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Attribution (psychology)
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Humans are motivated to assign causes to their actions and behaviors.[1] In social psychology, attribution is the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events. The development of models to explain these processes is called attribution theory.[2] Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider in the early part of the 20th century, subsequently developed by others such as Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner.
Contents
[hide]
1 Background
2 Types
2.1 External attribution
2.2 Internal attribution
3 Theories
3.1 Common sense psychology
3.2 Correspondent inference theory
3.3 Covariation model
3.4 Three-dimensional model
4 Bias and errors
4.1 Fundamental attribution error
4.2 Culture bias
4.3 Actor/observer difference
4.4 Dispositional attributions
4.5 Self-serving bias
4.6 Defensive attribution hypothesis
5 Application
6 In clinical psychology
6.1 Learned helplessness
7 Perceptual salience
8 Criticism
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
Background[edit]
Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is often described as the "father of attribution theory",[3] during the early years of the 20th century.
In his 1920s dissertation, Heider addressed the problem of phenomenology: why do perceivers attribute the properties such as color to perceived objects, when those properties are mental constructs? Heider's answer that perceivers attribute that which they "directly" sense – vibrations in the air for instance – to an object they construe as causing those sense data. "Perceivers faced with sensory data thus see the perceptual object as 'out there', because they attribute the sensory data to their underlying causes in the world."[4]:7
Heider extended this idea to attributions about people: "motives, intentions, sentiments ... the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior".[4]:7–8
Types[edit]
External attribution[edit]
External attribution, also called situational attribution, refers to interpreting someone's behavior as being caused by the situation that the individual is in. For example, if Jacob's car tire is punctured he may attribute that to a hole in the road; by making attributions to the poor condition of the highway, he can make sense of the event without any discomfort that it may in reality have been the result of his bad driving.[5]
Internal attribution[edit]
The process of assigning the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic, rather than to outside forces.
Theories[edit]
Common sense psychology[edit]
From the book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958), Fritz Heider tried to explore the nature of interpersonal relationship, and espoused the concept of what he called "common sense" or "naïve psychology". In his theory, he believed that people observe, analyze, and explain behaviors with explanations. Although people have different kinds of explanations for the events of human behaviors, Heider found it is very useful to group explanation into two categories; Internal (personal) and external (situational) attributions.[6] When an internal attribution is made, the cause of the given behavior is assigned to the individual's characteristics such as ability, personality, mood, efforts, attitudes, or disposition. When an external attribution is made, the cause of the given behavior is assigned to the situation in which the behavior was seen such as the task, other people, or luck (that the individual producing the behavior did so because of the surrounding environment or the social situation). These two types lead to very different perceptions of the individual engaging in a behavior.[7]
Correspondent inference theory[edit]
Main article: Correspondent inference theory
Correspondent inferences state that people make inferences about a person when their actions are freely chosen, are unexpected, and result in a small number of desirable effects.[2] According to Edward E. Jones and Keith Davis' correspondent inference theory, people make correspondent inferences by reviewing the context of behavior. It describes how people try to find out individual's personal characteristics from the behavioral evidence. People make inferences on the basis of three factors; degree of choice, expectedness of behavior, and effects of someone's behaviors. For example, we believe we can make stronger assumptions about a man who gives half of his money to charity, than we can about one who gives $5 to charity. An average person would not want to donate as much as the first man because they would lose a lot of money. By donating half of his money, it is easier for someone to figure out what the first man's personality is like. The second factor, that affects correspondence of action and inferred characteristic, is the number of differences between the choices made and the previous alternatives. If there aren't many differences, the assumption made will match the action because it is easy to guess the important aspect between each choice.[8]
Covariation model[edit]
Main article: Covariation model
The covariation model states that people attribute behavior to the factors that are present when a behavior occurs and absent when it does not. Thus, the theory assumes that people make causal attributions in a rational, logical fashion, and that they assign the cause of an action to the factor that co-varies most closely with that action.[9] Harold Kelley's covariation model of attribution looks to three main types of information from which to make an attribution decision about an individual's behavior. The first is consensus information, or information on how other people in the same situation and with the same stimulus behave. The second is distinctive information, or how the individual responds to different stimuli. The third is consistency information, or how frequent the individual's behavior can be observed with similar stimulus but varied situations. From these three sources of information observers make attribution decisions on the individual's behavior as either internal or external. There have been claims that people under-utilise consensus information, although there has been some dispute over this.[10]
There are several levels in the covariation model: high and low. Each of these levels influences the three covariation model criteria. High consensus is when many people can agree on an event or area of interest. Low consensus is when very few people can agree. High distinctiveness is when the event or area of interest is very unusual, whereas low distinctness is when the event or area of interest is fairly common. High consistency is when the event or area of interest continues for a length of time and low consistency is when the event or area of interest goes away quickly.[10]
Three-dimensional model[edit]
Bernard Weiner proposed that individuals have initial affective responses to the potential consequences of the intrinsic or extrinsic motives of the actor, which in turn influence future behavior.[11] That is, a person's own perceptions or attributions as to why they succeeded or failed at an activity determine the amount of effort the person will engage in activities in the future. Weiner suggests that individuals exert their attribution search and cognitively evaluate casual properties on the behaviors they experience. When attributions lead to positive affect and high expectancy of future success, such attributions should result in greater willingness to approach to similar achievement tasks in the future than those attributions that produce negative affect and low expectancy of future success.[12] Eventually, such affective and cognitive assessment influences future behavior when individuals encounter similar situations.
