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Attributing behavior to the individual's disposition or personality. Example: Assuming someone is quiet because they are introverted.

Attributing behavior to external factors, events, or situational demands. Example: Explaining someone's lateness due to heavy traffic.

The tendency to overemphasize internal characteristics and underestimate external factors when explaining others' behaviors. Example: Blaming a waiter's poor service on their laziness rather than considering they might be overwhelmed.

The tendency to attribute one's successes to internal factors and failures to external factors. Example: A student attributes an A grade to their intelligence (internal) but blames a poor grade on an unfair exam (external).

The tendency for individuals to make external attributions for their own behaviors while making internal attributions for the identical behavior of others. Example: A person justifies their own outburst as a reaction to stress but sees someone else's outburst as aggressiveness.

The belief that the world is fair and that people get what they deserve. Example: Assuming that a wealthy person must have worked harder than others.

A theory that describes the conditions under which we make dispositional attributes to the behavior we perceive as intentional. Example: Attributing someone's donation to a charity to their altruistic personality.

A model that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and whether the behavior occurs. Example: Noticing a friend is only grumpy around a particular colleague and concluding that the colleague's behavior is the cause.

A cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. Example: Believing that all of one's failures are due to external factors and not recognizing one's own role.