Person A sees Person B nodding off during work and thinks: “He said he loves watching TV. He must’ve stayed up late watching it again.”
But in reality, B had spent the night in the emergency room because his child was sick and hadn’t gotten any sleep.
The act of trying to figure out the cause of someone’s behavior is called attribution. The Fundamental Attribution Error is a psychological tendency to overlook external factors—like someone’s environment or situation—and instead assume their actions are caused by internal traits like personality or motivation.
A has also fallen asleep at work before, but when that happened, he justified it by blaming the stuffy air in the office or his exhaustion from having too much work.
When we fail to recognize this bias, we can become overly judgmental of others while giving ourselves a free pass. But if we try to think, “There’s probably a good reason for that,” or “Maybe they couldn’t help it,” we can start seeing people with more warmth and understanding.