Weiner's achievement attribution has three categories:
stable theory (stable and unstable)
locus of control (internal and external)
controllability (controllable or uncontrollable)
Stability influences individuals' expectancy about their future; control is related with individuals' persistence on mission; causality influences emotional responses to the outcome of task.
Bias and errors[edit]
While people strive to find reasons for behaviors, they fall into many traps of biases and errors. As Fritz Heider says, "our perceptions of causality are often distorted by our needs and certain cognitive biases".[13] The following are examples of attributional biases.
Fundamental attribution error[edit]
Main article: Fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error describes the habit to misunderstand dispositional or personality-based explanations for behavior instead considering external factors. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain and assume the behavior of others. For example, if a person is overweight, a person's first assumption might be that they have a problem with overeating or are lazy and not that they might have a medical reason for being heavier set.[14] When evaluating others' behaviors, the situational context is often ignored in favor of the disposition of the actor to be the cause of an observed behavior. This is because when a behavior occurs attention is most often focused on the person performing the behavior. Thus, the individual is more salient than the environment and dispositional attributions are made more often than situational attributions to explain the behavior of others.[5] However, when evaluating one's own behavior, the situational factors are often exaggerated when there is a negative outcome while dispositional factors are exaggerated when there is a positive outcome.[5]
The core process assumptions of attitude construction models are mainstays of social cognition research and are not controversial—as long as we talk about "judgment". Once the particular judgment made can be thought of as a person's "attitude", however, construal assumptions elicit discomfort, presumably because they dispense with the intuitively appealing attitude concept.[15]
Culture bias[edit]
Main article: Culture bias
Culture bias is when someone makes an assumption about the behavior of a person based on their cultural practices and beliefs. People in individualist cultures, generally Anglo-America and Anglo-Saxon European societies, value individuals, personal goals, and independence. People in collectivist cultures see individuals as members of groups such as families, tribes, work units, and nations, and tend to value conformity and interdependence. In other words, working together and being involved as a group is more common in certain cultures that views each person as a part of the community. This cultural trait is common in Asia, traditional Native American societies, and Africa. Research shows that culture, either individualist or collectivist, affects how people make attributions.[16]
People from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental-attribution error than people from collectivist cultures. Individualist cultures tend to attribute a person's behavior due to their internal factors whereas collectivist cultures tend to attribute a person's behavior to his external factors.[17]
Research suggests that individualist cultures engage in self-serving bias more than do collectivist cultures, i.e. individualist cultures tend to attribute success to internal factors and to attribute failure to external factors. In contrast, collectivist cultures engage in the opposite of self-serving bias i.e. self-effacing bias, which is: attributing success to external factors and blaming failure on internal factors (the individual).[18]
Actor/observer difference[edit]
People tend to attribute other people's behaviors to their dispositional factors while attributing own actions to situational factors. In the same situation, people's attribution can differ depending on their role as actor or observer.[19] For example, when a person scores a low grade on a test, they find situational factors to justify the negative event such as saying that the teacher asked a question that he/she never went over in class. However, if another person scores poorly on a test, the person will attribute the results to internal factors such as laziness and inattentiveness in classes. The theory of the actor-observer bias was first developed by E. Jones and R. Nisbett in 1971, whose explanation for the effect was that when we observe other people, we tend to focus on the person, whereas when we are actors, our attention is focused towards situational factors.The actor/observer bias is used less frequently with people one knows well such as friends and family since one knows how his/her close friends and family will behave in certain situation, leading him/her to think more about the external factors rather than internal factors.[original research?]
