Fundamental Attribution Error

This bias refers to the tendency to judge others by their personality or character, but judge our behavior based on external factors .

Sally is late to class; she’s lazy. You’re late to class; it was a bad morning.

Conversely, when it is a positive thing, you judge others by external factors, and yourself only by internal factors.

He got into Harvard only because he was born in a rich-family and privileged. I got into a good school because I worked my ass off.

Solution

We should take both types of factors into consideration when trying to explain why people do what they do.

• External factors = things out of our control, environmental
• Internal factors = personality, dispositions, moral character, or inner mental states