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social psychology
You assume that people act according to their nature.
The correspondence bias is the tendency to explain behavior as a function of personality rather than the situational constraints.
If you see a stranger snap at a waiter, you assume they are an aggressive person. You rarely pause to consider that they might be having a crisis, because the internal label is faster and requires less cognitive effort.
You define people by their actions, but yourself by your circumstances.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Gilbert and Malone, 1995
- What the check found
- The definition provided is the standard academic description of correspondence bias, and the source (Gilbert & Malone, 1995) is the authoritative review paper on this topic.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.