Dispositional attributions[edit]
Main article: Dispositional attribution
Dispositional attribution is a tendency to attribute people's behaviors to their dispositions; that is, to their personality, character, and ability.[20] For example, when a normally pleasant waiter is being rude to his/her customer, the customer may assume he/she has a bad temper. The customer, just by looking at the attitude that the waiter is giving him/her, instantly decides that the waiter is a bad person. The customer oversimplifies the situation by not taking into account all the unfortunate events that might have happened to the waiter which made him/her become rude at that moment. Therefore, the customer made dispositional attribution by attributing the waiter's behavior directly to his/her personality rather than considering situational factors that might have caused the whole "rudeness".[21]
Self-serving bias[edit]
Main article: Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias is attributing dispositional and internal factors for success, while external and uncontrollable factors are used to explain the reason for failure. For example, if a person gets promoted, it is because of his/her ability and competence whereas if he/she does not get promoted, it is because his/her manager does not like him/her (external, uncontrollable factor). Originally, researchers assumed that self-serving bias is strongly related to the fact that people want to protect their self-esteem. However, an alternative information processing explanation is that when the outcomes match people's expectations, they make attributions to internal factors. For example if you pass a test you believe it was because of your intelligence; when the outcome does not match their expectations, they make external attributions or excuses. Whereas if you fail a test, you would give an excuse saying that you did not have enough time to study.[13] People also use defensive attribution to avoid feelings of vulnerability and to differentiate themselves from a victim of a tragic accident.[22] An alternative version of the theory of self-serving bias states that the bias does not arise because people wish to protect their private self-esteem, but to protect their self-image (a self-presentational bias). This version of the theory would predict that people attribute their successes to situational factors, for fear that others will disapprove of them looking overly vain if they should attribute successes to themselves.[citation needed]
For example, it is suggested that coming to believe that "good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people" will reduce feelings of vulnerability[citation needed]. This belief would have side-effects of blaming the victim even in tragic situations.[13] When a mudslide destroys several houses in a rural neighborhood, a person living in a more urban setting might blame the victims for choosing to live in a certain area or not building a safer, stronger house. Another example of attributional bias is optimism bias in which most people believe positive events happen to them more often than to others and that negative events happen to them less often than to others. For example, smokers on average believe they are less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.[23]
Defensive attribution hypothesis[edit]
Main article: Defensive attribution hypothesis
The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term referring to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of defending themselves from concern that they will be the cause or victim of a mishap. Commonly, defensive attributions are made when individuals witness or learn of a mishap happening to another person. In these situations, attributions of responsibility to the victim or harm-doer for the mishap will depend upon the severity of the outcomes of the mishap and the level of personal and situational similarity between the individual and victim. More responsibility will be attributed to the harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe, and as personal or situational similarity decreases.[22]
An example of defensive attribution is the just-world hypothesis, which is where "good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people". People believe in this in order to avoid feeling vulnerable to situations that they have no control over. However, this also leads to blaming the victim even in a tragic situation.[13] When people hear someone died from a car accident, they decide that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident, and so they reassure themselves that an accident will never happen to them. Despite the fact there was no other information provided, people will automatically attribute that the accident was the driver's fault due to an internal factor (in this case, deciding to drive while drunk), and thus they would not allow it to happen to themselves.
