Attribution

When individuals monitor performance they attempt to determine if it is inner or outer caused. "Inner caused" means 1 believes that an event was under the personal control of the individual involved. For example, a person who missed a deadline did so because he is lazy. "Outer caused" means one believes an event was the result of outside causes. For example, a person missed a deadline because her boss had given her a huge workload. This links to the fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency to underestimate the influence of internal factors concerning one's own behavior and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about other people's behaviors. For example, if Paul did well on a project Paul will attribute it to his own qualities. If Paul sees a person else doing well on a project Paul will attribute it to outer factors as like luck, timing, etc. Conversely, if Paul did poorly on a project Paul will attribute it to outer factors. If Paul sees a person else doing badly Paul will likely attribute it to inner factors. This is mostly known as self-serving bias.