Kahneman: People mistakenly attribute situational behavior to internal personality traits
Daniel Kahneman · Daniel Kahneman: Algorithms Make Better Decisions Than You · Jul 22, 2025 · at 22:13
Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman explains the fundamental attribution error and situational psychology on The Knowledge Project.
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“Behaviors don't necessarily reflect the personality, but behaviors have a lot to do with the situation. And so if people behave in strange ways, look at the situation they're in, and what are the pressures in the situation that make them act as well. So there is a bias that the social psychologists, well-known social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error, and that means that when you see people acting in some way, you think that it's because of their personality that they do it. That may not be the case. It's Quite likely that the situation is making them do it.”
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