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Intuitive Psychologist or Intuitive Lawyer ? Alternative Models of the Attribution Process

The notion that humans commonly commit a "fundamental attribution error" by overattributing causality to persons rather than situations rests on a particular model of the attribution process. That model is a scientific analysis of causality. Using insights from legal reasoning, the present article contrasts the scientific model, "intuitive psychologizing," with an alternative view of attributions as sanctioning decisions, or "intuitive lawyering." It is suggested that sanctioning attributions rest on a different rational decision rule that tests whether the actor could have done otherwise. Kelley's model of the attribution process appears to be fundamentally a scientific analysis, whereas Jones and Davis's model appears to be fundamentally a sanctioning analysis. The supposed error of overattributing to persons is in fact an error only within the first type of model and may be perfectly rational within the second. Given that we are not always sure how experimental subjects interpret the situation or the questions they answer, further exploration of human use of "intuitive lawyering" as well as "intuitive psychologizing" is an important issue for future attribution research.