An Application of Attribution Theory to Clinical Judgment

Jennifer Murray,Mary E Thomson

doi:10.5964/ejop.v5i3.257

Abstract

The current article presents an application of attribution theory to clinical judgment, with a focus on the theory’s application to clinical judgments of violence risk assessment. While attribution theory has been applied to many diverse fields of human behavior, a comparatively limited level of research and discussion has been raised regarding its application to the very relevant and practical study of clinical decision making (Elbogen, 2002). The current article argues that is not only important for practicing clinicians to understand the way in which their client attributes causality to their behaviour in order to improve upon the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions, but also emphasizes the importance of recognizing and understanding the way in which the clinician attributes causality to the clients behaviour, and how this may affect the development of suitable therapeutic interventions and risk management plans. Through better understanding the effects of attribution on clinical judgments of violence risk assessment, it is argued that improvements to the effectiveness of clinical judgments in violence risk assessment may be possible.

Highlights

The current article presents an application of attribution theory to clinical judgment, with a focus on the theory’s application to clinical judgments of violence risk assessment
Of key interest within the present article is the effects of attribution on the formation of judgments and decision making in violence risk assessment
Research relating to attribution has been applied to such diverse areas as: motivations in education, personality, organizational and clinical psychology (Weiner, 1985 in Forsterling, 1988)

Summary

Introduction

The current article presents an application of attribution theory to clinical judgment, with a focus on the theory’s application to clinical judgments of violence risk assessment. The way in which we attribute causality to an individual’s actions (i.e., was a behavior caused by the person, the entity, or the time) will depend on the perceived consistency of the action/situation, in addition to the distinctiveness of the behavior across other situations and stimuli and the similarity of the action to usual response or social norm.

Results

Conclusion