Canadian Health Information Management Association Exam 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

Attribution theory is the concept that explains how individuals interpret and make judgments about the causes of their own and others' behaviors or outcomes. This theory posits that people seek to understand and explain the reasons behind events by attributing them to internal factors, such as personality traits, or external factors, such as situational influences. In essence, it focuses on the cognitive processes involved when individuals assess why things happen, which aids in constructing a framework for understanding social interactions and reactions.

This theory plays a crucial role in how people navigate their social environment, making sense of their own experiences as well as those of others. It emphasizes the importance of the context and the information available to a perceiver when forming causal explanations. Through attribution, individuals become attuned to the dynamics of social situations and can predict future behaviors based on previous observations.

In contrast, the other options, while related to social perceptions, do not specifically address the causal explanations for events as clearly or directly as attribution theory does. Selective perception refers to the process in which individuals focus on certain stimuli while ignoring others, which can distort understanding but does not inherently involve causal reasoning. Social perception theory relates more broadly to the processes involved in perceiving others, rather than the specific mechanisms for attributing caus