The fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias that causes people to underestimate the influence of environment-based situational factors on people’s behavior, and to overestimate the influence of personality-based dispositional factors.
Essentially, this means that the fundamental attribution error causes people to assume that other people’s actions are less affected by their environment than they actually are, and to assume that those actions are more affected by their personality than they actually are.
For example, the fundamental attribution error can cause someone to assume that if some stranger looks angry, then they must be an angry person in general, even though this person might have been driven to temporary anger by something, such as someone else being rude to them.
The fundamental attribution error can significantly influence how people, including yourself, judge others, so it’s important to understand it. As such, in the following article you will learn more about the fundamental attribution error, and see what you can do to account for it properly.
Examples of the fundamental attribution error
One notable example of the fundamental attribution error appears in the first study that focused on this phenomenon, published in 1967 by Edward Jones and Victor Harris, two researchers at Duke University.
In the first and best-known of the experiments in the study, participants were given what they thought was an essay written by a student for a political science exam on a controversial topic—Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Some participants received a Pro-Castro essay and others an Anti-Castro one, and they were all asked to judge the true attitude of the essay writer toward the topic.
The experiment provided evidence of the fundamental attribution error, since participants who read the Pro-Castro essay were significantly more likely to assume that the student who wrote it was himself Pro-Castro, compared to those who read the Anti-Castro essay, even when they were told that the student who wrote the essay had no choice with regard to its topic. These findings were replicated in a follow-up experiment, where participants read what they thought was an initial draft of an opening statement for a college debate on the topic.
Since then, other research has found evidence of the fundamental attribution error in various domains. For instance, additional examples of the fundamental attribution error include the following:
- People watching TV shows often display the fundamental attribution error, when they attribute the behavior of actors on the show to their personality, rather than to the script. Essentially, this means that people sometimes assume that an actor’s behavior while in-character reflects their true personality, rather than what is dictated for them by the script. Furthermore, this effect has been shown to remain consistent even when the person who displays the fundamental attribution error watches the same actor playing two different roles; in such cases, the last scene that people view is generally the one that determines their evaluation of the actor.
- Students often display the fundamental attribution error, when they overestimate internal causes for their teachers’ expression of anger. Essentially, this means that students assume that the main reason why their teachers are angry is that they’re angry people, rather than that their environment has caused the teachers to become angry. This remains the case even when students recognize that their own actions, such as misbehavior, intentional provoking, or lack of effort, are what caused the teacher to become angry in the first place.
Note: the term ‘fundamental attribution error’ was coined by Stanford professor Lee Ross in a 1977 paper titled “The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: distortions in the attribution process”, where Ross discusses this phenomenon based on findings from earlier studies. This term is often abbreviated as ‘FAE’.
Why people display the fundamental attribution error
The main reason why people display the fundamental attribution error is that it serves as a type of heuristic, which is a mental shortcut that people intuitively use in order to make judgments and decisions quickly.
Specifically, the fundamental attribution error can be viewed as a heuristic, since it’s easier and faster to assume that people’s behavior is based only on their relatively stable internal traits, than it is to account for the various situational factors that could affect it, and to try and disentangle people’s actions from their intentions. Accordingly, this bias is more likely to occur when people lack the cognitive resources or motivation needed to fully consider the influence of situational factors on people’s behavior.
Furthermore, besides speeding up people’s evaluation process and reducing their cognitive load during this process, there are also other potential benefits to using this kind of heuristic.
For example, a potential benefit of the fundamental attribution error is that the cost of erroneously assuming that someone’s actions are determined primarily by their disposition, rather than by situational factors, is sometimes lower than assuming the opposite. Essentially, this means that when judging someone’s actions, it is often preferable to assume that their behavior is more affected by their personality than it actually is, than it is to assume the opposite.
In addition, other reasons can also prompt people to display the fundamental attribution error. For example, a neuroscientific study showed that one potential reason why people display this bias is that, when they try to understand other people’s intentions, they engage in mentalizing, by spontaneously processing the other person’s mental state.
Finally, note that various factors have been shown to influence the likelihood that people will display the fundamental attribution error, as well as the degree to which they display it. This includes both factors that have to do with the person making the judgment, such as their nationality or mood, as well as factors that have to do with the person who is being judged, such as whether their actions are perceived in a positive or negative manner. This is in line with research on the general attribution process, which shows that this process can be biased in various ways and for various reasons, and can be affected by various situational and personal factors.
Overall, people display the fundamental attribution error primarily because this form of thinking serves as a mental shortcut, that allows them to render judgments faster and more easily. Furthermore, other factors can also lead people to display the fundamental attribution errors; this includes, for example, the fact that it is often preferable to overestimate, rather than underestimate, the impact of personality-based factors on people’s behavior.
Accounting for the fundamental attribution error
How to avoid the fundamental attribution error
There are several things that you can do to avoid the fundamental attribution error.
First, simply learning about this phenomenon and keeping it in mind can help reduce it to some degree.
Second, in situations where you notice yourself displaying this phenomenon while judging someone, you can further reduce it by actively thinking of similar situations where it was clear that people were strongly influenced by situational factors. When doing this, you can also ask yourself if you have ever acted in a similar manner under similar circumstances, and then examine the reasons that you had for acting the way you did.
Third, you can also try to come up with a number of possible explanations—including situational ones—for the behavior of the person that you’re judging.
In addition, actively explaining the rationale behind your judgment of someone can further help you reduce the likelihood that you’ll display the fundamental attribution error. This works both by making you feel more accountable for your reasoning, and by helping you identify and avoid the mental shortcuts that lead you to display this bias in the first place.
