The attribution theory is a theory that proposes that people attempt to understand the behaviour of others by associating it with either situational (external) or dispositional (internal) factors. While this an interesting and popular theory, it has been discovered that when attributing behaviour, we often make errors, as we are more biased and judgemental than we would like to think. The two attribution errors that I will bring up in this essay are The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) and the Self-Serving Bias (SSB). The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) implies that when we observe the behaviour of others, we tend to over-attribute their behaviour to dispositional factors and underestimate the influence that situational factors may have had. An example of when you could make this error is when you call someone and do not receive an answer, so you assume that the other person is being inconsiderate and purposefully ignoring you. In that case, you are only thinking of the dispositional factors. If we turn to the situational factors, you realise that they may be busy with work, have problems at home, or may have lost their …show more content…
The SSB supposes that we satisfy ourselves by applying our positive behaviour to dispositional factors and our negative behaviour to situational factors. An example of when this occurs could be when you do an exam. If you do well, you like to think that it is thanks to the fact that you studied hard, but when you fail, you like to think that it is because your teacher did not teach the topic well enough. Regardless of the situation, SSB seems to occur in order to boost our self-esteem, which also means that it is more prevalent in cultures where self-image is of importance. So once again, we should take precaution when considering the occurrence of this attribution error, if it seems to show up in a culture where it is not common, you may have misread the