In the United States, the dominant cultural attitudes favor a dispositional approach to explaining human behavior. Why do you think this is? The individualistic cultural values and ideals within the United States emphasize that people are in control of their own behaviors, and, therefore, any behavior change must be due to something internal, such as their personality, habits, or temperament. However, situational factors, often outside of conscious awareness, can have powerful influences on human behavior.
fundamental attribution error
According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977; Riggio & Garcia, 2009).
To better understand, imagine this scenario: Aditi returns home from work, and upon opening the front door, her partner jumps off the couch to greet her and inquires about her day. Instead of greeting her partner, Aditi slams the door and walks silently into the bedroom. Why did Aditi ignore her partner? How would someone committing the fundamental attribution error explain Aditi’s behavior? The most common response is that Aditi is a mean, angry, or unfriendly person (i.e., traits). This is an internal, or dispositional, explanation. However, imagine that Aditi was just laid off from her job due to company downsizing. Would your explanation for Aditi’s behavior change? Your revised explanation might be that Aditi was frustrated and disappointed by losing her job; therefore, she was in a bad mood (her state). Identifying the context for the behavior allows us to move to an external, or situational, explanation for Aditi’s behavior.
The fundamental attribution error is so powerful that people often overlook obvious situational influences on behavior. A classic example was demonstrated in a series of experiments known as the quizmaster study (Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977). Student participants were randomly assigned to play the role of questioner (the quizmaster) or contestant in a quiz game. Questioners were instructed to develop difficult questions to which they knew the answers and then presented these questions to the contestants. The contestants answered the questions correctly only 4 out of 10 times (Figure 2). After the task, both the questioners and contestants were asked to rate their own general knowledge compared to the average student. Questioners did not rate their general knowledge higher than the contestants, but the contestants consistently rated the questioners’ intelligence higher than their own. In a second, follow-up study, observers of the interaction also rated the questioner as having more general knowledge than the contestant, even when they knew that the questioners were writing the questions. That is, both contestants and observers attributed their performance the questions to dispositional factors, failing to take into consideration the situational factors that gave the questioners an advantage and falling prey to the fundamental attribution error.
As demonstrated in the example above, the fundamental attribution error is considered a powerful influence on how we explain the behaviors of others. However, it should be noted that some researchers have suggested that the fundamental attribution error may not be as powerful as it is often portrayed. In fact, a recent review of more than 173 published studies suggests that several factors (e.g., high levels of idiosyncrasy of the character and how well hypothetical events are explained) play a role in determining just how influential the fundamental attribution error is (Malle, 2006). One such factor that plays an important role is culture.
Is the fundamental attribution error a universal phenomenon?
You may be able to think of examples of the fundamental attribution error in your life. Do people in all cultures commit the fundamental attribution error? Research suggests that they do not. People from an individualistic culture, that is, a culture that focuses on individual achievement and autonomy, have the greatest tendency to commit the fundamental attribution error. Individualistic cultures, which tend to be found in Western countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, promote a focus on the individual. Therefore, a person’s disposition is thought to be the primary explanation for her behavior. In contrast, people from a collectivistic culture, that is, a culture that focuses on communal relationships with others, such as family, friends, and community, are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 2001).
Why do you think this is the case? Collectivistic cultures, which tend to be found in Indigenous American culture, East Asia, Latin American, and African countries, focus on the group more than on the individual (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). This focus on others provides a broader perspective that takes into account both situational and cultural influences on behavior; thus, a more nuanced explanation of the causes of others’ behavior becomes more likely. Table 1 summarizes compares individualistic and collectivist cultures.
| Individualistic Culture | Collectivistic Culture |
|---|---|
| Achievement oriented | Relationship oriented |
| Focus on autonomy | Focus on group harmony |
| Dispositional perspective | Situational perspective |
| Independent | Interdependent |
| Analytic thinking style | Holistic thinking style |
Masuda and Nisbett (2001) demonstrated that the kinds of information that people attend to when viewing visual stimuli (e.g., an aquarium scene) can differ significantly depending on whether the observer comes from a collectivistic versus an individualistic culture. Japanese participants were much more likely to recognize objects that were presented when they occurred in the same context in which they were originally viewed. Manipulating the context in which object recall occurred had no such impact on American participants. Other researchers have shown similar differences across cultures. For example, Zhang, Fung, Stanley, Isaacowitz, and Zhang (2014) demonstrated differences in the ways that holistic thinking might develop between Chinese and American participants, and Ramesh and Gelfand (2010) demonstrated that job turnover rates are more related to the fit between a person and the organization in which they work in an Indian sample, but the fit between the person and their specific job was more predictive of turnover in an American sample.