In
social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational and environmental explanations for an individual's observed behavior while overemphasizing dispositional- and personality-based explanations. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are", that is, to overattribute their behaviors (what they do or say) to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. The error is in seeing someone's actions as ''solely'' reflective of their personality rather than ''somewhat'' reflective of it and also largely prompted by circumstances. It involves a type of
circular reasoning
Circular may refer to:
* The shape of a circle
* ''Circular'' (album), a 2006 album by Spanish singer Vega
* Circular letter (disambiguation)
** Flyer (pamphlet), a form of advertisement
* Circular reasoning, a type of logical fallacy
* Circular ...
in which the answer to the question "why would they do that" is only "because they ''would'' do that." Although things like
personality
Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, mos ...
differences and
predispositions are in fact real, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.
As an example of the behavior which attribution error theory seeks to explain, consider the situation where Alice, a driver, is cut off in traffic by Bob. Alice attributes Bob's behavior to his fundamental personality; eg, ''He thinks only of himself, he is selfish, he is an unskilled driver.'' She does not think it is situational; eg. ''He is going to miss his flight, his wife is giving birth at the hospital, his daughter is convulsing at school.'' Alice might well make the opposite mistake and excuse herself by saying she was influenced by situational causes; eg. ''I am late for my job interview, I must pick up my son for his dental appointment,'' rather than thinking she has a character flaw.
Origin
Etymology
The phrase was coined by
Lee Ross
Lee David Ross (August 25, 1942 – May 14, 2021) was a Canadian-American professor. He held the title of the Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and was an influential social psychologist wh ...
10 years after a experiment by
Edward E. Jones
:For the Louisiana civil rights pioneer, see ''E. Edward Jones''.
Edward Ellsworth "Ned" Jones (August 11, 1926 – July 30, 1993) was an influential American social psychology, social psychologist, he is known as father of Ingratiation due to ...
and Victor Harris in 1967.
Ross argued in a popular paper that the fundamental attribution error forms the conceptual bedrock for the field of
social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
. Jones wrote that he found Ross's phrase "overly provocative and somewhat misleading", and also joked: "Furthermore, I'm angry that I didn't think of it first."
Some psychologists, including
Daniel Gilbert, have used the phrase "correspondence bias" for the fundamental attribution error.
Other psychologists have argued that the fundamental attribution error and correspondence bias are related but independent phenomena, with the former being a common explanation for the latter.
1967 demonstration study
Jones and Harris hypothesized, based on the
correspondent inference theory
Correspondent inference theory is a psychological theory proposed by Edward E. Jones and Keith E. Davis (1965) that "systematically accounts for a perceiver's inferences about what an actor was trying to achieve by a particular action".Berkowit ...
, that people would attribute apparently freely chosen behaviors to disposition and apparently chance-directed behaviors to situation. The hypothesis was
confounded
In statistics, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Con ...
by the fundamental attribution error.
Subjects in an experiment read essays for and against
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
. Then they were asked to rate the pro-Castro attitudes of the writers. When the subjects believed that the writers freely chose positions for or against Castro, they would normally rate the people who liked Castro as having a more positive attitude towards Castro. However, contradicting Jones and Harris' initial hypothesis, when the subjects were told that the writers' positions were determined by a coin toss, they still rated writers 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 subjects were unable to properly see the influence of the situational constraints placed upon the writers; they could not refrain from attributing sincere belief to the writers. The experimental group provided more internal attributions towards the writer.
Criticism
The hypothesis that people systematically overattribute behavior to traits (at least for other people's behavior) is contested. A 1986 study tested whether subjects over-, under-, or correctly estimated the empirical correlation among behaviors. (ie traits, see ''
trait theory
In psychology, trait theory (also called dispositional theory) is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of ''traits'', which can be defined as habitual patterns of behaviour, tho ...
'')
They found that estimates of correlations among behaviors correlated strongly with empirically-observed correlations among these behaviors. Subjects were sensitive to even very small correlations, and their confidence in the association tracked how far they were discrepant (i.e., if they knew when they did not know), and was higher for the strongest relations. Subjects also showed awareness of the effect of aggregation over occasions and used reasonable strategies to arrive at decisions. Epstein concluded that "Far from being inveterate trait believers, as has been previously suggested,
ubjects'intuitions paralleled psychometric principles in several important respects when assessing relations between real-life behaviors."
