Covariation Model

CORE DEFINITION

Harold Kelley's covariation model describes how people decide whether a person's behavior stems from the actor, the stimulus, or the situation, using three dimensions: distinctiveness, does the person behave this way only toward this thing; consistency, does the person behave this way every time; and consensus, does everyone behave this way. The patterns combine into attribution: high consensus, low consistency, and high distinctiveness point to the environment, and the person is let off the hook. The practical use is as an algorithm for fairness: run the three questions before concluding that a late employee or an angry partner is simply careless or unkind. Qualification: the model describes everyday inference, which still falls into the fundamental attribution error.