Imagine you came to work and saw your colleague tapping the table. You think, “What a bad character he has.” At this time, your colleague thinks about how on the way to work someone pushed him and then screamed at him. “Anyone in my place would be angry,” he said. We can’t get into people’s heads and understand why they behave in one way or another. Instead, we tend to explain people’s behavior by their characteristics, and we often explain our own behavior by external circumstances. Thus, the fundamental error of attribution is the tendency of a person to explain the actions and behavior of other people by their personal characteristics, rather than by external factors and situations.

There were a number of fine experiments confirming this phenomenon, but Harry did not want to go into detail.

Hpmor