The Fundamental Attribution Error : Blog by performance psychologist Mike Duckett

Performance psychologist, Mike Duckett talks about initial reactions and the Fundamental Attribution Error

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Imagine this; you’re driving to work and waiting at traffic lights. As the lights change the car behind pulls out and screeches around you and is off down the road. What do you think about that driver?

Then to make matters worse, as you’re driving along you notice out of the corner of your eye a teenager on a skateboard on the pavement just as he pushes an elderly lady out of the way. What do you think about this young man?

Then finally, as you arrive at work and walk into the kitchen you find your new head chef is late again for the second time in his first week with you but has sent a text to another member of staff simply to say he’ll be late. What do you make of these people?

Immediate thoughts

The chances are, if you are like the rest of us, your immediate thoughts are along the lines of, “that driver at the lights was a self-focused irresponsible jerk who doesn’t give a damn; that young man on the skateboard was obviously an aggressive callous youth and to top it off it seems our head chef is unreliable and lazy”!

This all may be true, maybe not but either way your assessment could lead to negative feelings, which by definition are unpleasant and could even prompt some response on your behalf that will damage your relationship with others.

Some years ago, in the late ‘60s, subjects in a psychology experiment were asked to read essays both for and against Fidel Castro, then they were asked what they thought about the authors who wrote in support of him.

When they were told the authors freely chose to take this position, of course, the readers rated them as having a favourable attitude towards the Cuban leader. However, even when they were told the authors had no choice and ‘for’ and ‘against’ was decided on the toss of a coin, readers STILL rated those who wrote in support as having more genuinely felt positive attitudes towards Castro than those who wrote against.

Fundamental Attribution Error

In other words, they found it difficult to accept or pay attention to the situation the writers faced and very easy to attribute sincere beliefs to them. This became known as the Fundamental Attribution Error; an idea we all would do well to think about before we act on our judgment of others’ behaviour.

It seems almost a default for us to see some behaviour and immediately believe the cause is something to do with the