![]() ![]() Despite the obvious situational constraints, perceivers still tend to infer that the speaker holds a personal attitude corresponding to the speech (e.g., a pro-marijuana attitude). For example, many studies have exposed research participants to a speech supporting a given topic that was created in response to an authority figure’s directions (e.g., a debate coach who requested a pro-marijuana speech). ![]() The correspondence bias (CB) is a related tendency to draw correspondent trait inferences from situationally constrained behavior. To the extent that perceivers fail to appreciate the power of the experimenter’s orders, they fall prey to the FAE. For example, people typically express surprise that people will follow an experimenter’s orders to deliver potentially lethal shocks to an innocent person ( Milgram 1963, cited under Background References). In part, the popularity of the FAE is due to its uniquely social psychological message: ordinary people typically underestimate the importance of social situations. For instance, if a college professor explained a student’s exam failures as due to something about the student’s character or intelligence-rather than lack of study opportunity or poor teaching-the professor might be seen as committing the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error (FAE) suggests that social perceivers attribute other people’s behavior primarily to dispositional causes, rather than to situational causes.
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