Quotes About Attribution Error

More collectivist cultures, including especially those of East Asia, not only show less focus on the self and more on family and other in-group members, they also are less dispositionist in their world view and in fact less prone to the fundamental attribution error. They focus less on the actor and more on the social situation surrounding the actor.

The fundamental attribution error is simply this: human beings tend to falsely attribute the negative behaviors of others to their character (an internal attribution), while they attribute their own negative behaviors to their environment (an external attribution).

The human beings I know are mostly wonderful people, but they often fail to distinguish clearly between what they worked for and the good things that came their way. They also are not so good at seeing the difference between the character flaws of other people and bad things that happen to them.

Our tendency to attribute our behavior to our context or to blame others for it is directly in contrast to how we tend to judge others' actions. When it comes to other people, we are far more likely to attribute the bad meal to their inability to cook rather than to other causes. This is called the fundamental attribution error.