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  Primary Attribution Error

  Psychologists refer to a primary attribution error. Whenever we see others behaving in a certain way, we attribute their behavior to inborn personality characteristics rather than seeing it as reactive to a particular environment. This considered an error because the situation and social context people find themselves in is often at least and usually far more important than their inborn tendencies in determining what they actually do.

David M. Allen, M.D.

Psychology Today

There is no universally accepted explanation for the fundamental attribution error. Here are several causes of the error.

Just-world phenomenon. The belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Attributing failures to dispositional causes rather than unchangeable and uncontrollable situational causes, satisfies our need to believe that the world is fair and we have control over our life. We are motivated to see a just world because this reduces our perceived threats, gives us a sense of security, helps us find meaning in difficult and unsettling circumstances, and benefits us psychologically. Unfortunately, the just-world hypothesis also results in a tendency for people to blame and disparage victims of a tragedy or an accident, such as victims of rape and domestic abuse to reassure themselves of their insusceptibility to such events.

Salience of the actor. We tend to attribute an observed effect to potential causes that capture our attention. When we observe other people, the person is the primary reference point while the situation is overlooked as if it is nothing but mere background. So, attributions for others' behavior are more likely to focus on the person we see, not the situational forces acting upon that person that we may not be aware of.

Lack of effortful adjustment. Sometimes, even though we are aware that the person's behavior is constrained by situational factors, we still commit the fundamental attribution error. This is because we do not take into account behavioral and situational information simultaneously to characterize the dispositions of the actor. We need to make deliberate and conscious effort to adjust our inference by considering the situational constraints. Therefore, when situational information is not sufficiently taken into account for adjustment, the uncorrected dispositional inference creates the fundamental attribution error. It also explains that people commit to fundamental attribution error more when they have no motivation or energy to process the situational information.

    Debiasing techniques have been found effective in reducing the effect of fundamental attribution error.

    Taking heed of consensus information. If most people behave the same way when put in the same situation, then the situation is more likely to be the cause of the behavior. 

 
Asking oneself how one would behave in the same situation.

Looking for unseen causes, specifically, looking for less prominent factors.

Wikipedia

Primary Attribution Error