Fundamental Attribution Error is a cognitive bias that occurs when people overestimate the influence of personal characteristics and underestimate the influence of situational factors in explaining the behavior of others. This bias leads people to attribute the behavior of others to internal causes, such as personality traits, rather than external causes, such
In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error is a cognitive attribution bias in which observers underemphasize situational and environmental factors for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional or personality factors. In other words, observers tend to overattribute the behaviors of others to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.