A keystone concept in psychology is known as the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or over-attribution effect), which is the tendency for people to overemphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for how a person acts while underemphasizing situational explanations. In Western culture especially, where we focus so much on the individual, there is a strong cognitive bias to assume that a person’s actions depend on what “kind” of person they are, rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person.
