Attributions refer to identifying the cause of another person or one’s own behavior and we propose there is a more complex type of attribution that is needed to explain the cause for behaviors in interpersonal interactions: identity attributions. Identity attributions refer to perceiving that the cause of another person’s behavior towards a focal person is due to an identity that the focal person holds. One type of identity attribution that has been investigated is discrimination attribution or perceiving that the cause of negative interpersonal treatment is due to bias or prejudice against a social category identity. However, we suggest another type of identity attribution exists in which a person identifies the cause of negative interpersonal treatment to be due to the other person not understanding the focal person’s identity, what we call identity misunderstanding attribution. This distinction is important because identity misunderstanding attributions are more likely to result in more functional interpersonal behaviors at work such as informing/demonstrating behaviors rather than interpersonal incivility or avoidance behaviors that may result from discrimination attributions. We test our hypotheses using a pilot study and two pre-registered, two-wave, online experiments. Our work has implications for attribution theory and the literature on interpersonal relationships.
