The Fundamental Attribution Error

We address the Fundamental Attribution Error in most of our workshops, particularly our Feedback ones, because it’s such a common bias and it causes so many problems. Essentially, the Fundamental Attribution Error occurs when we attribute someone’s behaviour to their personal characteristics, rather than acknowledging the context and situational factors. It leads us to believe that dispositional factors (personality traits) are more powerful than situational factors.

The Fundamental Attribution Error was coined by Lee Ross in 1977. He was reflecting on work by Edward Jones and Victor Harris 10 years earlier, and suggested that the Fundamental Attribution Error is the foundation for the entire field of social psychology. Edward Jones responded that he considered Ross’s take “overly provocative and somewhat misleading“, and joked “Furthermore, I’m angry that I didn’t think of it first.” 

If we fall into the trap of the Fundamental Attribution Error, we’re likely to conclude that someone’s bad behaviour shows they are a terrible person, rather than considering the social and environmental forces that are influencing their actions. We assume that people do bad things because they’re bad people. And interestingly, research suggests it doesn’t apply the other way around: if we witness someone doing something good, we don’t immediately assume that they’re a fundamentally good person. 

The Fundamental Attribution Error is especially problematic because we tend not to make the same conclusions about  our own “bad” behaviour. Instead, because we know our own contexts and the factors influencing our actions, we recognise the causes and reasons for the way we’ve acted. This inability, or bias against doing the same for others often results in conflict and blame, hindering our ability to learn lessons from failure and mistakes. 

Interestingly, there is some research to suggest that people from individualistic (most Western) cultures are reportedly more prone to the error, while people from collectivistic cultures (such as China, India and Japan) are less prone.

Examples of The Fundamental Attribution Error

To understand the Fundamental Attribution Error in action, imagine someone walking into a meeting late. We might be frustrated that they weren’t there as punctually as we were, or annoyed that we now need to interrupt the flow of the meeting and repeat ourselves. The Fundamental Attribution Error comes in when we take that irritation and conclude that the latecomer is selfish, careless or unprofessional. If, however, the next week, we get stuck in traffic or have to deal with an emergency, then we might be late to the meeting ourselves. However, this time, we know we had good reason to be late, so if someone were to judge us as unprofessional without trying to understand the context, that would feel very unfair.

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

As a real life example, I spend a lot of time in London and travel by tube. Recently, on my way out at Kensington High Street station, just as I was about to exit through the turnstile someone jumped the queue and squeezed through in front of me. My immediate reaction was to think “What a rude person!” (or words to that effect!). However, as I reflected (assisted by the fact I was on my way to deliver a Feedback workshop), I considered all the reasons they might have done that, from being late to an interview to being desperate for the toilet. They’re probably not a fundamentally rude person and when I thought about it I realised there are lots of situations in which jumping the queue might be a rational thing to do. 

Escalations of the Fundamental Attribution Error

If it goes unchallenged, the Fundamental Attribution Error can be compounding: if we deem a colleague to be “lazy” because they didn’t arrive to work on time, then every time they’re subsequently late, it reinforces our belief, even if actually they’re not late any more frequently than any other colleague. The cognitive attribution bias of Fundamental Attribution Error feeds our confirmation bias, and exacerbates the original erroneous belief. 

Another consequence can be that if we let ourselves believe “they’re being a jerk” and adhere to the “if they can do it, then so can I” approach, we risk giving ourselves licence to be a jerk, even when the other party actually had positive intentions. In turn, they’ll then suffer from our own jerk behaviour, and the cycle continues. 

Finally, an example of the Fundamental Attribution Error at scale is the “Group Attribution Error” (GAE). This is where we observe certain behaviours in members of a group of people, and then, without considering situational factors, attribute that as a personality trait to the whole group or even a whole demographic of people. We may therefore fall prey to believing fallacies such as “all software developers are nerds”, “all performers are extroverts”, or “all teenagers are moody”, because we observe their behaviour without regard for context and culture. Research by Tam et al in 2008 has also shown that people who are generally less prone to the Fundamental Attribution Error are less likely to possess racist beliefs.

Context Drives Behaviour

One of the core principles of Human and Organisational Performance is “context drives behaviour”, and therefore the Fundamental Attribution Error is one of the biases that this principle addresses. It helps us refocus on the context rather than personality, which is far more constructive because in making changes to the context and environment, those changes can have a positive impact on us all. As a side note, this doesn’t mean that personality traits don’t influence behaviour too – of course they do. But trying to change someone’s personality is somewhat fraught, likely destined to fail, and in many cases, ethically problematic at best. It’s also, as the Fundamental Attribution Error reminds us, likely not where the “problem” is situated anyway.

And this brings us on to another risk of the Fundamental Attribution Error. Falling prey to the Fundamental Attribution Error can lead us to ignore important systemic factors that influence behaviour such as discrimination, poverty, or social inequity. For example, if we just blame all criminal behaviour on “bad people”, and fail to look at the underlying causes of crime, we may well find we simply increase the prison population rather than improving aspects of society and systems that contribute to high crime rates.

The Local Rationality Principle

The Local Rationality Principle is one excellent tool to help us overcome the Fundamental Attribution Error. It reminds us that:

“People do reasonable things given their goals, knowledge, understanding of the situation and focus of attention at a particular moment.”

