Question

​when people explain their own behavior by making a situational attribution and the behavior of others by making a dispositional attribution it is called ____.

Answer 1

The correct answer is the fundamental attribution error.

Fundamental attribution error (FAE) refers to the phenomenon in which we attribute others' behavior to their disposition (personality) and their abilities, intelligence and skills (or their lack thereof), while attributing our own behavior to situational factors outside our control (bad weather, a harsh teacher, an unforeseen event, etc.). An instance of FAE is failing an exam. If we fail an exam we are much more likely to attribute it to situational factors (the exam was unfairly hard, the teacher graded it unfairly, etc.). On the other hand if another person fails an exam we are much more likely to attribute it to factors internal to him or her- he/ she did not study hard enough, he/she is not intelligent and is incompetent.