If youve been confused over the division of the nation lately, hopefully this helps: When it comes to other people, especially when something negative happens, we tend to justify what theyve done based on internal factors (He must be a terrible person) and ignore or minimize external variables (Maybe hes having a bad day). This phenomenon tends to be very widespread, particularly among individualistic cultures. The fundamental attribution error explains why people often blame other people for things over which they usually have no control. The term blaming the victim is often used by social psychologists to describe a phenomenon in which people blame victims of crimes for their misfortune. Interestingly, when it comes to explaining our own behavior, we tend to have the opposite bias of the fundamental attribution error. When something happens, we are more likely to blame external forces than our personal characteristics. In psychology, this tendency is known as the actor-observer bias.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 10:42:25 +0000
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