overattribution

Overattribution is a cognitive tendency to explain events by attributing them to a single cause, often a person, a trait, or a dominant factor, while downplaying or ignoring other contributing factors. It is a form of causal oversimplification and can occur in everyday judgment as well as in research, media, and policy contexts. The phenomenon is related to attribution theory and to biases such as the fundamental attribution error and the availability heuristic, which can bias people toward a salient or easily recalled cause.

Common manifestations include attributing success or failure to innate ability without acknowledging context or effort, or explaining social outcomes to a single factor despite multicausal processes. In media and politics, overattribution can lead to simplistic narratives that credit or blame one factor for complex events. In organizational or clinical settings, problems may be traced to a single root cause rather than a network of interacting influences.

Implications include misdiagnosis, ineffective interventions, reinforcing stereotypes, and poor decision-making. Overattribution can also hinder critical thinking by narrowing consideration of alternatives and by promoting blaming attributions that ignore systemic or contextual factors.

Mitigation strategies involve training in systems thinking and causal reasoning, explicitly listing alternative explanations, and using multi-cause frameworks or causal diagrams to structure analysis. Encouraging evidence gathering that tests competing hypotheses and seeking diverse perspectives can reduce overattribution and improve judgment.

See also: fundamental attribution error, causal reasoning, oversimplification, multi-causal thinking.