The tendency to attribute behaviors to dispositional qualities while underrating the role of the situation. See also actor-observer difference, attribution theory, self-serving bias.
The tendency to underestimate situational influences on behavior and assume that some personal characteristic of the individual is responsible.
The assumption that, if somebody behaves in an undesirable way, it happened solely because of the person, not the situation they are in. "He would say that, wouldn't he?" expresses it well. See also Ultimate Attribution Error
The tendency to make internal attributions over external attributions in explaining the behavior of others.
The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments.
In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.