Another example of defensive attribution is optimism bias, in which people believe positive events happen to them more often than to others and that negative events happen to them less often than to others. Too much optimism leads people to ignore some warnings and precautions given to them. For example, smokers believe that they are less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.[23]
Application[edit]
Attribution theory can be applied to juror decision making. Jurors use attributions to explain the cause of the defendant's intent and actions related to the criminal behavior.[24] The attribution made (situational or dispositional) might affect a juror's punitiveness towards the defendant.[25] When jurors attribute a defendant's behavior to dispositional attributions they tend to be more punitive and are more likely find a defendant guilty[25] and to recommend a death sentence compared to a life sentence.[26]
In clinical psychology[edit]
Attribution theory has had a big application in clinical psychology.[27] Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale developed a theory of the depressive attributional style, claiming that individuals who tend to attribute their failures to internal, stable and global factors are more vulnerable to clinical depression.[28] The Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) has been developed to assess whether individuals have the depressogenic attributional style.[29] However, the ASQ has been criticized, with some researchers preferring to use a technique called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE) in which an individual's ordinary writings are analysed to assess whether s/he is vulnerable to the depressive attributional style.[30]
Learned helplessness[edit]
Main article: Learned helplessness
The concept of learned helplessness emerged from animal research in which psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier discovered that dogs classically conditioned to an electrical shock which they could not escape, subsequently failed to attempt to escape an avoidable shock in a similar situation.[31] They argued that learned helplessness applied to human psychopathology. In particular, individuals who attribute negative outcomes to internal, stable and global factors reflect a view in which they have no control over their situation. It is suggested that this aspect of not attempting to better a situation exacerbates negative mood, and may lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses.[32]
Perceptual salience[edit]
Main article: Perceptual salience
When people try to make attributions about another's behavior, their information focuses on the individual. Their perception of that individual is lacking most of the external factors which might affect the individual. The gaps tend to be skipped over and the attribution is made based on the perception information most salient. The most salient perceptual information dominates a person's perception of the situation.[33]
For individuals making behavioral attributions about themselves, the situation and external environment are entirely salient, but their own body and behavior are less so. This leads to the tendency to make an external attribution in regard to their own behavior.[34]
Criticism[edit]
Attribution theory has been criticised as being mechanistic and reductionist for assuming that people are rational, logical, and systematic thinkers.[citation needed] It turns out, however, that they are cognitive misers and motivated tacticians as demonstrated by the fundamental attribution error. It also fails to address the social, cultural, and historical factors that shape attributions of cause. This has been addressed extensively by discourse analysis, a branch of psychology that prefers to use qualitative methods including the use of language to understand psychological phenomena. The linguistic categorization theory for example demonstrates how language influences our attribution style.[citation needed]
See also[edit]
Psychology portal
Abductive reasoning
Attribution bias
Living educational theory
Naïve realism
Psychological projection
Trait ascription bias
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Moskowitz, G. B. (2005). Social cognition: Understanding self and others. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
^ Jump up to: a b Kassin; Fein; Markus (2010). Social Psychology (Eighth international ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-8400-3172-3.
Jump up ^ Sanderson, Catherine (2010). Social Psychology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-471-25026-5.
^ Jump up to: a b Malle, Bertram F. (2004). How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social Interaction. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13445-4.
^ Jump up to: a b c Heider. F (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley. ISBN 9780898592825.
Jump up ^ Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Lynn, Steven Jay; Namy, Laura L.; Woolf, Nancy J. (2010). "Social Psychology". Psychology: A Framework For Everyday Thinking. Pearson Education. p. 380. ISBN 978-0-205-65048-4.
Jump up ^ Aronson. Social Psychology. pp. 106–108. [full citation needed]
Jump up ^ Lipe, Marlys G. "Counterfactual reasoning as a framework for attribution theories". Retrieved 2017-04-25.
Jump up ^ Kelley, Harold H. (1967). "Attribution Theory in Social Psychology". In Levine, David. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. 15. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 192–238.
^ Jump up to: a b McLeod, Saul. "Attribution Theory". Simply Psychology. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
Jump up ^ Weiner, B. (1992). Human Motivation: Metaphors, Theories and Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 0-7619-0491-3.
Jump up ^ Munton; Silvester; Stratton; Hanks (1999). Attributions in Action. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-98216-4.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Forsyth, Donelson (1987). Social Psychology. Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0-534-06744-1.
Jump up ^ Sanderson, Catherine (2010). Social Psychology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-471-25026-5.
Jump up ^ Schwarz, N. (2006). "Attitude Research: Between Ockham's Razor and the Fundamental Attribution Error". Journal of Consumer Research. 33 (1): 19–21. doi:10.1086/504124.
Jump up ^ Hongyin Wang (1993). 跨文化心理学导论 [Introduction to the Cross-Culture Psychology]. Shanxi Normal University Press. ISBN 7-5613-0864-7.
Jump up ^ Perrius, Chris. "Individualism, collectivism, and attribution". Retrieved 27 April 2017.
