Blog Posts Tagged "Attributions".

In my last blog post, I wrote about why negative emotions affect thoughts.

Here’s another thinking distortion that leads to irritability.

Personalizing

This cognitive bias is not necessarily relevant to you but it might be.

Taking things personally that might not have been personal.

For example,

- someone ignoring a Facebook friend request you sent.

- you jumping to the conclusion that something that happens in a business context is personal when its not.

- thinking you did something wrong if someone says something a bit strange to you or is brusque in conversation.

What can help

- At least entertaining the possibility that whatever happened might not have been personal (i.e. that it might not have been comment on who you are as a person or that the reason for something occurring might not have been anything to do with you)! Thinking openly. There might be some other explanation for what happened, you just might not know what it is. Negative emotions cause thinking to become more self focussed (they put us in self protective mode) which is why people are more prone to personalizing when they’re feeling negative emotions.

- Learning to tolerate uncertainty. Often we don’t know (and often never find out) if something was personal or not.

Tolerating uncertainty and not knowing is an INCREDIBLY important emotion skill. It will help you have stable self esteem and a calm life.

Note that when I say “tolerating” uncertainty I mean the opposite of wrestling with it. Using a tug of war metaphor, think dropping the rope rather than pulling harder on one end.

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This post is a follow-up to a post from a couple of weeks about How Your Attributional Style is Linked to Your Happiness and Self Esteem.

Today, as promised, I’m writing about Your Relationship Attributional Style (best to read the post mentioned above before reading this one).

Attribution patterns are an important difference between happy and unhappy relationships. When attributions turn negative it predicts troubled times ahead for the relationship.

Attributions for “Good Relationship Behaviour”

In happy intimate relationships, people tend to attribute good things their partner does to

Internal, Global, and Stable Factors.

For example, in a happy relationship, if your partner brings home flowers, you’re likely to attribute it to the partner’s warm, loving personality. Personality is both internal and stable (people’s personalities don’t change much). Characteristics like “warm” and “supportive” are global characteristics compared to specific, positive characteristics like “good at remembering anniversaries”.

It’s more important in relationships that we have a positive view of our partners’ global characteristics than of more specific characteristics, although obviously these two perceptions are linked.

In unhappy relationships, people tend to attribute “good behaviour” from their partners as caused by

External, Specific, and/or Temporary Factors.

In an unhappy relationship, if your partner brings home flowers for an anniversary/Valentine’s you might discount their wanted behaviour by explaining it as having been caused by something like

“My partner only buys flowers when it’s socially expected”.

Attributions for “Bad Relationship Behaviour”

You can probably see where this is going…

In happy relationships, people tend to attribute (i.e. explain) unwanted relationship behaviour from partners as caused by

External (not their fault), Specific, and/or Temporary Factors

For example, in a happy relationship, if your partner forgets Valentine’s day you might explain this as

They’re under a lot of stress at work at the moment (External, Temporary), or

In general they’re warm and supportive. They might not be traditionally romantic but they express their love in other ways (The flaw is framed as a specific flaw in “traditional romantic gestures” which is less detrimental to relationship satisfaction than thinking of the partner as not warm or not caring). Or,

They’ve remembered most years (Forgetting is Temporary)

In unhappy relationships, bad relationship behaviour tends to be attributed to stable, global, internal factors. For example, if my partner forgot our anniversary it’s evidence that they’re below average in warmth, caring, or reliability.

How Understanding Attributional Style Can Help You

Check in with yourself about what attributions you’re making. Are other attributions also potentially valid?

You might be being overgenerous in your attributions because you’re caught up in love. This can lead people to make poor relationship decisions.

Alternatively, you might be making attributions that are too harsh. Sometimes this happens when people are feeling unhappy in their own lives. Other times, it’s a sign of a negative spiral that’s happening in the relationship (relationship unhappiness > negative attributions > further relationship unhappiness).

Want More? My most popular blog posts about relationships:

Self Experiments in Relationship Closeness

Relationship Self Help – Psychologist Recommended Books

How Fluctuating and Low Self Esteem Wreak Havoc in Relationships (and How Low Self Esteem Robs People of one of the Most Important Benefits from Relationships).

Original Post about Attributions and Self-Esteem/Depression

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What the heck is attributional style?

“Attributional Style” is about how you explain the causes of events. Why you should care about your attributional style is that it’s related to depression, self esteem, and relationship happiness.

Psychologists think of attributions as falling along three dimensions.

1. Stable vs Temporary.
2. Global vs. Specific.
3. Internal vs. External.

(Stick with me this sounds more complicated than it is)

Depression and Self Esteem

When people are depressed or have low self esteem they’re likely to explain the causes of negative events in terms of stable + global + internal causes.

Let’s say someone with depression mucks up the icing on a cake they’re baking to take to a party.

A depressed or low self esteem person is likely to explain the icing getting mucked up as

a) something that was their fault (internal),
b) something that reflects a global characteristic of their personality (“I’m hopeless at everything” instead of just “I’m not good at icing cakes”),
c) something that’s not going to change (stable – “I’m always going to be hopeless at everything and I’m never going to be good at cake icing”)

You can see how this pattern of attributions is a recipe for unhappiness.

To make things worse, people with depression or low self-esteem tend to attribute positive events to unstable, specific, and external causes.

Let’s say the depressed, low self esteem person did a good job of icing the cake.

A depressed or low self esteem person’s attributions of a positive event might look like this -

a) Temporary – It was a fluke. I’ll probably screw it up next time.
b) Specific – I’m ok at icing cakes but I’m useless at everything that really matters.
c) External – The recipe on the packet was foolproof, or I asked my husband if it looked like the right color/consistency and I couldn’t have done it without his help.

People who have healthy self esteem tend to show the reverse patterns of attributions. They tend to attribute positive events to stable, global, and internal causes, and negative events to temporary, specific or
external causes.

These are only tendencies – people’s real attributions are a mixture of different patterns for different events. However, research studies have shown very clear overall differences in the attributions of depressed people vs. non-depressed people with healthy self esteem.

What’s the Solution

When you’re having negative/pessimistic thoughts, consider alternative attributions for whatever events or situations your negative thoughts are in response to. Ask yourself if the attributions you’re making are more like the depressed attributional style or more like the non-depressed attributional style.

(I’ll cover the links between Attributional Style and Relationships Happiness in a separate post)

Thanks for reading

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