There are several identifiable behaviors that inherently are motivated. The first one is the driving. His travel in the area was motivated by, as mentioned in the article, the need to get the down payment for a job he was supposed to do. His reason for driving down this particular street may have been precipitated by the location of his destination or traffic patterns. Both of these are situational motivations. With driving in traffic, with barriers, traffic controls such as stop signs, one way streets, and speed regulations there are fewer and fewer dispositional attributions. His dispositional attribution was that of following the law.
Why, then, did he get out of his vehicle to confront the other motorist? This is where the actor-observer bias starts to come into effect. On one hand, one could argue that the motorist was blocking his way and it was merely this situation that caused the painter to confront him. On the other hand, it could be argued that the painter’s disposition (perhaps as argumentative or confrontational) caused him to start the