According to Fritz Heider (1958), each of us, including ex-presidents, searches ceaselessly for ways to create meaning in our lives, Heider proposed that this process is guided by the principles of attribution theory, which involve ascribing causes to our actions and to the actions of others. Clearly this is what Richard Nixon was doing, trying to make comprehensible his questionable actions during the Watergate scandal. These same dynamics are also illustrated by the self-searching of aeronautics pioneer, Samuel Langley, who anguished over why his flying machine crashed into the Potomac River on takeoff (incidently, just nine days before the Wright brothers' first successful flight). Was it his fault? Did the crash result from a design flaw in the steam-launch catapult, or were erratic wind currents to blame? A TV commentator who attributes the success of a college basketball team to brilliant preseason recruiting is playing the attribution game as well. A schoolchild who frets over a failing grade also is trying to ascribe causes. Was failure the result of incompetency, or the fault of the teacher for not better explaining the assignment?

As all these examples show, meaning is a construction of reality, not reality itself, and a variety of constructions are possible. Perhaps the schoolchild is in fact intellectually backward.