The Fundamental Attribution Error
People are profoundly influenced by the situa- tional contexts of their behavior—or, as Samuel Sommers put it, “Situations Matter.” This point is not as obvious as it may seem. For example, parents are often surprised to hear that their impossi- bly mischievous child is a perfect angel in the classroom. And stu- dents are often surprised to observe that their favorite professor, so eloquent in the lecture hall, may stumble over words in less formal gatherings. These reactions are symptomatic of a well-documented aspect of social perception. When people explain the behavior of others, they tend to overestimate the role of personal factors and overlook the impact of situations. Because this bias is so pervasive (and sometimes so mis- leading), it has been called the fundamental attribution error.
Evidence of the fundamental attribution error was first reported in the Jones and Harris study described earlier, in which participants read an essay presumably written by a student. In that study, participants were more likely to infer the student’s true attitude when the position taken had been freely chosen than when they thought that the student had been assigned to it.
