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The fundamental attribution error
So if people search for sufficient explanations, is there any
evidence that they prefer internal or external causes? There certainly
is. Twenty-five years of research on the fundamental attribution error
<REF>(Ross, 1977), also known as the correspondence
bias <REF>(Jones, 1990), has  shown
that people consistently ignore external situational explanations
in favor of internal dispositional explanations. This means that
people are more likely to conclude that something about the person
caused her behavior rather than something about the situation,
even when the situationalready provides an adequate explanation.
For example, when we see someone fail to answer a difficult question,
or behave rudely in an awkward situation, we are more likely to
attribute the behavior to his lack of ability and personality
than to the difficulty of the task or unpleasantness of the situation.
Similarly, when we see a person succeed on an easy task, we are
more likely to attribute the behavior to her high ability than
we are to the task's ease - which helps explain, at least in part,
why Alex Trebek and Regis Philbin both look smart even though
the answers are printed out for them.
A question that has emerged, however, is whether the fundamental
attribution error is a universal tendency. Recent work suggests
that the fundamental attribution error may be more common in  individualistic
cultures, <glossary term> where the theme of individual
autonomy is deeply ingrained in the culture, than in collectivist
cultures, <glossary term>, where the cultural themes emphasize
group-based relations. Choi, Nisbett, and Norenzayan <REF>(1999),
for example, found that U.S. participants were more likely to
commit the fundamental attribution error than were participants
from China.
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