Editing Fundamental attribution error (section)

== Criticism ==
The hypothesis that people systematically overattribute behavior to traits (at least for other people's behavior) is contested. A 1986 study tested whether subjects over-, under-, or correctly estimated the empirical correlation among behaviors (i.e., traits, see ''[[trait theory]]'').<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last1=Epstein|first1=Seymour|last2=Teraspulsky|first2=Laurie|title=Perception of cross-situational consistency.|journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology|volume=50|issue=6|pages=1152–1160|doi=10.1037/0022-3514.50.6.1152|year=1986|pmid=3723332}}</ref> They found that estimates of correlations among behaviors correlated strongly with empirically-observed correlations among these behaviors. Subjects were sensitive to even very small correlations, and their confidence in the association tracked how far they were discrepant (i.e., if they knew when they did not know), and was higher for the strongest relations. Subjects also showed awareness of the effect of aggregation over occasions and used reasonable strategies to arrive at decisions. Epstein concluded that "Far from being inveterate trait believers, as has been previously suggested, [subjects'] intuitions paralleled psychometric principles in several important respects when assessing relations between real-life behaviors."<ref name=":1" />

A 2006 meta-analysis found little support for a related bias, the [[actor–observer asymmetry]], in which people attribute their own behavior more to the environment, but others' behavior to individual attributes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Malle |first=Bertram F. |date=2006 |title=The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis. |url=http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.895 |journal=Psychological Bulletin |language=en |volume=132 |issue=6 |pages=895–919 |doi=10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.895 |pmid=17073526 |issn=1939-1455|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The implications for the fundamental attribution error, the author explained, were mixed. He explained that the fundamental attribution error has two versions:  

# Observers tend to explain an actor's behavior with dispositional rather than environmental explanations;
# Observers tend to draw conclusions about an actor's stable disposition based on the actor's behavior in a given situation.

The author of the meta-analysis concluded that the existing weight of evidence does not support the first form of the fundamental attribution error, but does not contradict the second.

In 2015, the fundamental attribution error was contested once again in an argument against the measures originally used from the 1967 demonstration study done by Jones and Harris, and the 1982 study done by Quattrone. In this argument, the authors posed that the degree to which behaviour is constrained by a situation is a vital determinant of whether or not a dispositional attribution will be made.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Walker |first=Drew |last2=Smith |first2=Kevin A. |last3=Vul |first3=E. |date=2015 |title=The 'Fundamental Attribution Error' is rational in an uncertain world |url=https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-'Fundamental-Attribution-Error'-is-rational-in-Walker-Smith/80ff8fb064f19599172315e53ded914ffc3ae605 |journal=Cognitive Science}}</ref> Since situations are undeniably complex and are of different "strengths", this will interact with an individual's disposition and determine what kind of attribution is made; although some amount of attribution can consistently be allocated to disposition, the way in which this is balanced with situational attribution will be dependent on the kind of situation one is in and the information available in said situation.<ref name=":2" /> The authors analyzing the 2015 study claimed that the results found in the traditional fundamental attribution error studies were "interpreted as biased only because they have been compared to an inappropriate benchmark of rationality predicated on the assumption of deterministic dispositions and situations."<ref name=":2" />