Fundamental attribution error

What it is

Explaining other people's behaviour by their character while explaining our own by circumstances.

Related

• Outcome bias bias
  Judging people by how things turned out, rather than by their circumstances, overrates character.
• Self-serving bias bias
  The two are linked: we attribute our own failures to the situation but others' failures to character, and our successes to ourselves.
• Fallacy of the single cause fallacy
  Blaming one person's character for an outcome is a single-cause explanation that ignores circumstances.
• Just-world hypothesis bias
  Blaming people's character for their misfortune keeps the world feeling fair.

Appears in

• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly#36: Fundamental attribution error

References

• Wikipedia: Fundamental attribution error en.wikipedia.org
• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: List of cognitive biases en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: Cognitive bias codex en.wikipedia.org

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