INTRODUCTION
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Introduce attribution theory (Heider 1958) and define it as how people interpret causal relationships in the world.
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Heider (1958), one of the first people to do research on this theory, claimed that people actively seek to explain the behaviours demonstrated by thepeople around them, rather than being passive observers. People tend to make inferences about the reasons for behavior, such as intentions and responsibility over actions
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However, attribution theory is highly flawed as there can be errors in attribution, such as the
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE – Ross, 1977) and the Self-Serving Bias (SSB – Miller and
Ross, 1975).
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This paper will compare the two errors in attribution, seeking the similarities that are present in both errors.
THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
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FAE: When people overestimate the role of dispositional factors in an individual’s behavior and underestimate the situational factors
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Theory argues that people are more likely to explain another person's behavior by pointing to dispositional factors rather than situational
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Observing others for information -> illogical conclusions
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Ex: Rachel Berry (Glee) plays a very snobby, stuck-up, self-centered kind of person and her personality on TV by some is extended to her real-life self Lea Michele.
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One attributes her on-screen characteristics to her personality (dispositional) and don't acknowledge the fact that she auditioned for it (situational)
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Psychologists argue that people -> adaptable, flexible, and ever-changing
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Do not think of themselves as a "type" of person, not enough info to make a decision about other ->attribute behavior to disposition
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Ex: people are more likely to say that a murderer is evil rather than refer to environmental factors as explanations
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Study: Jones and Harris (1967) investigated whether people would attribute apparently freely chosen behaviors to disposition and apparently chance-directed behaviors to situation.
Participants read pro and anti Fidel Castro essays and asked to rate the pro-castro attitudes of the writers. "Freely Chosen" and "Coin tossed" participants rated the people who spoke pro
Castro as having a more positive attitude towards Castro. Participants were unable to see the

influence of situational factors on the writers and could not refrain from attributing sincere belief (dispositional factors) to the writers.
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MECG
THE SELF SERVING BIAS
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SSB is when people take credit for their success, attributing them to dispositional factors, and dissociate themselves from their failures, attributing them to situational factors. (Miller and
Ross, 1975)
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(Lau and Russel, 1980) found out that American football coaches and players tend to credit their wins to internal factors – for example, being in good shape, training hard, natural talent and they tend to associate their failures with external factors – for example, injuries, weather, fouls committed or the referee.
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Greenberg et al. (1982) argue that the reason we do this is to protect our self-esteem. For example, if we attribute our success to dispositional factors it makes us feel good about our self, and if we associate our failures with situational factors, we let ourselves know that it was out of our control and it wasn’t our fault that we were not successful.
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It can also be argued that cognitive factors play a role in SSB. According to Miller and Ross
(1975), if we expect to succeed at a task, and if we do indeed succeed at a task, we attribute it to our skill and ability. However, if we expect to succeed at a task, and we in fact do not succeed, we tend to attribute it to situational factors that brought about this unexpected outcome.
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What has been described so far is commonly observed in people in the western world. There is, however, an exception. It has been found that people who are severely depressed tend to make more dispositional attributions thus blaming themselves for feeling miserable.
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It also seems that there are cultural differences in SSB. In studies carried out by Kashima and
Triandis (1986), significant cultural differences were found between US and Japanese students.
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In their experiment, Kashima and Triandis asked participants to remember details of slides of scenes from unfamiliar countries. When asked to explain their performance, the Americans tended to attribute their success to ability while the Japanese tended to explain their failures in terms of their lack of ability. This is called a modesty bias.
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A cross-cultural study on self serving bias was performed by: Higgins and Bhatt (2001). The aim of their experiment was to investigate the role of culture in self-serving bias (to see whether it is an etic – culturally universal) or an emic (culturally specific)
COMPARISON
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The most apparent similarity between the FAE and the SSB is that they were both initially researched by Ross –The SSB in 1975 and the FAE in 1977. Both are also errors in attribution theory, since they propose flaws in attribution theory and how people explain behavior.

CONCLUSION
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Although the FAE and SSB talk about two different errors in attribution, they are both similar in that they both demonstrate flaws in Attribution Theory
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The FAE and SSB also both have significant research support, as mentioned above. Both errors in attribution use mostly non-experimental research methods.
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Culture has an effect on both the FAE and SSB. In FAE, people from collectivist cultures consider the larger group whereas people from western cultures lean towards the individual. The SSB also has the same element of cultural attitudes.