Stop misjudging people: the hard truth about how bias works

How the Fundamental Attribution Error makes fools of us all

The error lies in our inclination to attribute people’s behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in.

 Chip Heath, Switch

In education - as in life - we are rarely short of strongly held opinions. Every initiative, policy tweak, or behavioural fad attracts a chorus of knowing nods and righteous fury. The debates are lively. The positions entrenched. And yet, so much of this noisy back-and-forth rests on a common and rather silly cognitive trap: the Fundamental Attribution Error.

The Fundamental Attribution Error, or FAE, isn’t new. The term was coined in 1977 by social psychologist Lee Ross, though the habit itself predates the label by several millennia. At its core, the FAE is our unfortunate tendency to explain other people’s behaviour by appealing to their personal qualities, while explaining our own behaviour by appealing to our circumstances. Ross explores how ordinary people try to understand and explain the behaviour of others, acting as “intuitive psychologists.” He argues that while people are skilled at generating explanations for behaviour, they are also systematically prone to predictable errors. He said, we have “a pervasive tendency to see behaviour as a reflection of stable personal traits even when it can be fully explained by situational factors.”¹

If someone cuts you up on the motorway, your first thought isn’t usually that they’re having a rough day or were momentarily distracted. No, they’re a selfish, reckless, inconsiderate idiot who shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel. But if you cut someone up, well, that’s different. You didn’t see them, or you had to swerve to avoid another car, or you were rushing to make a hospital appointment. Your mistake was circumstantial; theirs reveals their character. If a colleague struggles with a class, we might sigh and think: weak behaviour management, poor subject knowledge, lack of resilience. If we struggle with the same class, it’s because we’ve been given the bottom set again, the timetable is a disaster, and the curriculum was rewritten over half term.

The problem is perceptual: we see people behaving badly or foolishly, but we rarely see the situational factors pressing on them. As philosopher Albert Michotte pointed out, we can never see causes; we only see effects. In The Perception of Causality, he explored how people instinctively impose causal interpretations on what they observe, even when no genuine cause is visible. Michotte demonstrated that we are hardwired to see one event as the cause of another - for example, when one object appears to ‘launch’ another - even though all we actually perceive are sequences of movement. We don’t witness causality; we invent it. This is precisely what happens when we judge others: we see behaviour and instinctively weave a story of personal traits as its cause, while the invisible situational factors are quietly erased.

When an animation shows a red ball moving swiftly towards a blue ball, we tend to ‘see’ the red ball collide with the blue and impel it across the screen. The faster the movement, the stronger this perception of causality. But slow the animation down, and the illusion fades: we no longer think the red ball’s movement as causing the blue ball’s. All that’s changed is speed, but our minds leap from sequence to cause. Just as with people, we don’t witness causality, we invent it. We see behaviour, and we fill in the gaps with stories that flatter our biases and hide the messy reality of context.

Behaviour is vivid and immediate; context is complicated, opaque and often invisible. Attributing behaviour to character is simply easier and quicker. Trying to unravel the messy web of circumstances, systems, incentives, and pressures that produce behaviour requires far more effort. And, frankly, who has the time?

Literature is full of examples of the FAE and its attendant dangers. Again and again, we find characters falling into the trap of judging people rather than circumstances, with disastrous consequences. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet mistakes Darcy’s reserve for arrogance and Wickham’s charm for moral worth. She sees what flatters her instincts, not what is true. In Les Misérables, Javert’s moral certainty blinds him. He attributes Jean Valjean’s status as an ex-convict to unchanging vice, unable to see the web of poverty, injustice, and desperation that shaped him. His refusal to consider situational complexity destroys him. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the townsfolk condemn Boo Radley, attributing his strangeness to malevolence rather than the cruelty and isolation imposed by his family. Great Expectations offers another variation: Pip mistakes Joe’s quiet goodness for weakness and misreads Miss Havisham’s intentions, seeing what suits his fantasies rather than what reality supplies. These are not just plot devices, they’re also warnings. The FAE seduces us with the illusion that we understand others, when all we’re really seeing is our own prejudice.

The same phenomenon plays out endlessly in school leadership. If a department’s results drop, it must be because the head of department is weak, coasting, or simply not up to the job. If our results falter, well, it’s obviously because of a rogue cohort, staffing issues, or a spate of long-term absences. Never mind that both scenarios might involve precisely the same structural problems. The FAE flatters us and indicts others. It’s comforting and it’s dangerous.