ABSTRACT
The topic of causal attribution has become a dominant research concern in social psychology. A fundamental assumption of attribution theory is that naive epistemology is similar in crucial respects to scientific epistemology. The relevance of attribution theory to social psychology derives from the fact that people are significant means, whereby knowledge about the world is acquired, and significant objects of most persons’ interest. The chapter examines the ANOVA formulation of attribution. According to the present theory, ANOVA categories or, for that matter, A. W. Kruglanski’s “endogenous” categories are merely specific contents, or more precisely, specific identificational categories. The chapter provides a theory of lay epistemology is developed, along the lines of a threefold distinction between: the contents of lay knowledge; the logic whereby such knowledge is validated; and the course of the epistemic episode. The content of naive epistemology is the layman’s total set of concepts pertaining to the world of experience.