Finally, you can also benefit from using general debiasing techniques, such as slowing down your reasoning process. In particular, you will often benefit from using debiasing techniques that are effective against similar types of cognitive biases, such as the egocentric bias and the empathy gap. This includes, for example, trying to consider the situation from the other person’s perspective.
Overall, to avoid the fundamental attribution error, you should keep this cognitive bias in mind when judging others, and use techniques such as considering relevant past situations, coming up with multiple explanations for people’s behavior, and explaining the rationale behind your judgment; you can also use general debiasing techniques, such as slowing down your reasoning process.
Note: to avoid the fundamental attribution error, a useful principle to keep in mind is Hanlon’s razor, which suggests that when someone does something that leads to a negative outcome, you should avoid assuming that they acted out of an intentional desire to cause harm, as long as there is a plausible alternative explanation for their behavior.
How to respond to the fundamental attribution error
If you notice that someone else is displaying the fundamental attribution error, you can attempt to debias their thinking, by using similar techniques that you would use to avoid this bias yourself.
For example, you can encourage the person who’s displaying this bias to think of similar situations where they’ve acted like the person that they’re judging, because of situational factors. Similarly, you can ask the person displaying this bias to think of environment-based reasons why the person in question might be engaging in the behavior that’s being judged.
It’s important to note that such methods are intended to work primarily on people who are displaying the fundamental attribution error unintentionally, as a cognitive bias. However, some people intentionally use fallacious patterns of reasoning that are similar to this bias, for various reasons.
For example, someone might argue that a certain person who did something negative must have done so simply because they’re a bad person, rather than because they were pushed to do it by their environment, in order to promote the fundamental attribution error in others.
To handle cases where this happens, it is often best to demonstrate the logical issues with the argument in question. You can achieve this by demonstrating the issues associated with such logic using various approaches, such as explaining that people’s actions aren’t necessarily driven just by their personality, and by providing examples that support this claim.
A potential exception to this are cases where there’s an audience to the discussion where this kind of fallacious argument is being used, and you care primarily about the opinion of the audience, rather than about the opinion of the person who’s intentionally using this argument. In such cases, you might choose to focus on debiasing the audience members using the previously mentioned debiasing techniques, instead of—or in addition to—demonstrating the logical issues with such arguments.
Caveats regarding the fundamental attribution error
As with similar psychological phenomena, there are some important caveats that should be taken into account with regard to the fundamental attribution error.
First, it’s important to note that some research on the topic has called into question the degree to which people display the fundamental attribution error and related phenomena, such as the actor-observer asymmetry in attribution. Furthermore, such research has also called into question the reasons why people display these phenomena in the first place.
Second, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a complex phenomenon, that can be affected by various factors. As such, you should expect there to be significant variability with regard to the exact manner in which people display this phenomenon, in terms of factors such as how strongly they underestimate the influence of situational factors.
Related concepts
There are several psychological phenomena that are often mentioned in relation to the fundamental attribution error. These include, most notably:
- The correspondence bias. The correspondence bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to draw conclusions about a person’s disposition, based on behaviors that can be explained by situational factors. Some people use the terms ‘fundamental attribution error’ and ‘correspondence bias’ interchangeably, but the two terms refer to two separate—though closely related—phenomena.
- The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution. The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution is a cognitive bias that causes people to attribute their own behavior to situational causes and other people’s behavior to dispositional factors.
- Self-serving bias. The self-serving bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to take credit for their successes and positive behaviors by attributing them to dispositional factors, and to deny responsibility for failures and negative behaviors by attributing them to situational factors. In addition, the term ‘self-serving bias’ is sometimes used to refer to any type of cognitive bias that is prompted by a person’s desire to enhance their self-esteem.
- The ultimate attribution error. The ultimate attribution error is a cognitive bias that makes people more likely to attribute positive acts to situational factors when they’re performed by someone from an outgroup than by someone from their ingroup, and also makes people more likely to attribute negative acts to dispositional factors when they’re performed by someone from an outgroup than by someone from their ingroup.
- The just-world bias. The just-world bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to assume that people’s actions always lead to fair consequences, meaning that those who do good are eventually rewarded, while those who do evil are eventually punished. For example, the just-world hypothesis can cause someone to assume that if someone else experienced a tragic misfortune, then they must have done something to deserve it.
In addition, there are three frameworks that are often mentioned in relation to the fundamental attribution error:
- Situationism, which involves heavily favoring situational factors when it comes to explaining human behavior.
- Dispositionalism, which involves heavily favoring dispositional factors when it comes to explaining human behavior.
- Interactionism, which suggests that when it comes to explaining human behavior, both situational and dispositional factors strongly matter.
Most researchers show support for interactionism, rather than to the other frameworks, under the belief that both situational and dispositional factors play a major role in guiding human behavior.
Summary and conclusions
- The fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias that causes people to underestimate the influence of environment-based situational factors on people’s behavior, and to overestimate the influence of personality-based dispositional factors.
- For example, the fundamental attribution error can cause someone to assume that if some stranger looks angry, then they must be an angry person in general, even though this person might have been driven to temporary anger by something, such as someone else being rude to them.
- The main reason why people display the fundamental attribution error is that it’s easier and faster to assume that people’s behavior is driven only by their personality, than to try and account for the various situational factors that could affect it.
- To avoid the fundamental attribution error, you should keep this bias in mind when judging others, and use techniques such as considering relevant past situations, coming up with multiple explanations for people’s behavior, and explaining the rationale behind your judgment; you can also use general debiasing techniques, such as slowing down your reasoning process.
- To help others avoid the fundamental attribution error, you can debias their thinking using similar techniques that you would use to debias yourself; however, if they’re using similar patterns of reasoning intentionally for some reason, it might be preferable to focus on explaining the logical issues with their argument instead.