Fundamental Attribution

Fundamental attribution bias or fundamental attribution error is a social psychology concept which is also termed as attribution effect or correspondence bias which occurs when a person attributes others’ negative behaviors to internal factors such as trait characteristics while one’s own negative behaviors are related to external factors such as weather, traffic jam, and other situations. For instance, when Grace was late for a meeting, John saw this as caused by lack of time management and being lazy. On the other hand, when John was late, he perceived this as solely caused by the Monday rush hour.