Attributional

Attributional is an adjective that relates to attribution—the cognitive or linguistic act of assigning causes, properties, or ownership to something. In everyday language, it can describe statements or theories that attempt to explain why events occur or why a person behaves in a certain way.

In psychology, attributional processes are central to attribution theory. Researchers study how people explain successes and failures, how attributions influence motivation, emotion, and behavior, and how attributional style — habitual patterns of explaining events — affects adjustment. Common dimensions in attribution theory include whether causes are interpreted as internal versus external to the actor, stable versus unstable over time, and global versus specific across situations. A typical example: attributing a test failure to lack of ability (internal, stable) rather than insufficient effort (internal, unstable) or external factors. Attributional retraining programs aim to modify maladaptive attributional styles to improve persistence and well-being.

In linguistics and grammar, attributional is less standard; the field usually uses attributive to describe modifiers that attach properties to a noun (as in “the red apple”). Nevertheless, attributional can appear in broader discussions of how language attributes or assigns properties related to causation or ownership, though attributive is the preferred term in most grammatical descriptions.

See also: attribution theory, causal attribution, fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, attribution bias.