The impact of causal attributions on the user experience of error messages

Abstract

Attribution theory deals with the causal explanations that individuals find for events and behaviors and the extent of control they feel to have to influence the cause. A person’s understanding of the causes of past events influences his/her future actions, e.g. the motivation to carry on with a task. This study examines whether causal attributions of computer users have an influence on the perception and the experience of system and error messages by means of an online survey with N = 196 participants. The study results give hints that the attribution of computer-related failures indeed partly influences how users perceive systems and error messages.