Fundamental Attribution Error

Definition

Two related biases are usually grouped here:

• Correspondence bias: inferring a matching disposition from behaviour even when the situation adequately explains it.
• Actor-observer asymmetry: attributing one's own behaviour to circumstances and others' to character.

The name is a poor one. Ross coined it, and it implies a universality and a definiteness the evidence does not support.

History

Grew out of Heider's attribution theory and Jones and Harris's 1967 attitude-attribution studies, in which readers inferred an essay writer's real opinion even when told the position had been assigned.

Ross named it in 1977, and the name spread far faster than the qualifications attached to it.

Theory

Gilbert's three-stage account is the standard mechanism: categorise the behaviour, characterise the actor, then correct for the situation. The first two are relatively automatic, the third requires cognitive resources, so correspondence bias increases under cognitive load, time pressure and distraction.

This predicts the bias is not a fixed trait of human reasoning but a failure of a correction stage, which can be restored by conditions that make the situation salient.

Research

Correspondence bias in the attitude-attribution paradigm is robust.

Actor-observer asymmetry is not. Malle's meta-analysis of 173 studies found the effect close to zero overall, with the direction reversing depending on how attributions were coded and on the valence of the event. This is a substantial correction to a finding still taught as established.

Cross-cultural evidence is the other major qualification. Miller found the developmental trajectory differs between American and Indian samples, and East Asian participants attend more to situational information across a range of tasks. Calling the bias fundamental was premature.

Applications

Clinical formulation, where the discipline of asking what the situation demands rather than what the person is like changes case conceptualisation substantially.

Also: performance appraisal and the disciplinary process in organisations, incident investigation in safety-critical industries — where a systems view replaced a blame view precisely because of this bias — and understanding how poverty and unemployment are explained politically.

Criticism

• Actor-observer asymmetry does not hold as a general effect.
• Fundamental is the wrong word. The effect varies by culture, task and cognitive load.
• Attribution coding is inconsistent across the literature, which is part of why the meta-analytic picture is messy.
• Some dispositional inference is correct. Traits do predict behaviour to a degree, so treating every dispositional attribution as an error overcorrects.

References

• Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 173-220.
• Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3(1), 1-24.
• Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117(1), 21-38.
• Malle, B. F. (2006). The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 895-919.