Jump up ^ "Individual and Cultural Differences in Person Perception".
Jump up ^ Jones; Nisbett (1971). The Actor and the Observer: Divergent Perceptions of the Causes of Behavior. New York: General Learning Press. ISBN 0-382-25026-5.
Jump up ^ Pettigrew (1979). "The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport's cognitive analysis of prejudice, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 5 (4): 461–476. doi:10.1177/014616727900500407.
Jump up ^ Graham; Folkes (1990). Attribution Theory: Applications to Achievement, Mental Health, and Interpersonal Conflict. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-0531-1.
^ Jump up to: a b Shaver, Kelly G. (1970). "Defensive Attribution: Effects of Severity and Relevance on the Responsibility Assigned for an Accident". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. American Psychological Association. 14 (2): 101–113. doi:10.1037/h0028777.
^ Jump up to: a b Roesch; Amirkham (1997). "Boundary Conditions for Self-serving Attributions: Another Look at the Sports Pages". Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 27 (3): 245–261. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00631.x.
Jump up ^ Moskowitz, G. B. (2005). Social cognition: Understanding self and others. New York, NY: Guilford Press. ISBN 9781593850852.
^ Jump up to: a b Sommers, S. R. & Ellsworth, P. C. (2000). "Race in the courtroom: Perceptions of guilt and dispositional attributions" (PDF). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 26 (11): 1367–1379. doi:10.1177/0146167200263005.
Jump up ^ Cochran, J. K.; Boots, D. P. & Heide, K. M. (2003). "Attribution styles and attitudes toward capital punishment for juveniles, the mentally incompetent, and the mentally retarded". Justice Quarterly. 20 (1): 65–93. doi:10.1080/07418820300095461.
Jump up ^ Antaki, C. & Brewin, C., eds. (1982). Attributions and psychological change: Applications of attributional theories to clinical and educational practice. London: Academic Press.
Jump up ^ Abramson, L. Y.; Seligman, M. E. & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). "Learned helplessness in humans: critique and reformulation" (PDF). Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 87 (1): 49–74. PMID 649856. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.87.1.49.
Jump up ^ Peterson, C.; Semmel, A.; Von Baeyer, C.; Abramson, L. Y.; Metalsky, G. I. & Seligman, M. E. (1982). "The attributional style questionnaire". Cognitive Therapy and Research. 6 (3): 287–299. doi:10.1007/BF01173577.
Jump up ^ Schulman, P.; Castellon, C. & Seligman, M. E. (1989). "Assessing explanatory style: The content analysis of verbatim explanations and the attributional style questionnaire" (PDF). Behaviour Research and Therapy. 27 (5): 505–509. PMID 2818415. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(89)90084-3.
Jump up ^ Maier; Seligman (1976). "Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 105 (1): 3–46. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3.
Jump up ^ Seligman, Martin (1975). Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 0-7167-0752-7.
Jump up ^ Aronson. Social Psychology. pp. 113–114. [full citation needed]
Jump up ^ Huffman. Psychology in Action. p. 622. [full citation needed]
Further reading[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Attribution theory
Gordon, L. M.; Graham, S. (2006). "Attribution theory". The Encyclopedia of Human Development. 1. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. pp. 142–144. ISBN 1-4129-0475-7.
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Frontier Thesis
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The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results; especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism, a lack of interest in high culture, and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner.[1]
In the thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History.[2]
Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.[3]
Contents
[hide]
1 Evolution
2 Closed frontier
3 Comparative frontiers
4 Impact and influence
5 New frontiers
5.1 Fermilab
5.2 Electronic frontier
6 See also
7 Further reading: Scholarly studies
8 References
Evolution[edit]
Frederick Jackson Turner, c. 1890
Turner set up an evolutionary model (he had studied evolution with a leading geologist, Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin), using the time dimension of American history, and the geographical space of the land that became the United States.[4][5] The first settlers who arrived on the east coast in the 17th century acted and thought like Europeans. They adapted to the new physical, economic and political environment in certain ways—the cumulative effect of these adaptations was Americanization.
