causal attribution or casual inference

n. Causal attribution refers to the process through which laypeople try to understand the underlying cause of a behavior. Through this process, individuals use their perceptions about the self, others, and the world to make sense of social interactions, other people's behaviors, and behaviors of their own. The two most studied explanations of behaviors are dispositional attributions and situational attributions. Dispositional attribution relates to the use of factors that lie within the individual (i.e., actor), such as personality traits, to explain the cause of a behavior. This type of attribution is also referred to as an internal attribution. In contrast, situational attribution refers to the use of factors that are external to the individual, such as situational constraints and group influence that would have influenced the actors' behavior, to explain the cause of a behavior. This type of attribution is also referred to as an external attribution.

-EWMA, CYC