Whilst we might still have an instinctive emotional response to someone’s behaviour, we can use the Local Rationality Principle to help us take a step back and consider the context in which that person was working. We tend to apply local rationality to our own behaviour very easily because we’re already seeing the world through our eyes and we know the context, but it can require deliberate practice to apply it to others, especially when we feel wronged. One of the greatest mitigations for the Fundamental Attribution Error is empathy: reverse the roles, and try to understand how it felt to be in their shoes. Maybe you’d have done the same thing, or maybe in hindsight, something different – but of course that’s the power of hindsight. Similarly, James Reason, in his 1997 decision tree of the culpability of unsafe acts, describes a “substitution test” to determine whether “a different person (well motivated, equally competent, and comparably qualified) have behaved similarly under similar circumstances”. If we’d have done the same thing as someone else when faced with the same situation, it’s hardly fair to blame them for their behaviour. Though we need to be very mindful of hindsight bias for substitution tests – since we already know the outcome, it can be difficult to perform the test objectively.

And what about if empathy is something you find difficult? Lots of us do, and it is a skill. Fortunately, we can all improve our capacity for empathy. The more we practise it, the better we get. One very enjoyable way is simply through reading more fiction, which has been shown to boost our capacity for empathy. Research also shows that another way to become less susceptible to the Fundamental Attribution Error is through training courses, such as ours!

Blame vs Accountability

It is important to note that understanding the Fundamental Attribution Error and applying Local Rationality doesn’t mean excusing poor behaviour: it doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t say sorry or make amends for harm they’ve caused, and it doesn’t provide a warrant for harmful behaviour. I’d still have appreciated an apology from the person who pushed in front of me at the tube station, and we can still hold people accountable for poor behaviour, whatever the context. But this isn’t the same as blame. Blame can be interpreted as holding people accountable without regard for context. Indeed, in blame cultures, context is often seen instead as an excuse. We know that blame is likely to result in resentment, fear and the hiding of mistakes, whilst taking account of context allows us to learn, continually improve, and nurture positive working relationships.

Examining and appreciating the context around behaviour actually makes that process of accountability even more powerful, because we can recognise the environmental and contextual drivers behind it, and maybe even do something about them, as well as upholding high standards of behaviour. 

References

Gawronski, B. (2007). Correspondence bias. In R. F. Baumeister, & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology (pp. 194-195). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hooper, N., Erdogan, A., Keen, G., Lawton, K. and McHugh, L., 2015. Perspective taking reduces the fundamental attribution error. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 4(2), pp.69-72.

Jones, E. E.; Harris, V. A. (1967). “The attribution of attitudes”. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 3 (1): 1–24. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(67)90034-0.

Mauer, M., 2001. The causes and consequences of prison growth in the United States. Punishment & Society, 3(1), pp.9-20.

Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(5), 961–978.

Ross, L. (1977). “The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process”. In Berkowitz, L. (ed.). Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 10. New York: Academic Press. pp. 173–220.

Tam, K., Au, A., & Leung, A. K. (2008). Attributionally more complex people show less punitiveness and racism. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(4), 1074-1081. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.11.002

Further Reading

The Local Rationality Principle

Delivering Feedback

Human and Organisational Performance

Reading fiction improves empathy

Delivering Effective Feedback workshop

Practical Psychological Safety in Education

As well as Delivering Effective Feedback and our core workshops focussed on psychological safety, we have two new online workshops on psychological safety in education available to book now! The workshops are designed for teachers, lecturers, classroom assistants, and anyone managing or leading in those environments.

Psychological safety is fundamental in creating healthy, inclusive and successful learning environmentsfor students, teachers, educators and leaders alike. In these workshops, we delve into the practices and activities that foster psychological safety in the classroom and staffroom. Full of practical tools, strategies and approaches, you’ll leave with lots of ideas about what to try next to establish and build psychological safety in your educational spaces. 

The two workshops are Psychological Safety for Educators, and Psychological Safety for Students. 

You can attend just the workshop that is most relevant to your context, or book both. Each is designed to be accessible as a standalone workshop, but they do complement and build on each other. By booking both workshops, you will receive a 10% discount. 

These Psychological Safety in Education workshops are relevant to those working with students of all ages and stages, from pre-school to Higher Education, work and training. Find out more at psychsafety.com

All attendees receive a Credly Badge, a CPD certificate, further reading, resources used in the session, a copy of the Psychological Safety Action Pack and a licence to use it in your organisation, access to a private alumni online group, and some swag! Book here!

Psychological Safety in Practice

Psychological Safety in Higher Education

A silent lecture theatre, in response to a question by the lecturer, is an all-too-common challenge. And for an environment that is supposed to be a place of learning, where we’re not expected to have all the answers already, it’s a critical issue. In this excellent piece in the Times Higher Education, our own Jade Garratt examines the causes of student silence, and some strategies to encourage voice in lecture halls. 

Unmasking at Work

There’s been a great deal of talk over the past few years of “bringing your whole self to work”, which I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with. This excellent piece by Nancy Doyle examines the nature of psychological safety and masking / unmasking in the workplace, touching on neurodiversity as well as marginalised identities. Fundamentally, this nails it: “Psychological safety is not risked by holding appropriate, professional boundaries.“

Psychological Safety and Product teams

Our wonderful community moderator and contributor Diana Stepner featured on this excellent episode of the “Product Weekend” podcast with João Moita (another community member!). There are loads of neat takeaways here, including the importance of rephrasing “whys” to “hows” – asking “Why did you do that?” often leads to instinctive defensiveness: a sensation that we need to defend our actions (even if they were successful). Instead, asking something like “How did you arrive at this decision?” can elucidate more nuanced and messy details of what happened. Check out the video of the episode here.

This week’s poem:

‘A Calendar of Sonnets: October’ by Helen Hunt Jackson

The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.
The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign
Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,
Oar empress wore, in Egypt’s ancient line,
October, feasting ‘neath her dome of blue,
Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through
Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!

Helen Hunt Jackson was an American poet, writer, and activist for Native American rights. In A Century of Dishonor (1881), she exposed the harmful impact of U.S. government policies, and her novel Ramona in 1884 highlighted the mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California after the Mexican–American War.