Question

Discuss how attribution theory can be applied to the situation of a person staeling from the workplace in 200 words

Answer 1

Attribution Theory explains how people give causes or attributes something to an event or behavior. There are two types of attributions, internal and external. Internal attribution tries to explain the cause to the person’s personality, character and traits whereas external attribution theory explains one’s behavior to external factors such as poverty, discrimination etc.

Stealing is an anti-social behavior and internal attribution would look for explanation in the person’s family background, their previous stealing record and their personality type etc. to determine why the person steals. Most of the time, people would attribute stealing at workplace to one’s greed to live a luxurious life and to become rich in a short time.

External attribution to stealing at the workplace would say that the person is poor and stole because of his family situations such as paying the kid’s school fee, buying medicine for the elderly parents etc. Another reason attributed would be the discrimination the person experienced at his workplace, so the person did it to retaliate someone, probably the manager or the owner. The final reason would be that the person was overlooked for promotion and thus incurred enough financial loss which he would have otherwise received along with the promotion.