A 2006 meta-analysis found little support for a related bias, the
actor-observer asymmetry, in which people attribute their own behavior more to the environment, but others' behavior to individual attributes. The implications for the fundamental attribution error, the author explained, were mixed. He explained that the fundamental attribution error has two versions:
# That people make person-focused attributions more than environmental attributions for behavior, and
# Observers will mistakenly overestimate the influence of personal factors on behavior.
The meta-analysis concluded that existing weight of evidence does not support the first form of the fundamental attribution error, but does support the second.
Explanations
Several theories predict the fundamental attribution error, and thus both compete to explain it, and can be falsified if it does not occur. Some examples include:
#
Just-world fallacy
The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will have morality, morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. For example, the assumptions that noble ...
. The belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get, the concept of which was first theorized by
Melvin J. Lerner
Melvin J. Lerner, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Waterloo between 1970 and 1994 and now a visiting scholar at Florida Atlantic University, has been called "a pioneer in the psychological study of justice."
Education
Lerner re ...
in 1977. Attributing failures to dispositional causes rather than situational causes—which are unchangeable and uncontrollable—satisfies our need to believe that the world is fair and that we have control over our lives. We are motivated to see a just world because this reduces our perceived threats, gives us a sense of security, helps us find meaning in difficult and unsettling circumstances, and benefits us psychologically.
However, the just-world hypothesis also results in a tendency for people to
blame and disparage victims of an accident or a tragedy, such as
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...
and
domestic abuse
Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner v ...
, to reassure themselves of their insusceptibility to such events. People may even
blame the victim
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as t ...
's faults in a "past life" to pursue justification for their bad outcome.
#
Salience of the actor. We tend to attribute an observed effect to potential causes that capture our attention. When we observe other people, the person is the primary reference point while the situation is overlooked as if it is nothing but mere background. As such, attributions for others' behavior are more likely to focus on the person we see, not the situational forces acting upon that person that we may not be aware of. (When we observe ourselves, we are more aware of the forces acting upon us. Such a differential inward versus outward orientation accounts for the actor–observer bias.)
# Lack of effortful adjustment. Sometimes, even though we are aware that the person's behavior is constrained by situational factors, we still commit the fundamental attribution error.
This is because we do not take into account behavioral and situational information simultaneously to characterize the dispositions of the actor. Initially, we use the observed behavior to characterize the person by
automaticity
Automaticity is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice. Examples of tas ...
. We need to make deliberate and conscious effort to adjust our inference by considering the situational constraints. Therefore, when situational information is not sufficiently taken into account for adjustment, the uncorrected dispositional inference creates the fundamental attribution error. This would also explain why people commit the fundamental attribution error to a greater degree when they're under
cognitive load
In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the amount of working memory resources used. There are three types of cognitive load: ''intrinsic'' cognitive load is the effort associated with a specific topic; ''extraneous'' cognitive load refe ...
; i.e. when they have less motivation or energy for processing the situational information.
[Gilbert, D. T. (1989). Thinking lightly about others: Automatic components of the social inference process. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), ''Unintended thought'' (pp. 189–211). New York, Guilford Press.]
# Culture. It has been suggested cultural differences occur in attribution error: people from
individualistic
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-relianc ...
(Western) cultures are reportedly more prone to the error while people from
collectivistic cultures are less prone. Based on cartoon-figure presentations to Japanese and American subjects, it has been suggested that collectivist subjects may be more influenced by information from context (for instance being influenced more by surrounding faces in judging facial expressions). Alternatively, individualist subjects may favor processing of focal objects, rather than contexts. Others suggest Western individualism is associated with viewing both oneself and others as
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
agents, therefore focusing more on individuals rather than contextual details.
Versus correspondence bias
The fundamental attribution error is commonly used interchangeably with "correspondence bias" (sometimes called "correspondence inference"), although this phrase refers to a judgment which does not necessarily constitute a bias, which arises when the inference drawn is incorrect, e.g. dispositional inference when the actual cause is situational). However, there has been debate about whether the two terms should be distinguished from each other. Three main differences between these two judgmental processes have been argued:
# They seem to be elicited under different circumstances, as both correspondent dispositional inferences and situational inferences can be elicited spontaneously. Attributional processing, however, seems to only occur when the event is unexpected or conflicting with prior expectations. This notion is supported by a 1994 study, which found that different types of verbs invited different inferences and attributions. Correspondence inferences were invited to a greater degree by interpretative action verbs (such as "to help") than state action or state verbs, thus suggesting that the two are produced under different circumstances.
