Fundamental attribution

The “fundamental attribution error” is one of those phrases that I’ve heard a few times, but I never really knew what it meant. It came up on a recent episode of The Long and The Short Of It podcast and they shared some great examples.

Harvard Business School defines it like this:

“The fundamental attribution error refers to an individual’s tendency to attribute another’s actions to their character or personality, while attributing their behavior to external situational factors outside of their control. In other words, you tend to cut yourself a break while holding others 100 percent accountable for their actions.”

In the case of the podcast referenced above, someone borrowed a few stools from Jen’s studio, and she immediately thought of the other person in the worst possible light until the truth came out.

We see this come up quite a lot while driving. Our actions on the road are justified (“I’m late to pick up my kid”, “they were in my blind spot”, etc), while everyone else on the road is either horrible or incompetent.

It’s related to the concept of Hanlon’s Razor, which is simply to “ never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity “. There are certainly bad people in the world who do bad things, but more often people are just making simple mistakes.