Case file
Ultimate Attribution Error
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- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Ultimate attribution error is interpreting your own group's bad behavior as situational but another group's bad behavior as revealing character, while reversing that pattern for good behavior.
How it operates
Social identity motivates us to protect our in-group and explain outsiders in harsher, more dispositional terms.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
Your team misses a deadline because of dependencies, but a competitor misses because they are incompetent.
- Incident 02
One rude support agent at a vendor becomes proof that the vendor's culture is bad.
- Incident 03
An outsider candidate's success is seen as luck while an insider's success is seen as talent.
What to watch for
Ask: Would I explain this the same way if my own group had done it?
Recommended action
Use attribution retraining and force the team to list situational explanations for both in-group and out-group behavior.
Known associates
- Group Attribution ErrorGroup attribution error is assuming what is true of one member is true of the whole group, or that…
- StereotypingStereotyping is assigning traits or likely behavior to an individual based mainly on group membership.
- EssentialismEssentialism is believing categories of people or things have a deep fixed essence that explains how they…
- Functional FixednessFunctional fixedness is seeing an object, team, or process only in its usual role and missing other workable…
- Moral Credential EffectMoral credential effect is using a past moral act as psychological permission to behave less ethically later.
- Just-World HypothesisJust-world hypothesis is the tendency to assume people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they…
Source of record