Fundamental Attribution Error
(reading time – 20 sec.)

The fundamental attribution error (FAE) describes how, when making judgments about people’s behavior, we often overemphasize dispositional factors and downplay situational ones.5 In other words, we believe that people’s personality traits have more influence on their actions, compared to the other factors over which they don’t have control.

Let’s say you’re driving to work one day, and somebody cuts you off. Furious, you decide that the other driver is a selfish person, who doesn’t care about other people’s safety. In fact, the other driver rarely cuts people off, and normally they are very careful about safety—but right now they’re on the way to a hospital for a family emergency, so they’re acting differently than they usually would.

Topic: #CognitiveBiases
Source: thedecisionlab.com