Hi Aleksandra,
Thank you for your question!
Attributional biases is the umbrella term that encompasses fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, self-serving bias, optimism bias and just-world bias. For the MCAT, you must be able to distinguish these different categories:
- The actor/observer bias is the tendency to assign our own behaviour to a situation.
- Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to assign other's behaviour to their personalities.
- Self-serving bias includes the tendency to attribute our successes to our personalities and our failures to our situations.
- Optimism bias is the tendency to think that bad things happen to others, not to us
- The just world bias is the tendency to think the world is fair.
Essentially, the actor/observer bias is the tendency to blame our own actions on situational factors while assigning dispositional causes to the actions of others. This is essentially a combination of the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias. We have all the information about our situation. The distinction here is that fundamental attribution error focuses only on other's behaviour and the self serving bias focuses only on our own behaviour whereas the actor/observer bias focuses on both.