2/11/22; Week 6: Response to "Attributional tendencies in Cultures".

 

Have you ever come across people who blame bad luck or others’ mistakes for their own lack of success? Or people who are hard on themselves and blame themselves for whatever happens? I have and I myself have been the latter many times. This week I learned that this tendence to look for whoever or whatever responsible for the situations we are going through is called “making attributions”, which are inferences we make to understand the causes of events and behavior and they can heavily influence the way we interact with others.

Attributions can be internal which means that the cause of the outcome is within the individual due to personality traits, talents or mistakes; or external which means that somebody else takes the responsibility, Also, attributions can be stable, or in other words, constant over a period of time; or unstable, that could change any time. Knowing these dimensions can help us understand students’ behavior and even expectations. Something that drew my attention was the bias in attributions that can cause people to judge someone’s behavior and attitude from our own perspective, which can be totally different for the other person. This can cause many misunderstanding in the classroom, for example: if a student doesn’t do well in class and acts apathic towards the lessons, the teacher may think that is because the student is irresponsible and lazy. But students might actually like the class but be tired due to activities carried out throughout the week. I feel that understanding how students attribute their success and failure can help teachers assess their progress as well as plan assessment activities and decide how to keep a low affective filter in the classroom.