 Can you tell us about the fundamental attribution error? Oh, well, actually I'll tell you about the history of the fundamental attribution error. Well, the term the fundamental attribution error has a kind of strange and interesting history and it's led to some confusion. I was doing work a very long time ago. It came when Dick Nisbet, who I know you've interviewed, had done a very important series of studies and written a paper with Ned Jones on actor-observer differences. And the hypothesis that I was pushing was that people are situationists for themselves to a much greater extent than they are. I know what situations I'm responding to. So I explain my own behavior in terms of situations. I explain other people's behavior in terms of their dispositions. And when he showed it to me, I said, well, that's really interesting, Dick. But the fundamental thing is that people overestimate the degree of cross-situational consistency and they make trait attributions in general when they shouldn't. And with absolutely no hesitation, Ross says, yeah, Dick, that's right, but you're missing the main point, which is that everybody for everything is too much of a dispositionist and too little focus on situation. Then in a later paper when I was discussing various kinds of errors and biases, in distinguishing my work from what I thought was the central message of social psychology, I had said, well, the fundamental error is the tendency to underestimate the impact of the situation. And what I meant by that was not that it was fundamental in the sense that it was irreducible. No, what I meant is it was an error in the most fundamental task that we attempt in life, which is to say, what does that situation tell me about the actor? What does that situation tell me about the observer? And the term fundamental attribution error referred to the fact that people characteristically make an error in that fundamental task. And then a while later he comes up with the name for that. It's a fundamental attribution error, and that's now become a staple of psychology. Now you read an editorial and someone said that guy made the fundamental attribution error. There are two concepts that people understand about that. Ecolomists, you can count on columnists to know a man from social psychology. One is fundamental attribution error, the other is cognitive dissonance. How can we reduce the effect of the fundamental attribution error? Well, I think there's a limit to how much you can do. I know that all day long I'm making the error. I mean, I know that in the abstract. So I think there is a limit. On the other hand, knowing we're subject to it. I mean, if I hear myself say, you know, he's a very hostile guy, I'm like, what exactly is the evidence for that? Well, he shouted at his kid at the picnic. I mean, how good is that evidence really? So if you have the concept clearly in mind, which you can do by giving people many, many examples, I think it takes many examples, many illustrations for everyday life, of the way that we can make those mistakes. Eventually it does pack down to the principle that we can sometimes recognize, we can sometimes see the error in ourselves. And you can also point to the consistency with which situations affect people. One thing that strikes me often is that, you know, I say you should see such and such a movie, people are saying it's great and people's initial reaction to that is, oh, well, you know, I'm me, I'm not those. Now listen, if it's getting a 92% on rotten tomatoes, you're going to like it, that's an end to it. Hey, you know, every now and then you're not, actually. I mean, but you probably are. If it's getting a 34 on rotten tomatoes, unless you happen to have a real thing for the actress in that thing, then you're not going to like it. And I think people find it hard to accept that generalization, actually. But I've come, since I say that so often, to believe in really, I don't go to many movies that haven't been strongly recommended. And I've got a lot better hit rate than when I say, oh, that's the kind of movie I like. No, no, no, specifically how much people like that. Because there are some stimuli that are just very powerful and we make a mistake in assuming that we're not going to be one of those people. We way overestimate our own individuality and our own idiosyncrasy. But that isn't the fundamental failing that human beings have. The fundamental failing that really is much more basic is the tendency to assume that the way we see the world is the way the world really is. That other reasonable people should see it the same way and if they don't see it the same way, it's because there's something wrong with them. Some bias that's affecting them. It can be the propaganda to which they've been exposed. It can be some failing in their intelligence. It can be something about their education, but we readily think that when people disagree with us, it's because there's something wrong with them, not something wrong with us, or at least not something that's affecting both of us. That's making us simply disagree.