480 CHAPTER 12
But why do we do that? Why not assume an external cause for
everyone?
When people are the actors, they are very aware of the situational influences on
their own behavior. For example, Tardy John was actually the one driving to work,
and he knows that heavy traffic and a small accident made him late to work—he was
there, after all. But an outside observer of John’s behavior doesn’t have the opportunity
to see all of the possible situational influences and has only John himself in focus and,
thus, assumes that John’s tardiness is caused by some internal personality flaw.
Other research has shown that when students are given an opportunity to make
attributions about cheating, they make the fundamental attribution error and actor–
observer bias: If others are cheating, it’s because they are not honest people, but if the
students themselves are cheating, it is because of the situation (Bogle, 2000).
Can the tendency to make these errors be reduced? There are several strategies for mak-
ing errors in attribution less likely. One is to notice how many other people are doing the same
thing. As a college professor, the author often has students who come in late. When it is only
one student and it happens frequently, the assumption is that the student is not very careful
about time (dispositional cause). But when a large number of students come straggling in late,
the assumption becomes “there must be a wreck on the bridge,” which is a situational attribu-
tion. In other words, if a lot of people are doing it, it is probably caused by an outside factor.
Another trick is to think about what you would do in the same situation. If you
think that you might behave in the same way, the cause of behavior is probably situa-
tional. People should also make the effort of looking for causes that might not be obvi-
ous. If John were to look particularly stressed out, for example, the assumption might be
that something stressed him out, and that “something” might have been heavy traffic.
Although the fundamental attribution error has been found in American culture (Jones
& Harris, 1967), would the same error occur in a culture very different from that of Ameri-
ca’s, such as Japan’s? This is the question asked by researchers Masuda and Kitayama (2004),
who had both American and Japanese participants ask a target person to read a prewritten
attitudinal statement. The participants were then asked to give their opinion on the target’s
real attitude. American participants made the classic error, assuming that the target’s attitude
matched the reading. The Japanese participants, however, assumed that the person’s attitude
might be different from the statement—the person might have been under social obligation to
write the piece. Japanese society is a collectivistic culture, and a Japanese person might expect
to write a paper to please a teacher or employer even though the paper’s contents do not nec-
essarily express the writer’s attitudes. A summary of the research in cross-cultural differences
in attribution provides further support for the idea that the fundamental attribution error is
not a universal one (Peng et al., 2000). The work of Miller (1984) and many other researchers
(Blanchard-Fields et al., 2007; Cha & Nam, 1985; Choi & Nisbett, 1998; Choi et al., 1999; Lee et
al., 1996; Morris & Peng, 1994; Morris et al., 1995; Norenzayan et al., 1999) strongly suggests
that in more interdependent, collectivistic cultures found in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and
Korea, people tend to assume that external situational factors are more responsible for the
behavior of other people than are internal dispositional factors—a finding that is exactly the
reverse of the fundamental attribution error so common in the United States and other indi-
vidualist Western cultures.
Even age is a factor in how likely someone is to fall prey to the fundamental attri-
bution error. Several studies (Blanchard-Fields & Horhota, 2005; Follett & Hess, 2002;
Leclerc & Hess, 2007) have found that older adults show a stronger bias toward attribut-
ing the actions of another to internal causes than do younger people.
One study has found that attribution of motive may also create conflict between
groups (Waytz et al., 2014). The study compared Israelis and Palestinians in the Mideast as
well as Republicans and Democrats in the United States. Obviously, these groups continue
to experience a great deal of animosity, conflict, and an unwillingness to shift from long-
held beliefs. Over the course of five studies, in which participants were asked to rate the
