Fundamental Attribution Error

Cultural differences in the Fundamental Attribution Error.

In social psychology , the attribution theory attempts to justify that every individual’s behaviour is motivated and intended, people are naive psychologists who aim to understand the social world. They are keen to know the reason for every behaviour and event and why they take place (Heider; 1958). Some individuals prefer to attribute behaviour to a person’s character, whereas others attribute behaviour to the circumstances ( Bastian & Haslam, 2006; Robins et al; 2004).
The fundamental attribution error, also recognized as the correspondence bias, refers to the likelihood of the observers to accuse and criticize a person’s personality and internal traits and underestimate the situational

It is prevalent in individualist cultures, for instance, like in the United States, where individuals are recognized as self-dependent. As children grow up in Western culture, they determine the behaviour of other people on the basis of their personal characteristics ( Rholes et al, 1990; Ross, 1981).Mostly, people in the individualist cultures have an inclination for internal description of the behaviour. When interpreting individuals behaviour, in the west they generally undervalue the influence of the situation and consider the individual’s traits and attitudes (Jellison & Green, 1981). People in Eastern Asian cultures give more attention and priority to the situations, it is a highly collectivist culture in which people point out to the situational factors over the individual and they are not prone to fundamental attribution error. They hardly accept that others behaviour rely on their personality and characteristics ( Choi et al, 1999; Farwell & Weiner, 2000; Masuda & Kitayama,

A few researches support this hypothesis.
Morris and Peng (1994; Morris, Nisbett, & Peng, 1995) provided a description of cultural discrepancy in fundamental attribution for Chinese and Americans. Morris and Peng considered the account of the two tragic situations that took place in the United States, in the English language newspaper as well as in the Chinese language newspaper.
They observed that the English newspaper contemplated more about the mental instability and other unfavourable dispositions of the criminal and assigned causes such as “ the man was mentally unstable”. In contrast, the Chinese newspaper highlighted the circumstantial, situational, and even societal factors (eg.,”the man did not get along with his