When evaluating others Many people underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence?

Fundamental Attribution Error

By Dr. Saul McLeod, published 2018

The fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or over-attribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations.

In other words, people have a cognitive bias to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person.

The term was coined by Lee Ross some years after the now-classic experiment by Jones and Harris. Ross (1977) argued in a popular paper that the fundamental attribution error forms the conceptual bedrock for the field of social psychology.

We tend to see others as internally motivated and responsible for their behavior. This could be because of perceptual salience, that is, the other person is what we see most of when we look at them; or it could be that we lack more detailed information about what causes their behavior.

What is an example of the fundamental attribution error?

What is an example of the fundamental attribution error?

Perhaps the saddest example of the tendency to make internal attributions whether they are warranted or not is blaming the victim.

If giving someone our sympathy or blaming the true culprit somehow causes us dissonance, we may hold the victim responsible for his or her own pain and suffering. "He had it coming" and "she was asking for it" are all-too-common phrases!

Empirical Evidence

Empirical Evidence

Jones and Harris (1967) hypothesized that people would attribute apparently freely-chosen behaviors to disposition (personality), and apparently chance-directed behaviors to a situation. The hypothesis was confounded by the fundamental attribution error.

Participants listened to pro- and anti-Fidel Castro speeches. Participants were asked to rate the pro-Castro attitudes of the speakers. When the subjects believed that the speakers freely chose the positions they took (for or against Castro), they naturally rated the people who spoke in favor of Castro as having a more positive attitude toward Castro.

However, contradicting Jones and Harris' initial hypothesis, when the participants were told that the speaker's positions were determined by a coin toss, they still rated speakers who spoke in favor of Castro as having, on average, a more positive attitude towards Castro than those who spoke against him.

In other words, the participants were unable to see the speakers as mere debaters coldly performing a task chosen for them by circumstance; they could not refrain from attributing some disposition of sincerity to the speakers.

Critical Evaluation

Critical Evaluation

Fundamental attribution bias may not be universal across cultures. While American children were found by Miller (1984), as they grow older, to place increasing reliance upon disposition as an explanation of events observed, the Hindu children of India by contrast based their explanations more on situations.

This finding is consistent with the theory that some countries, like the U.S., emphasize an individualistic self-concept. Raised in a society that places a premium on individual achievement and uniqueness, Americans seem to develop a tendency to focus on the characteristics of the individual in making attributions.

APA Style References

Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of experimental social psychology, 3(1), 1-24.

Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(5), 961–978.

Ross, L. (1977). The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process1. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173-220). Academic Press.

How to reference this article:

How to reference this article:

McLeod, S. A. (2018, Oct, 31). Fundamental attribution error. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html

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A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.

An attempt to determine whether an individual’s behavior is internally or externally caused.

fundamental attribution error

The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others.

The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors and put the blame for failures on external factors.

The tendency to selectively interpret what one sees on the basis of one’s interests, background, experience, and attitudes.

The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.

Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.

Judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that person belongs.

A situation in which a person inaccurately perceives a second person, and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original perception.

Choices made from among two or more alternatives.

A discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some desired state.

Characterized by making consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified constraints.

rational decision-making model

A decision-making model that describes how individuals should behave in order to maximize some outcome.

A process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity

intuitive decision making

An unconscious process created out of distilled experience.

A tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then fails to adequately adjust for subsequent information.

The tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices and to discount information that contradicts past judgments.

The tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is readily available to them.

An increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information.

The tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcome of random events.

The tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount over a riskier outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff.

The tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is actually known, that one would have accurately predicted that outcome.

A system in which decisions are made to provide the greatest good for the greatest number.

Individuals who report unethical practices by their employer to outsiders.

The ability to produce novel and useful ideas.

three-component model of creativity

The proposition that individual creativity requires expertise, creative thinking skills, and intrinsic task motivation.

What is the tendency to overestimate internal factors of behavior and underestimate external?

Which term below describes the tendency for individuals decisions and Judgements to be systematically influenced by their beliefs and extraneous information?

When an individual attributes his her own successes to internal factors and put the blame for failure on external factors it refers to?