The correspondence bias
Gilbert and Malone define the correspondence bias as the tendency to infer a person's unique and enduring dispositions from behaviour that the situation fully explains. The paper sketches the intellectual history of the problem in social psychology, describes four mechanisms that produce distinct forms of the bias (lack of awareness, unrealistic expectations, inflated categorisations and incomplete corrections), and discusses how the consequences of correspondence-biased inferences may perpetuate such inferences.
Gilbert and Malone define the correspondence bias as the tendency to infer a person's unique and enduring dispositions from behaviour that the situation fully explains. The paper sketches the intellectual history of the problem in social psychology, describes four mechanisms that produce distinct forms of the bias (lack of awareness, unrealistic expectations, inflated categorisations and incomplete corrections), and discusses how the consequences of correspondence-biased inferences may perpetuate such inferences.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-25 via OpenAlex.
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Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). 'The correspondence bias.' Psychological Bulletin, 117(1), 21-38. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21