Successive generations moved further inland, shifting the lines of settlement and wilderness, but preserving the essential tension between the two. European characteristics fell by the wayside and the old country's institutions (e.g., established churches, established aristocracies, standing armies, intrusive government, and highly unequal land distribution) were increasingly out of place. Every generation moved further west and became more American, more democratic, and more intolerant of hierarchy. They also became more violent, more individualistic, more distrustful of authority, less artistic, less scientific, and more dependent on ad-hoc organizations they formed themselves. In broad terms, the further west, the more American the community.[6]
Closed frontier[edit]
Turner saw the land frontier was ending, since the U.S. Census of 1890 had officially stated that the American frontier had broken up. He sounded an alarming note, speculating as to what this meant for the continued dynamism of American society as the source of U.S. innovation and democratic ideals was disappearing.[citation needed]
Comparative frontiers[edit]
Historians, geographers, and social scientists have studied frontier-like conditions in other countries, with an eye on the Turnerian model. South Africa, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Australia—and even ancient Rome—had long frontiers that were also settled by pioneers.[7] However these other frontier societies operated in a very difficult political and economic environment that made democracy and individualism much less likely to appear and it was much more difficult to throw off a powerful royalty, standing armies, established churches and an aristocracy that owned most of the land. The question is whether their frontiers were powerful enough to overcome conservative central forces based in the metropolis.[8] Each nation had quite different frontier experiences. For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism was in the United States.[9]
Impact and influence[edit]
Other historians in the 1890s had begun to explore the meaning of the frontier, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who had a different theory. Roosevelt argued that the battles between the trans-Appalachian pioneers and the Indians in the "Winning of the West" had forged a new people, the American race.[10] It was the Turner version that became standard.
Turner's thesis quickly became popular among intellectuals. It explained why the American people and American government were so different from their European counterparts. It was popular among New Dealers—Franklin Roosevelt and his top aides[11] thought in terms of finding new frontiers.[12] FDR, in celebrating the third anniversary of Social Security in 1938, advised, "There is still today a frontier that remains unconquered—an America unreclaimed. This is the great, the nation-wide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier—the America—we have set ourselves to reclaim."[13] Historians adopted it, especially in studies of the west,[14] but also in other areas, such as the influential work of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) in business history.[15]
Many believed that the end of the frontier represented the beginning of a new stage in American life and that the United States must expand overseas. However, others viewed this interpretation as the impetus for a new wave in the history of United States imperialism. William Appleman Williams led the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic historians by arguing that the frontier thesis encouraged American overseas expansion, especially in Asia, during the 20th century. Williams viewed the frontier concept as a tool to promote democracy through both world wars, to endorse spending on foreign aid, and motivate action against totalitarianism.[16] However, Turner's work, in contrast to Roosevelt's work The Winning of the West, places greater emphasis on the development of American republicanism than on territorial conquest. Other historians, who wanted to focus scholarship on minorities, especially Native Americans and Hispanics, started in the 1970s to criticize the frontier thesis because it did not attempt to explain the evolution of those groups.[17] Indeed, their approach was to reject the frontier as an important process and to study the West as a region, ignoring the frontier experience east of the Mississippi River.[18]
Turner never published a major book on the frontier for which he did 40 years of research.[19] However his ideas presented in his graduate seminars at Wisconsin and Harvard influenced many areas of historiography. In the history of religion, for example, Boles (1993) notes that William Warren Sweet at the University of Chicago Divinity School as well as Peter G. Mode (in 1930), argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the Mormons, the Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the Cumberland Presbyterians. The frontier, they argued, shaped uniquely American institutions such as revivals, camp meetings, and itinerant preaching. This view dominated religious historiography for decades.[20] Moos (2002) shows that the 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist Oscar Micheaux incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work. Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could transcend race and earn economic success through hard work and perseverance.[21]
Slatta (2001) argues that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis influenced popular histories, motion pictures, and novels, which characterize the West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice. Disneyland's Frontierland of the late 20th century reflected the myth of rugged individualism that celebrated what was perceived to be the American heritage. The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. However, the work of historians during the 1980s–1990s, some of whom sought to bury Turner's conception of the frontier, and others who sought to spare the concept but with nuance, have done much to place Western myths in context and rescue Western history from them.[22]
New frontiers[edit]
John F. Kennedy, White House photo portrait, looking up
Subsequent critics, historians, and politicians have suggested that other 'frontiers,' such as scientific innovation, could serve similar functions in American development. Historians have noted that John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s explicitly called upon the ideas of the frontier.[23] At his acceptance speech on July 15, 1960, Kennedy called out to the American people, "I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age—to the stout in spirit, regardless of party."[24] Mathiopoulos notes that he "cultivated this resurrection of frontier ideology as a motto of progress ('getting America moving') throughout his term of office."[25] He promoted his political platform as the "New Frontier," with a particular emphasis on space exploration and technology. Limerick points out that Kennedy assumed that "the campaigns of the Old Frontier had been successful, and morally justified."[26] The "frontier" metaphor thus maintained its rhetorical ties to American social progress. The frontier thesis is one of the most influential documents on the American west today.
