How people explain behavior: A new theoretical framework

Personality and Social Psychology Review

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 23-48

  Malle, Bertram F ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033247138     PISSN: 10888683     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0301_2     Document Type: Article

References (113)

1. Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49-74.
2. Anderson, C. A. (1989). Causal reasoning and belief perseverance. In D. Schumann (Ed.), Proceedings of the society for consumer psychology: 1988 Annual convention (pp. 115-120). Knoxville: University of Tennessee.
3. Anderson, C. A., Krull, D. S., & Weiner, B. (1996). Explanations: Processes and consequences. In E. T. Higgins, & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 271-296). New York: Guilford.
4. Anscombe, G. E. M. (1957). Intention. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
5. Antaki, C. (1994). Explaning and arguing: The social organization of accounts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
6. Antaki, C., & Leudar, I. (1992). Explaining in conversation : Towards an argument model. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22. 181-194.
7. Au, T. K. (1986). A verb is worth a thousand words: The causes and consequences of interpersonal events implicit in language. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 104-122.
8. Audi, R. (1993). Action, intention, and reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
9. Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10. Bartsch, K., & Wellman, H. (1989). Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires. Child Development, 60, 946-964.
11. Bohner, G., Bless, H., Schwarz, N., & Strack, F. (1988). What triggers causal attributions? The impact of valence and subjective probability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 335-345.
12. Bradley, G. W. (1978). Self-serving biases in the attribution process; A reexamination of the fact or fiction question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 56-71.
13. Brand, M. (1984). Intending and acting. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
14. Bratman, M. E. (1987). Intention, plans, and practical reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
15. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
16. Buss, A. R. (1978). Causes and reasons in attribution theory: A conceptual critique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1311-1321.
17. Buss, A. R. (1979). On the relationship between reasons and causes. Journal of 'Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1458-1461.
18. Chan, D. K. (1995). Non-intentional actions. American Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 139-151.
19. Cheng, P. W., & Novick, L. R. (1990). A probabilistic contrast model of causal induction. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 58, 545-567.
20. Christensen, S. M., & Turner, D. R. (Eds.). (1993). Folk psychology and the philosophy of mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
21. D'Andrade, R. (1987). A folk model of the mind. In D. Holand & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 112-148). New York: Cambridge University Press.
22. Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, reasons and causes. Journal of Philosophy, 60, 685-700.
23. Dretske, F. (1988). Explaining behavior: Reasons in a world of causes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
24. Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide. A study in sociology (J. A. Spaulding & G. Simpson, Trans.). Glencoe, IL: Free Press. (Original work published 1897)
25. F.Ex (1998). People 's folk explanations of behavior. Coding scheme available at , University of Oregon, Eugene.
26. Fincham, F. D, & Bradbury, T. N. (1992). Assessing attributions in marriage: The Relationship Attribution Measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 457-468.
27. Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
28. Fletcher, G. J. O. (1995). Two uses of folk psychology: Implications for psychological science. Philosophical Psychology, 8, 221-238.
29. Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21-38.
30. Goldman, A. I. (1993). The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 15-28.
31. Goldman, A. (1970). A theory of human action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
32. Harman, G. (1976). Practical reasoning. Review of Metaphysics, 29, 431-463.
33. Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
34. Herzberger, S. D., & Clore, G. L. (1979). Actor and observer attributions in a multitrait-multi method matrix. Journal of Research in Personality, 13, 1-15.
35. Hilton, D. J. (1990). Conversational processes and causal explanation. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 65-81.
36. Hilton, D. J., & Slugoski, B. R. (1986). Knowledge-based causal attribution: The abnormal conditions focus model. Psychological Review, 93, 75-88.
37. Hilton, D. J., Smith, R. H, & Kin, S. (1995). Processes of causal explanation and dispositional attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 377-387.
38. Hirschberg, N. (1978). A correct treatment of traits. In H. London (Ed.), Personality: A new look at metatheories (pp. 45-68). New York: Wiley.
39. Holtzworth-Munroe, A., & Jacobson, N. S. (1988). Toward a methodology for coding spontaneous causal attributions: Preliminary results with married couples. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 101-112.
