Why do we tend to hold others accountable for their misbehavior and excuse ourselves for the same behavior?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The tendency to infer the motives and traits of others through observation of their behavior is referred to as the attribution process. Attributions are inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others' behaviors, and their own behavior. Social psychologists describe two types of attributions: internal and external attributions. In internal attributions, we attribute people's behavior to internal factors such as their personality traits and decisions. In external attributions, we attribute people's behavior to their circumstances or external forces. In addition to the external-internal dimension, Bernard Weiner argues that people also focus on the stability of the causes underlying the behavior. Attributions are only inferences and people tend to be biased in the way they make attributions. The fundamental attribution error is an observer's bias in favor of internal attributions in explaining others' behavior. In general, we are likely to attribute our own behavior to situational causes and others' behavior to dispositional causes. We often take credit for our successes, but blame our failures on someone or something else. This is because situational factors are more apparent to the actor than to an observer.