Tendency to Overestimate Consistency of Behavior (Fundamental Attribution Error)

The cognitive bias of assuming that people's behavior is more consistent across situations than it actually is—overestimating the role of personality traits and underestimating the role of situational factors. We see someone act aggressively in one context and assume they're 'an aggressive person' rather than 'a person in an aggression-provoking situation.' The Milgram experiments and Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated that situations can produce extreme behaviors from ordinary people—behavior that observers would attribute to personality. The overestimation of consistency produces: unfair character judgments, prediction errors about future behavior, and hiring mistakes that expect interview behavior to predict on-the-job behavior.

When to use it

When character judgments are being made from limited behavioral samples; when predicting how people will behave in new contexts; when management is attributing systemic problems to individual character; when hiring processes need to account for situation-behavior interaction.

How it can help

When predicting someone's future behavior: weight the SITUATION at least as heavily as their personality. The practice: instead of 'what kind of person are they?' ask 'what kind of situation will they be in?' A person who was lazy in a demotivating environment may be energized in a motivating one. A person who was aggressive under threat may be gentle when safe. For hiring: assess the match between the person AND the situation rather than evaluating the person in isolation. For management: when behavior is problematic, change the situation before judging the person.