40. Hume, D. (1978). A treatise of human nature (L. A. Selby-Bigge & P. H. Nidditch's 2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1740)
41. Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 219-266). New York: Academic.
42. Jones, E. E., & McGillis, D. (1976). Correspondent inference and the attribution cube: A comparative reappraisal. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, &R. F. Kidds (Eds.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 1, pp. 389-420). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
43. Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (1972). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. In E. E. Jones, D. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79-94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
44. Kalish, C. (1998). Reasons and causes: Children's understanding of conformity to social rules and physical laws. Child Development, 69, 706-720.
45. Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192-240). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
46. Kelley, H. H. (1973). The process of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28, 107-128.
47. Kidd, R. F., & Amabile, T. M. (1981). Causal explanations in social interaction: Some dialogues on dialogue. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. F. Kidd (Eds.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 3, pp. 307-328). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
48. Koehler, D. J. (1991). Explanation, imagination, and confidence in judgment. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 499-519.
49. Kruglanski, A. H. (1975). The endogenous-exogenous partition in attribution theory. Psychological Review, 82, 387-406.
50. Kruglanski, A. W. (1979). Causal explanation, Ideological explanation: On radical particularism in attribution theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1447-1457.
51. Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge. New York: Plenum.
52. Lennon, K. (1990). Explaining human action. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
53. Lepper, M., & Greene, D. (1978). The hidden costs of reward. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
54. Locke, D., & Pennington, D. (1982). Reasons and other causes: Their role in attribution processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 212-223.
55. Lyon, T. D. (1993). Young children's understanding of desire and knowledge. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, CA.
56. Malle, B. F. (1994). lntentionality and explanation: A study in the folk theory of behavior. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, CA.
57. Malle, B. F. (1998). Whose psychological concepts? A review of J. Smedlsund's "The structure of psychological common sense." Contemporary Psychology, 43, 671-672.
58. Malle, B. F., & Bennett, R. E. (1998). People's praise and blame for intentions and actions. Implications of the folk concept of intentionality. Unpublished manuscript.
59. Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997a). The folk concept of intentionality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 101-121.
60. Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997b). Which behaviors do people explain? A basic actor-observer asymmetry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 288-304.
61. Malle, B. F., O'Laughlin, M., & Knobe, J. (1998). The study of free-response behavior explanations: Linguistic surface vs. deep structure. Manuscript submitted for publication.
62. McClure, J. (1984). On necessity and commonsense: A discussion of central axioms in new approaches to lay explanation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 123-149.
63. McClure, J , & Hilton, D. (1997). Because you can't always get what you want: When preconditions are better explanations than goals. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 223-240.
64. McGill, A. L. (1989). Context effects in judgments of causation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 189-200.
65. McNichol. (1972). A primer of 'signal detections theory. London: Allen &Unwin.
66. Mele, A. R. (1992). Springs of action: Understanding intentional behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
67. Mele, A. R. (Ed.). (1997). The philosophy of action. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
68. Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213-225.
69. Miller, F. D., Smith, E. R., & Uleman, J. (1981 ). Measurement and interpretation of situational and dispositional attributions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 80-95.
70. Moore, G. E. (1993). Moore's paradox. In T. Baldwin (Ed.), G. E. Moore: Selected writings (pp. 207-212). London: Routledge.
71. Nelson-LeGall, S. A. (1985). Motive-outcome matching and outcome foreseeability: Effects on attribution of intentionality and moral judgments. Developmental Psychology, 21, 323-337.
72. Nichols, L. (1990). Reconceptualizing social accounts: An agenda for theory building and empirical research. Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 10, 113-144.
73. Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P , & Marecek, J. (1973). Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 154-164.
74. Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1994). [Conversations between teenagers about personal problems]. Unpublished raw data.
75. O'Laughlin, M., & Malle, B. F. (1998). How people explain actions performed by groups and individuals. Manuscript submitted for publication.
76. Premack, D. (1990). The infant's theory of self-propelled objects. Cognition, 36, 1-16.
