revalent in western cultures, in the west people are supposed to be responsible for their own actions and their own opinions, focus of attention, in which the actors behavior or opinions attract more attention than the background, for some reason it is more conspicuous against the background, and thus over-represented causally. There is also the possibility of differential forgetting, where people tend to forget situational attributions more easily than dispositional attributions, although the data is inconsistent (Peterson 1980, Funder 1982, respectively)This theory was extended by Pettigrew (1979), where he argued that positive outgroup behaviors are externally attributed, and negative outgroup behaviors are dispositionally attributed. By this he meant that people refer to outgroups as doing "good" things because something made them, and "bad" things because they just are "bad" or "strange".All in all, the fundamental attribution error can be used to explain some quirks of human behavior, e.g. why people tend to attribute poverty and unemployment to dispositional factors instead of external circumstances.The actor-observer effectThe actor-observer effect is considered to be an extension of the fundamental attribution error; however, in actor-observer bias we tend to attribute our own behavior to external circumstances and other peoples behavior to internal, dispositional variables. Remember last time when somebody was rude tom you? You probably didnt think, oh, they mustve had a bad day, instead, you probably thought: What an unpleasant person. According to Baxter and Goldberg 1988, we tend to consider other peoples behavior to be more constant and predictable than our own. This is why we find it difficult to change our minds about other people, even after we get to know them better, and could be reason why first impressions are important.The actor-observer effect can be overturned sometimes if you know your behavior is dispositional,...
