Attributing Holocaust perpetration to authoritarian personality may itself be a fundamental attribution error.

Evidence

It may also be that the hypothesized link between authoritarianism and sup­ port for the Nazi genocide is an example of the fundamental attribution error, a term that refers to a widespread tendency to attribute people’s actions to per­ sonality dispositions rather than to external, situational factors. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 461

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on chapter 56’s own treatment of the fundamental attribution error (people over-attribute others’ behavior to personality) and chapter 45 on situational obedience. — connects to: People over-attribute others’ behavior to personality and underweight situational constraints — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 356; Authoritarianism is not a single coherent psychological construct — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 525; Authoritarians make far more attribution errors than non-authoritarians (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Authoritarians make far more attribution errors than non-authoritarians #complicates (0.75)
• Early authoritarian personality research hoped to blame anti-Semitism on deviants #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1594