Attributions

“Attributions” can be thought of as quick, snap judgements we make about other people. Louise Belcher has a history of being quick to come to conclusions about the behavior of others, and to make fast, and harsh judgements, especially about people who she does not personally like. One such example is her schoolmate Millie. She attributes many of her cognitive attributions about Millie and situations involving her and Millie to external factors or other people (typically Millie and the other students at the school). For example, in one episode, Millie decides to run for student body president and Louise makes the immediate external attribution that if Millie becomes the school’s student body president, she will “ruin” the school. This can be considered an external attribution because she is attributing the actions of Millie running for president to be something that will destroy the school. As a form of retaliation and defense, Louise decides herself to run for student body president as she believes she will definitely be a better candidate, and her competitive nature makes her feel like she has to win against Millie. This can be thought of as an internal attribution as she believes internally that she is a better candidate than Millie, and has better skills than her for the job. It makes Louise extremely angry that Millie is running for the position, and she begins pursuing many efforts telling the other children not to vote for her, that she is “crazy”, and even attempting to run an advertisement smear campaign against her on the school news. 

This behavior ultimately ends up turning a lot of the students against Louise, and ends up earning Millie even more points in the polls. Louise laments and ends up externally attributing this event to Millie, citing that Millie is “crazy, messing with her” and that all of the school’s students are naive enough to believe Millie’s lies and that is why she is losing and Millie is winning. This can be considered yet another external attribution, as Louise is attributing this situation to factors outside of her control (Millie’s behavior, student beliefs). These external attributions about Millie can generally be considered to be stable because they are not factors that change over time. This pattern of attributions definitely has an impact on Louise’s long-term motivations and emotions because it is a recurring goal for her throughout the series to beat Millie at whatever she is doing, and to reject all of Millie’s attempts to be her friend. In episodes where Millie is featured such as this one, it is also shown that the mention of, presence, or work of Millie causes Louise to act frustrated, irritable, and even crazy at times. This can be considered a short-term impact on her emotions, but a long-term impact on her motivations because beating Millie is a consistent goal for her.