Hostile attribution in perceived justification of workplace aggression.

A 10-item Hostile Attribution Scale was developed to test the hypothesis that hostile attribution is predictive of support for aggression in frustrating workplace situations in which a supervisor's motivation is ambiguous. The Hostile Attribution Scale showed good test-retest reliability (.80), but weak internal consistency (alpha=.60). For one workplace scenario (Steve), hostile attribution predicted aggression in the ambiguous but not the definite version of the scenario. For the other scenario (Dan), however, hostile attribution in both the ambiguous and definite versions was equally predictive of aggression. Ambiguous situations are the most problematic for generating workplace aggression so research should focus on individual differences in hostile attributions.