While eating at a restaurant, you see a waiter's serving tray accidentally tilt and an avalanche of food and beverages splatters on four people. "what a careless, clumsy idiot," you mumble to yourself as you resume eating. you have just committed?
You have just committed what is called a fundamental
attribution error. When we explain people’s behavior we do that by using external
and interior factors. When we commit a fundamental attribution we unduly assign
some internal factor such as selfishness instead of some external factor as maybe
someone being late and we wouldn’t do that when explaining our own behavior.
