fundamental attribution error

n. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to make dispositional attributions when explaining other people’s behaviors, even when there is an obvious situational explanation for the behaviors. For example, the perceiver may attribute a student’s good performance in a statistics class to his or her quantitative ability (a dispositional attribution) even when the class is known to be easy (situational explanation). The term suggests that individuals spontaneously use dispositional explanations to understand behavior. This may happen because the actor is the most salient aspect of the perceptual field, and the stimulus that engulfs the field is likely to be viewed as having causal power.

-EWMA, CYC

► See also DISPOSITIONAL INFERENCE, LAY DISPOSITIONAL THEORY, and LAY DISPOSITIONISM