behavior, i.e. they discount it.The covariation principle has its uses, however, it has flaws as well, firstly, we dont always have enough information available to form "proper" attributions, secondly, most research on it has been done in artificial laboratory conditions, which do not give an accurate picture of the real world situations, and thirdly, people might use some other form of attribution when evaluating peoples behavior. Later on, Kelley developed the notion of causal schemas, a kind of belief that is built from experience and used to fill the gaps in our knowledge. These schemas have some support from research Kun and Weiner, 1973, but other researchers do not universally accept them. One schema is the multiple necessary cause schema, which states that a particular event requires at least two causes.Add something about it here.The Fundamental Attribution errorIn the fundamental attribution error, people tend to make dispositional attributions for the behavior of others even when there are clear external factors at play. Ross discovered it in 1977.A famous example is that of the pro- and anti- Castro speeches . In this study students read speeches written by their fellow students, which were either pro-Castro or anti-Castro. The writers either had had a choice to write pro- or anti-Castro speech or not. When there was a choice, the participants reasoned that those who wrote an anti-Castro speech were against him those who wrote a pro-Castro speech were in favor of him. When the participants read speeches when people did not have a choice, they still assumed the same, i.e. they still made a dispositional attribution although they knew that the students had been ordered to write that speech. They overlooked the evidence and made a dispositional choice, thus making a fundamental attribution error.Possible explanations for the fundamental attribution error are cultural factors, the fundamental attribution error seems to be more p...
