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Edward E. Jones

Edward E. Jones (1927–1993) was an American social psychologist who, together with Fritz Heider, shaped the development of attribution theory. His work focused on how people infer others’ dispositions from observed behavior and on the systematic biases that distort these inferences.

Core ideas

  • Correspondent inference theory: observers infer that an actor’s behavior corresponds to an underlying disposition when the behavior is freely chosen, produces non-common effects, and is socially unexpected.
  • Actor-observer asymmetry: actors tend to attribute their own behavior to situational factors, while observers attribute the same behavior to the actor’s disposition. (Developed with Richard Nisbett.)
  • Ingratiation: strategic self-presentation designed to make oneself more likeable to a target, studied as a form of interpersonal power.

Notable works

  • From Acts to Dispositions: The Attribution Process in Person Perception (1965, with Keith Davis)
  • Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior (1972, edited with others)
  • Interpersonal Perception (1990)

Relations

Date created

Cite

@misc{emsenn2026-edward-e-jones,
  author    = {emsenn},
  title     = {Edward E. Jones},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://emsenn.net/library/general/domains/people/edward-e-jones/},
  publisher = {emsenn.net},
  license   = {CC BY-SA 4.0}
}