Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour.


  • Address the question 
    • In the psychological world, there are many different methods and approaches to the understanding and explaining of why or how people behave in certain situations. 

  • Introduce Fritz Heider 
    • Heider (1958) suggested that all people have a tendency to try to predict, understand and explain human behaviour, in terms of what causes people to behave in the ways that they do. 

  • Introduce "attributions 
    • One way that people interpret and explain causal relationships in the social world is through attribution --> which has laid the foundations for the attribution theory (AT) proposed by Heider (1958). 
    • Attributions are "the beliefs about why people behave as they do" the end result of a process in which people use available information to make inferences about the causes of a particular behaviour.
    • Therefore, AT is concerned with explanations of how each of us attributes causes for our own and others" behaviour.

  • Introduce Heider"s assumptions 
    • According to Heider, when we observe somebody"s behaviour we are inclined to attribute its cause to either dispositional (internal) factors of that person or to situational (external) causes. 

  • Describe the two types of attributions, with examples
    • Dispositional attributions: We explain people"s behaviour in terms of factors which are specific to them as a person, such as their personality or other internal and generally unchanging characteristics, traits, feelings, moods and abilities. 
      • Can be positive or negative 
      • An example of a dispositional attribution (commonly seen as innate factors)
        • They are always late; they have been like that since they were born, etc. 
    • Situational attributions: One"s behaviour is assumed to be/dependent upon their current circumstances, situation or the environment that they are in. 
      • An example: Blaming the weather for something that has happened

  • Example of attribution situations you could use for your essay. There are many real-life examples of how these two attributions are used in a daily basis.

  • The following scenario was observed by Evans-Pritchard among the Azande people of Central America.

    • Situation: The situation was that several people in the village were killed when a granary doorway collapsed.
    • This resulted in the villagers to have attributions on why the door collapsed and killed so many people.
    • Their attributions for this circumstance was that:
      • The Azande attributed their deaths, or the fact that they were standing next to the walls when it collapsed was to witchcraft. 
      • However, although E-P noted and told the villagers that the doorway had been eaten through by termites (representing its unstableness), the Azande people still attributed the situation to occur because of witchcraft. 

Connection of Study to Question 
  • This study shows how people may have different ways of attributing causes to events.

  • Another scenario would be for example,
    • Situation: A person is sitting in a restaurant, waiting for their date to show up, but he or she is late.
    • This would result in us looking for explanations or "attributing" possible situations as to why he or she has not yet arrived.
    • Possible attributions might be:
      • We attributed his lateness to the dispositional factor of their nature as being late all the time. 
      • Or towards a situational basis, that he had missed his/her bus, or heavy traffic may have occurred or even the result of their car breaking down. 
  • Thus, outline the purpose of your essay
    • As such, this essay response will aim to give a detailed account in the role of dispositional and situational factors in explaining behaviour.


  • Provide a brief explanation of why we tend to attribute behaviour?
    • We tend to attribute behaviour because humans are "social animals" (as underlined by one of the fundamental principles of the SCLOA) and have a need to understand why things happen in the world around us.
    • People tend to make attributions based on when they are performing it themselves or if they are observing it happen. This is known as the actor-observer effect.
  • State the problems and possible errors that concerns making attributions
    • However, when judgements are passed there is usually some form of bias, as both situational and dispositional factors are not considered from every viewpoint/angle.
    • Errors can occur when attributing tne"s behaviour, however it is also important to note that people can accurately attribute causes of behaviour to these factors (situational or dispositional) as well.

  • Give an example of an error that could occur in attribution
    • An example of a common error when attributing one"s behaviour is humans tendency tver- emphasize dispositional factors over situational factors, especially when they are judging other people"s behaviour; this is known as the fundamental attribution error (FAE).

  • Generally attributions follow this trend (optional) 
    • Positive outcomes (individual behaviour) 
      • Dispositional 
    • Negative outcome (individual behaviour 
      • Situational 
    • Positive outcome (other individuals) 
      • Situational 
    • Negative outcomes (other individuals) 
      • Dispositional 

  • Explain FAE"s role in attributing one"s behaviour to dispositional/situational factors 
    • Exploring FAE gives us more insight on the roles of situational and dispositional factors when explaining behaviour, and also helps us to be more open-minded to the possible alternative factors that cause people to behave in a certain way. 

  • Give Example 
    • An example of how people attribute dispositional and situational factors to explain behaviour is through Zimbardo"s Stanford Prison Experiment (1971). 

Supporting Study 1: Zimbardo (1971) – Stanford Prison Experiment 
  • To investigate how people react in difficult situations. 
  • Zimbardo created a simulation of a prison in Stanford University basement. 
  • He randomly assigned the volunteers/participants to be either the guard or prisoner in the prison simulation. Therefore the IV was role (prisoner or guard). 
  • DV was behaviour observed through direct observation, video and audiotape. 
  • After a while, the volunteers playing the role of guards started to show acts of empowerment, aggression and a more confident attitude compared to the volunteers playing the role of the prisoners. 
  • Whilst the prisoners became passive, depressed, anxious and experienced loss of control over life. 
  • The volunteers acted like what their roles in their situation/predicament would be in real life prison conditions. 
  • This study demonstrated that situational rather than dispositional factors caused negative behaviour and thoughts found in prison settings. 
  • Zimbardo"s study is a prime example of how people can use either dispositional situational attribution to explain the behaviours of certain people. 


  • Thus, it can be seen that dispositional and situational causes of behaviour are attributed by people to explain the cause of behaviour.