77. Regan, D. T., & Totten, J. (1975). Empathy and attribution: Turning observers into actors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 850-856.
78. Robins, R. W., Spranca, M. D., & Mendelsohn, G. A. (1996). The actor-observer effect revisited: Effects of individual differences and repeated social interactions on actor and observer attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 375-389.
79. Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 174-221). New York: Academic.
80. Schachter, S., & Singer, J. E. (1962). Cognitive, sociall and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychological Review, 69, 379-399.
81. Schneider, D. J., Hastorf, A. H., & Ellsworth, P. C. (1982). Person perception (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
82. Schult, C. A., & Wellman, H. M. (1997). Explaining human movements and actions: Children's understanding of the limits of psychological explanation. Cognition, 62, 291-324.
83. Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513-523.
84. Scott, M. B., & Lyman, S. M. (1968). Accounts. American Sociological Review, 33, 46-62.
85. Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
86. Searle, J. R. (1984). Minds, brains and science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
87. Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press.
88. Shaver, K. G. (1975). An introduction to attribution processes. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop.
89. Shaver, K. G. (1985). The attribution of blame: Causality, responsibility, and blameworthiness. New York: Springer.
90. Slugoski, B. R., Lalljee, M., Lamb, R., & Ginsburg, G. P. (1993). Attribution in conversational context: Effect of mutual knowledge on explanation-giving. European Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 219-238.
91. Smedslund, J. (1988). Psycho-logic. New York: Springer.
92. Snare, F. (1991). Morals, motivation, and convention. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
93. Storms, M. D. (1973). Videotape and the attribution process: Reversing actors' and observers' point of view. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 165-175.
94. Stratton, P., Heard, D., Hanks, H.G.I., Munton, A. G., Brewin, C. R., & Davidson, C. (1986). Coding causal beliefs in natural discourse. British Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 299-313.
95. Svartvik, J., & Quirk, R. (Eds.). (1980). A corpus of English conversation (Lund Studies in English, 56). Lund, Sweden: Gleerups/Liber.
96. Taylor, S. E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation. American Psychologist, 38, 1161-1173.
97. Tedeschi, J. T., & Reiss, M. (1981). Verbal strategies as impression management. In C. Antaki (Ed.), The psychology of ordinary social behaviour (pp. 271-309). London: Academic.
98. Tumbull, W. (1986). Everyday explanation: The pragmatics of puzzle resolution. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 16, 141-160.
99. Tumbull, W., & Slugoski, B. (1988). Conversational and linguistic processes in causal attribution. In D. J. Hilton (Ed.), Contemporary science and natural explanation (pp. 66-93). Brighton, England: Harvester Press.
100. Valins, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (1972). Attribution processes in the development and treatment of emotional disorders. In E. E. Jones, D. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 63-78). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
101. Weary, G., Harvey, J. H., Schweiger, P., Olson, C. T., Perloff, R., & Pritchard, S. (1982). Self-presentation and the moderation of self-serving attributional biases. Social Cognition, I, 140-159.
102. Weiner, B. (1985). "Spontaneous" causal thinking. Psychological Bulletin. 97, 74-84.
103. Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. New York: Springer.
104. Weiner, B. (1995). Judgments of responsibility. New York: Guilford.
105. Weiner, B., Frieze, I., Kukla, A., Reed, L., Rest, S., & Rosenbaum, R. M. (1972). Perceiving the causes of success and failure. In E. E. Jones, D. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 95-120). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
106. Wellman, H. M., Hickling, A. K., & Schult, C. A. (1997). Young children's psychological, physical, and biological explanations. In H. M. Wellman & K. lnagaki (Eds.), The emergence of core domains of thought: Children 's reasoning about physical, psychological, and biological phenomena (pp. 7-25). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
107. Wellman, H. M., & Woolley, J. D. (1990). From simple desires to ordinary beliefs: The early development of everyday psychology. Cognition, 35, 245-275.
108. White, P. A. (1991 ). Ambiguity in the internal/external distinction in causal attribution. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 259-270.
109. Whiten, A. (1994). Grades of mindreading. InC. Lewis & P. Mitchell (Eds.), Children 's early understanding of mind: Origins and development (pp. 47-70). Hove, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
110. Wilson, J. Q. (1997). Moral judgment: Does the abuse excuse threaten our legal system? New York: HarperCollins.
111. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. (Original work published 1953)
112. Yuill, N., & Perner, J. (1988). Intentionality and knowledge in children's judgments of actor's responsibility and recipient's emotional reaction. Developmental Psychology, 24, 358-365.
113. Zuckerman, M. (1978). Actions and occurrences in Kelley's cube. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 647-656.