Chapter 5: Attributions

Have you ever met a famous person and felt disappointed afterwards because he/she did something or said something that was unexpected? A few months ago, I went to a book signing and was disturbed that the person did not shake my hand at my request. Maybe I should finish the book and get a clue as to why shaking hand is not a habit for this person. Attribution is defined as "assessment of the cause of an action or behavior (e.g. our thoughts about why someone acted as he or she did or what caused us to act in a certain way) or the degree of responsibility that someone or something had for the action or behavior." In this example, I attribute the reason for not shaking hand to an external cause (environmental: germs and situational: sets a shaking-hand-precedent with hundreds of people in line). According to expectancy violations theory, "when someone whom we have judged to be 'high reward' violates our expectations, we are likely to assume that he or she did so for a good reason." This famous person is influential across the globe and has made impacts throughout history. Therefore, it wasn't personal; there was a good reason for not shaking my hand.