The Fundamental Attribution Error

The Fundamental Attribution Error

The fundamental attribution error (sometimes referred to as correspondence bias) involves a propensity for individuals to over-emphasize attributional, or personality-based, justifications for observable actions among individuals while under-emphasizing environmental reasons. In other terms, individuals exhibit a cognitive bias that leads them to believe that the “type” of personality determines a person’s behaviors that the person displays instead of the societal and environmental circumstances that influence the individual. The primary rationale individuals exhibit the fundamental attribution error would be that it functions as a form of heuristic, which involves a cognitive bypass that individuals naturally employ to make rapid judgments and choices.

One of the situations I found myself is when I chastised a colleague for attending late during a group forum discussion, yet I was also late during the day when submitting the tasks. The above connotes an example of the fundamental attribution error since I was trying to link the person’s character to the behavior, yet perhaps the lateness was beyond my control.

Ways to avoid fundamental attribution errors

Since it connotes a mistake from a cognitive bias, it is essential to understand perspectives, use logic and rationale when analyzing a situation, and avoid blaming others (Chen and Palmer, 2017). Additionally, generalized debiasing tactics, including decelerating your thinking approach, might be beneficial. Employing debiasing approaches that are successful against comparable sorts of cognitive biases, including egotistical prejudice and the empathy deficit, can typically assist you. The above involves, for instance, attempting to see the scene through the opposing person’s point of view. Whenever you detect that another person is making a fundamental attribution error, you may try to debase their reasoning by utilizing the same tactics that one usually does to prevent this prejudice yourself.

References

Chen, P. G., & Palmer, C. L. (2017). The prejudiced personality? Using the big five to predict susceptibility to stereotyping behavior. American Politics Research, 46(2), 276–307. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/Jqa9qfjnRgRIHSn52JjR/full

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ATTRIBUTION ERRORS

Wherever you go, you will be observing human behavior, and it is difficult not to make a judgment about people after observing how they behave. You might consider three people on a crowded bus to be kind if you see them give up their seats so a mother can sit down with her two young children. You might consider a grocery store employee to be rude if you asked him where to find the milk, and he rolled his eyes and sighed heavily before directing you to its location. These two judgments would be logical—kind in the first case and rude in the second—because that is the type of people they appeared to be.

However, social psychologists are more concerned with the external social conditions that influence behavior. Maybe only one of the people on the bus acted kindly, and the other two gave up their seats because they did not want to be perceived as unkind by others on the bus. Perhaps the grocery store employee is usually kind, but he behaved rudely because he has been told to work an extra shift at the last minute and it means he will likely miss a friend’s birthday party. If you attribute someone’s behavior to her or his personality, your judgment may underestimate the social conditions that influenced the behavior. When explaining the causes of someone’s behavior, underestimating or discounting the social situation results in what social psychologists call an attribution error.

For your assignment this week, you will look at a scenario and consider how the cause of a person’s behavior may be explained better by situational influences than one’s personality or internal disposition.