Counselor trainees' explanations of behavior: attributions to traits, situations, and interaction

Counselor trainees' views of generic causes of behavior were investigated. Thirty-seven counselor education graduate students were asked to assign validity ratings to seven possible explanations of what determines behavior. Participants were asked to make judgments either in reference to their own behavior or to someone else's behavior. The students assigned high validity ratings to an "interaction" explanation for behavior. Further, consistent with previous research findings that concern attributional processes, when counselor trainees explained their own behavior, they assigned relatively high ratings to external causes; when explaining others' behavior, they assigned relatively high validity ratings to internal causes.