speak with different accents when they are at home as opposed to when they are at work?” If the answer is no, we are more apt to decide that the exhibited behavior has an external cause—perhaps a concern with their employer’s impression of them.

When focusing on consistency to make an attribution, we look at repeated behavior. For example, if our friend is chronically late, then there is high behavioral consistency, and we are more apt to attribute the behavior to internal causes.

When focusing on distinctiveness, we ask if the person displays similar behavior in different situations. If the answer is yes, we are likely to conclude the behavior has an internal cause.

Finally, when focusing on controllability, we seek to determine if the person’s behavior was under his or her control. For example, if someone is flying in to see you and is delayed because of a mechanical problem with the airplane, the delay was not under his or her control.