Fundamental attribution error
 

 

Fundamental Attribution error

Mistakenly explaining actions in terms of factors intrinsic to the person rather than in terms of the person's external situation – a bias affecting actors’ attempts to determine the causes of other people’s behaviour.

 

Pursuant to mitigating the bias we should keep in mind that:

 

Ø

the behaviour of anyone – including ourselves as well as those we may like to take a dim view of – depends upon both the purpose, intentions, and resolve, etc., of the person themselves and the vagaries, complications, and pressures, etc., contained in the circumstances in which these actions take place;

Ø

we can make efforts when assessing the actions of others, for example, by thinking of ourselves as being in that situation: a strategy which will probably temper the tendency to emphasize dispositional factors;

 

and

Ø

we can continue to recognize the various cognitive and motivational influences which contribute to or are responsible for this error.

 

(see also: Co-variation, Actor-Observer difference, cognitive bias, motivational bias, schema, metacognitive shortfall, regressive fallacy, Self-serving bias)

 

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Labels: Fundamental attribution error, attribution error
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