Fermilab[edit]
Kolb and Hoddeson argue that during the heyday of Kennedy's "New Frontier," the physicists who built the Fermi Labs explicitly sought to recapture the excitement of the old frontier. They argue that, "Frontier imagery motivates Fermilab physicists, and a rhetoric remarkably similar to that of Turner helped them secure support for their research." Rejecting the East and West coast life styles that most scientists preferred, they selected a Chicago suburb on the prairie as the location of the lab. A small herd of American bison was started at the lab's founding to symbolize Fermilab's presence on the frontier of physics and its connection to the American prairie. The bison herd still lives on the grounds of Fermilab.[27] Architecturally, The lab's designers rejected the militaristic design of Los Alamos and Brookhaven as well as the academic architecture of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Instead Fermilab's planners sought to return to Turnerian themes. They emphasized the values of individualism, empiricism, simplicity, equality, courage, discovery, independence, and naturalism in the service of democratic access, human rights, ecological balance, and the resolution of social, economic, and political issues. Milton Stanley Livingston, the lab's associate director, said in 1968, "The frontier of high energy and the infinitesimally small is a challenge to the mind of man. If we can reach and cross this frontier, our generations will have furnished a significant milestone in human history."[28]
Electronic frontier[edit]
The Internet and the World Wide Web are often seen as part of a new "electronic frontier," with profound implications for the future of communications, the society and the economy. The slogan "the Internet is free" echoes the "free land" mantra of the Turner thesis. Indeed, opposition to pay walls and subscription services resembles the pioneer quest for free land unencumbered by ownership claims. Scholars analyzing the Internet have often cited Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier model.[29][30][31] Of special concern is the question whether the electronic frontier will replicate the stages of development of the American land frontier. Wikipedia is a major presence on the electronic frontier, and the Wikipedia editors have been explicitly compared to the pioneers of Turner's American frontier in terms of their youth, aggressiveness, boldness, equalitarianism and rejection of limitations.[32]
See also[edit]
American frontier
Frontier
Rural history
Frederick Jackson Turner
Further reading: Scholarly studies[edit]
The Frontier In American History the original 1893 essay by Turner
Ray Allen Billington. The American Frontier (1958) 35 page essay on the historiography
Billington, Ray Allen. Frederick Jackson Turner: historian, scholar, teacher. (1973), highly detailed scholarly biography.
Billington, Ray Allen, ed,. The Frontier Thesis: Valid Interpretation of American History? (1966); the major attacks and defenses of Turner.
Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage (1984), an analysis of Turner's theories in relation to social sciences and historiography
Billington, Ray Allen. Land of Savagery / Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century (1981)
Bogue, Allan G. . Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down. (1988), highly detailed scholarly biography.
Brown, David S. Beyond the Frontier: Midwestern Historians in the American Century. (2009).
Coleman, William, "Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis," American Historical Review (1966) 72#1 pp. 22–49 in JSTOR
Etulain, Richard W. Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional? (1999)
Etulain, Richard W. Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians (2002)
Etulain, Richard W. and Gerald D. Nash, eds. Researching Western History: Topics in the Twentieth Century (1997) online
Faragher, John Mack ed. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History". (1999)
Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000), deals with events, not historiography; concise edition is Frontiers: A Short History of the American West (2008)
Hofstadter, Richard. The Progressive Historians—Turner, Beard, Parrington. (1979). interpretation of the historiography
Hofstadter, Richard, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds. Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier (1968) 12 essays by scholars in different fields
Jensen, Richard. "On Modernizing Frederick Jackson Turner," Western Historical Quarterly 11 (1980), 307-20. in JSTOR
Lamar, Howard R. ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998), 1000+ pages of articles by scholars
Milner, Clyde A., ed. Major Problems in the History of the American West 2nd ed (1997), primary sources and essays by scholars
Milner, Clyde A. et al. Trails: Toward a New Western History (1991)
Nichols, Roger L. ed. American Frontier and Western Issues: An Historiographical Review (1986) essays by 14 scholars
Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (1973), complex literary reinterpretation of the frontier myth from its origins in Europe to Daniel Boone
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950)
References[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Works by, Frederick Jackson Turner
Jump up ^ Turner, Frederick Jackson (1920). "The Significance of the Frontier in American History". The Frontier in American History. p. 293.
