Attribution biases are present in everyday life, and therefore are an important and relevant topic to study. For example, when a driver cuts us off, we are more likely to attribute blame to the reckless driver (e.g., “What a jerk!”), rather than situational circumstances (e.g., “Maybe they were in a rush and didn’t notice me”). Additionally, there are many different types of attribution biases, such as the ultimate attribution error, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and hostile attribution bias. Each of these biases describes a specific tendency that people exhibit when reasoning about the cause of different behaviors.
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The fundamental attribution error refers to a bias in explaining others’ behaviors. According to this error, when we make attributions about another person’s actions, we are likely to overemphasize the role of dispositional factors, while minimizing the influence of situational factors.[26] For example, if we see a coworker bump into someone on his way to a meeting, we are more likely to explain this behavior in terms of our coworker’s carelessness or hastiness, rather than considering that he was running late to a meeting.
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Hostile attribution bias (HAB) has been defined as an interpretive bias wherein individuals exhibit a tendency to interpret others’ ambiguous behaviors as hostile, rather than benign.[8][9] For example, if a child witnesses two other children whispering and assumes they are talking about him/her, that child makes an attribution of hostile intent, even though the other children’s behavior was potentially benign. Research has indicated that there is an association between hostile attribution bias and aggression, such that people who are more likely to interpret someone else’s behavior as hostile are also more likely to engage in aggressive behavior.[32][33] See the following section on aggression for more details on this association. See also: Ideas of reference and delusions of reference
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wiki attribution bias