[Unlike objects, people are] usually perceived as action centers and as such can do something to us. They can benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or harm them. Persons have abilities, wishes, and sentiments; they can act purposefully, and can perceive or watch us. They are systems having an awareness of their surroundings and their conduct refers to this environment, an environment that sometimes includes ourselves.
One might say psychological processes such as motives, intentions, sentiments, etc., are the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior and expression in many variable ways.
Man is usually not content simply to register the observables that surround him; he needs to refer them as far as possible to the invariances of his environment.. The underlying causes of events, especially the motives of other persons, are the invariances of the environment that are relevant to him; they give meaning to what he experiences and it is these meanings that are recorded in his life space and are precipitated as the reality of the environment to which he then reacts.
The action outcome, x , may then be said to be dependent upon a combination of effective personal force and effective environmental force, thus:
Personal causality, refers to instances in which p causes x intentionally. That is to say, the action is purposive.
In the basic case, where the person is concerned with the dispositional properties of his surrounding environment, the choice is between external attribution and internal (self) attribution.