Imagine that you are in a restaurant. You observe a woman at the next table drinking coffee. As you watch, she spills the coffee all over the table. How would you interpret this event?
If you think she spilled the coffee because she is clumsy, you would be making a dispositional attribution. If you think that she spilled the coffee because the table wobbled, you would be making a situational attribution.
Social psychologists have found that we tend to overestimate dispositional influences on the behavior of others (“She spilled the coffee because she is clumsy.”), while underestimating the impact of situational influences (“She spilled the coffee because the table wobbled.”). This is called the fundamental attribution error.
Interestingly, we do not seem to make this error when we explain our own behavior. Instead, we usually recognize the importance of the situational influences in our own lives. The difference between the way we interpret other people’s behaviors and our own behavior is referred to as the actor-observer bias. If we’re the “actor,” we are biased towards a situational interpretation, but if we’re the “observer,” we are more likely to make a dispositional attribution.