The perception concepts most relevant to OB include person perceptions. Many of our perceptions of others are formed by first impressions and small cues that have little supporting evidence. This is particularly troublesome—but common—when we infer another person’s morality. Attribution theory tries to explain the ways we judge people differently depending on the meaning we attribute to a behavior. For instance, we assign meaning to smiles and other expressions in many ways.

Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That depends largely on three factors: distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency. Internally caused behaviors are those an observer believes to be under the personal behavioral control of another individual. Externally caused behavior is what we imagine the situation forced the individual to do. If an employee is late for work, you might attribute that to overnight partying and oversleeping. This is an internal attribution. But if you attribute his lateness to a traffic snarl, you are making an external attribution.

Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations. Is the employee who arrives late today also one who regularly “blows off” other kinds of commitments? When we make judgments about the behavior of other people, we tend to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors. People tend to attribute ambiguous information as relatively flattering, accept positive feedback, and reject negative feedback. This is called self-serving bias.

The concept of attribution theory helps us identify why we draw certain conclusions from behavior.