ABSTRACT
The theories and research on cognitive interpretations of social events, including events that have caused misery, provide a rich source of knowledge that can be useful to educators engaging students in helping situations. Attribution theory offers interesting commentary on those who view misery, those who attempt to intervene, those who experience misery, and those who are recipients of attempts by others to reduce their suffering. People are compelled to engage in making attributions. Attributions include causal inferences people make in an attempt to explain the behaviors of themselves, the behavior of others, and the events that occur in the world. Proponents of the egoism hypothesis propose that helping is done with the ultimate goal of increasing one’s own welfare. An attributional analysis of helping situations provides an important tool from which educators can enhance student understanding of complexity of cognitive interpretations associated with helping and their implications for feelings and behaviors on the part of students, agency personnel, and recipients.