Jump up ^ Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920) chapter 1
Jump up ^ Allan G. Bogue, "Frederick Jackson Turner Reconsidered," The History Teacher, (1994) 27#2 pp. 195–221 at p 195 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Sharon E. Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000 (2005) p. 133
Jump up ^ William Coleman, "Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis," American Historical Review (1966) 72#1 pp. 22–49 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Ray Allen Billington, America's frontier heritage (1974)
Jump up ^ Walker D. Wyman and Clifton B. Kroeber, eds. Frontier in Perspective (1957)
Jump up ^ Marvin K. Mikesell, "Comparative Studies in Frontier History," in Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier (1968) pp. 152–72
Jump up ^ Carroll, Dennis (1982). "Mateship and Individualism in Modern Australian Drama". Theatre Journal. 34 (4): 467–80. JSTOR 3206809.
Jump up ^ Richard Slotkin, "Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt's Myth of the Frontier," American Quarterly (1981) 33#5 pp. 608–37 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Henry A. Wallace, New Frontiers (1934)
Jump up ^ Gerald D. Nash, "The frontier thesis: A historical perspective," Journal of the West (Oct 1995) 34#4 pp. 7–15
Jump up ^ Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rendezvous with Destiny: Addresses and Opinions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2005) p. 130
Jump up ^ Ann Fabian, "The ragged edge of history: Intellectuals and the American West," Reviews in American History (Sept 1998), 26#3 pp. 575–80
Jump up ^ Richard R. John, " Turner, Beard, Chandler: Progressive Historians," Business History Review (Summer 2008) 82#2 pp. 227–40
Jump up ^ William Appleman Williams, "The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy," Pacific Historical Review (1955) 24#4 pp. 379–95. in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Nichols (1986)
Jump up ^ Milner (1991)
Jump up ^ Ray Allen Billington, "Why Some Historians Rarely Write History: A Case Study of Frederick Jackson Turner," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 1. (Jun., 1963), pp. 3–27. in JSTOR
Jump up ^ John B. Boles, "Turner, the frontier, and the study of religion in America," Journal of the Early Republic (1993) 13#2 pp. 205–16
Jump up ^ Dan Moosd, "Reclaiming the Frontier: Oscar Micheaux as Black Turnerian," African American Review (2002) 36#3 pp. 357–81
Jump up ^ Richard W. Slatta, "Taking Our Myths Seriously." Journal of the West 2001 40(3): 3–5.
Jump up ^ Max J. Skidmore, Presidential Performance: A Comprehensive Review (2004) p. 270
Jump up ^ John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen, Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy 1947 to 1963 (1991) p. 101
Jump up ^ Margarita Mathiopoulos, History and Progress: In Search of the European and American mind (1989) pp. 311–12
Jump up ^ Richard White, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and James R. Grossman, The Frontier in American Culture (1994) p. 81
Jump up ^ Fermilab (30 December 2005). "Safety and the Environment at Fermilab". Retrieved 2006-01-06.
Jump up ^ Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson, "A New Frontier in the Chicago Suburbs: Settling Fermilab, 1963–1972," Illinois Historical Journal (1995) 88#1 pp. 2–18, quotes on p. 5 and 2
Jump up ^ Rod Carveth, and J. Metz, "Frederick Jackson Turner and the democratization of the electronic frontier.," American Sociologist (1996) 27#1 pp. 72–100. online
Jump up ^ A.C. Yen, "Western Frontier or Feudal Society: Metaphors and Perceptions of Cyberspace," Berkeley Technology Law Journal (2002) 17#4 pp. 1207–64
Jump up ^ E. Brent, "Electronic communication and sociology: Looking backward, thinking ahead, careening toward the next millennium," American Sociologist 1996, 27#1 pp. 4–10
Jump up ^ Richard Jensen, "Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812," Journal of Military History (2012) 76#4 pp. 1165–82 online
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