# Correspondence inferences and causal attributions also differ in automaticity. Inferences can occur spontaneously if the behavior implies a situational or dispositional inference, while causal attributions occur much more slowly.
# It has also been suggested that correspondence inferences and causal attributions are elicited by different mechanisms. It is generally agreed that correspondence inferences are formed by going through several stages. Firstly, the person must interpret the behavior, and then, if there is enough information to do so, add situational information and revise their inference. They may then further adjust their inferences by taking into account dispositional information as well.
Causal attributions however seem to be formed either by processing visual information using perceptual mechanisms, or by activating knowledge structures (e.g. schemas) or by systematic data analysis and processing. Hence, due to the difference in theoretical structures, correspondence inferences are more strongly related to behavioral interpretation than causal attributions.
Based on the preceding differences between causal attribution and correspondence inference, some researchers argue that the fundamental attribution error should be considered as the tendency to make dispositional rather than situational explanations for behavior, whereas the correspondence bias should be considered as the tendency to draw correspondent dispositional inferences from behavior.
With such distinct definitions between the two, some cross-cultural studies also found that cultural differences of correspondence bias are not equivalent to those of fundamental attribution error. While the latter has been found to be more prevalent in individualistic cultures than collectivistic cultures, correspondence bias occurs across cultures, suggesting differences between the two phrases. Further, disposition correspondent inferences made to explain the behavior of nonhuman actors (e.g., robots) do not necessarily constitute an attributional error because there is little meaningful distinction between the interior dispositions and observable actions of machine agents.
See also
*
Attribution (psychology)
Attribution is a term used in psychology which deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal. Models to explain this process are called attribution theory. Psychological research into a ...
*
Base rate fallacy
The base rate fallacy, also called base rate neglect or base rate bias, is a type of fallacy in which people tend to ignore the base rate (i.e., general prevalence) in favor of the individuating information (i.e., information pertaining only to a ...
*
Cognitive miser
In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. See ...
*
Dispositional attribution
Dispositional attribution ''(or internal attribution)'' is a phrase in personality psychology that refers to the tendency to assign responsibility for others' behaviors due to their inherent characteristics, such as their motives, beliefs or perso ...
*
Explanatory style
Explanatory style is a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative.
Aspects Personal
This aspect covers the degree to which a person attributes the ca ...
Cognitive biases
*
Actor-observer asymmetry
*
Attributional bias
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors.Kelley, H.H. (1967). Attribution theory in social ...
*
Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...
*
Defensive attribution hypothesis
The defensive attribution hypothesis (or ''bias'', ''theory'', or simply ''defensive attribution'') is a social psychological term where an observer attributes the causes for a mishap to minimize their fear of being a victim or a cause in a similar ...
*
False consensus effect
In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances”. In ot ...
*
Group attribution error The group attribution error refers to people's tendency to believe either
# the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole, or
# a group's decision outcome must reflect the preferences of individual group me ...
*
List of cognitive biases
Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics.
Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible ...
*
Locus of control
Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives. The concept was developed by Julian Rotter, Julian B. Rotter in 1954 ...
*
Omission bias
Omission bias is the phenomenon in which people prefer omission (inaction) over commission (action) and people tend to judge harm as a result of commission more negatively than harm as a result of omission. It can occur due to a number of process ...
*
Ultimate attribution error The ultimate attribution error is a type of attribution error which proposed to explain why attributions of outgroup behavior is more negative (ie. antisocial or undesirable) than ingroup behavior (see '' in-group and out-group''). Ultimate attrib ...
*
Extrinsic incentives bias
The extrinsic incentives bias is an attributional bias according to which people attribute relatively more to "extrinsic incentives" (such as monetary reward) than to "intrinsic incentives" (such as learning a new skill) when weighing the motives o ...
References
Further reading
* Heider, Fritz. (1958). ''The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations''. New York, John Wiley & Sons. .
* Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A., & Reisberg D. (1999). Psychology webBOOK:
Psychology Fifth Edition / Basic Psychology Fifth Edition'. W. W. Norton and Company. Accessed online 18 April 2006.
External links
Detailed explanations by Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fundamental attribution error
Cognitive biases
Attitude attribution
Error