ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between causal attributions for another’s behavior and interpersonal attraction, or liking for that other. But for attributional processes to play any role in predicting attraction to others, they must occur. Making attributions is seen as a largely rational activity in which the perceiver integrates two kinds of information in arriving at an estimate of the locus of causality for an action: the particular behavior of the actor, and the surrounding circumstances. The chapter explores both assumptions: that attributional processes systematically affect our perceptions of the internal and dispositional qualities of others, and that our perception of those qualities affects our attraction to them. It was suggested earlier that stronger and more confident attributions about the personal characteristics of another are made when the apparent environmental press toward the behavior is weak and particularly when situational factors could have been expected to inhibit the behavior.
