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Excusing a partner changes nothing
Benevolent attribution
The first is called benevolent attribution. If a husband is late all the time, the thought goes: boy, he has a terrible job. It isn't that he doesn't love her or didn't consider her.
Too much of it doesn't change anything. It never leads to sitting down and asking whether the job has to change, or whether something else is going on that needs to be addressed.
Malevolent attribution
The second is malevolent attribution, the idea that he is just a sexist swine or that she is just a terrible nag. That isn't helpful either.
A third reading
Taking a historical or sociological view opens a third reading: these are habits people were channeled into over the centuries, and they don't fit values that are more egalitarian now. From there, it's not their fault, there is no need to feel guilty about a mistake, and the pattern can be understood and moved past.
How did attribution research begin?
Psychologist Fritz Heider laid out the foundations in his 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. He argued that people act as everyday scientists, explaining others' behavior by weighing the person against the situation. Later researchers built on the idea and called it attribution theory. It became one of the most studied topics in social psychology.
Why do people blame character over circumstance?
In a 1967 experiment, Edward Jones and Victor Harris asked students to read essays about Fidel Castro. Readers rated the writers as holding the pro-Castro views in the essay even when they were told the writers had been assigned that side. Social psychologist Lee Ross named this tendency the fundamental attribution error in 1977.
What do studies find about couples' explanations?
Psychologists Thomas Bradbury and Frank Fincham reviewed marriage research in 1990. They reported that unhappy couples tend to explain a partner's bad behavior as a lasting trait. Happier couples are more likely to credit the situation and to see the partner's good behavior as intended.
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