In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution 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 an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.

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

Jones wrote that he found Ross's term "overly provocative and somewhat misleading", and also joked, "Furthermore, I'm angry that I didn't think of it first." More recently some psychologists, including Daniel Gilbert, have begun using the term "correspondence bias" for the fundamental attribution error.

Author Malcolm Gladwell provides a more soft-spoken definition of the fundamental attribution error: he defines it as extrapolation from a measured characteristic to an unrelated characteristic. He cites as an example "a typical study [that] showed that 'how neat a student's assignments were or how punctual he was told you almost nothing about how often he attended class or how neat his room or his personal appearance was'". By basing his definition on the comparison of one behavior with another behavior rather than one motivation with another motivation, Gladwell avoids the entanglements of complex questions about the "essence" of a person.

Classic demonstration study: Jones and Harris (1967)

Based on an earlier theory developed by Edward E. Jones and Keith Davis, Jones and Harris hypothesized that people would attribute apparently freely-chosen behaviors to disposition, and apparently chance-directed behaviors to situation. The hypothesis was confounded by the fundamental attribution error.

Subjects read pro- and anti-Fidel Castro essays. Subjects were asked to rate the pro-Castro attitudes of the writers. When the subjects believed that the writers 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 subjects were told that the writer's 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 see the influence of the situational constraints placed upon the writers; they could not refrain from attributing sincere belief to the writers.

Why the fundamental attribution error occurs

There is no universally-accepted explanation for the fundamental attribution error. One hypothesis is that the error results largely from perspective. When we observe other people, the person is the primary reference point. When we observe ourselves, we are more aware of the forces acting upon us. So, 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. In the parlance of psychology research, this is called salience: the more salient a factor is, the more likely it is for a behavior to be attributed to it.

Reducing the error's effects

A number of "debiasing" techniques have been found effective in reducing the effect of the fundamental attribution error:

• Taking heed of "consensus" information. If most people behave the same way when put in the same situation, then the situation is more likely to be the cause of the behavior.
• Asking oneself how one would behave in the same situation.
• Looking for unseen causes; specifically, looking for less-salient factors.
• Additionally, it was found that if the participants in a study were told that there were ulterior motives for a writer to take a particular position, such as a professor holding a certain view point on the topic, they were less likely to fall victim to the fundamental attribution error.

Related findings

1. Persons in a state of cognitive load are more likely to commit the fundamental attribution error.
2. There is some evidence to support the contention that cultures which tend to emphasize the individual over the group ("individualistic" cultures) tend to make more dispositional attributions than do the "collectivist" cultures. Persons living in more individualistic societies may be more likely to commit the fundamental attribution error (Miller, 1984).

See also

• Attribution
• Attribution theory

Therapeutic Implications:

• The related concept of Explanatory Style is a major component of the theories of learned helplessness and learned optimism pioneered by Martin Seligman.

Cognitive biases:

• Attributional bias
• Just-world phenomenon
• Group attribution error
• List of cognitive biases
• Locus of control

Logical fallacies:

• Compare to ad hominem arguments.
• Fallacy of the single cause

References

• Heider, Fritz. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-36833-4
• Jones, E. E. & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 3, 1?24.
• Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 10, pp. 173?220). New York: Academic Press.
• Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21?38. PDF.
• Gilbert, D. T. (1998). Speeding with Ned: A personal view of the correspondence bias. In J. M. Darley & J. Cooper (Eds.), Attribution and social interaction: The legacy of E. E. Jones. Washington, DC: APA Press. PDF.
• Gladwell, Malcom, "The New-boy network", in the New Yorker, May 29, 2000, p. 72.
• Miller, J.G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961?978.
• Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A., & Reisberg D. (1999). Psychology webBOOK: Psychology Fifth Edition / Basic Psychology Fifth Edition. W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. Accessed online 18 April 2006 http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/gman5/glossary/F.htm

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