Attribution Bias Everywhere

Particularly this one, "actor-observer bias":

"In psychology, people are known to display an actor-observer bias, when actors tend to attribute their own behavior to their circumstances (i.e., situation causes) and the behaviors of those we observe to their dispositions (i.e., person causes) when the situation is not desired.

"Following Jones and Nisbett, the actor-observer bias is distinguished from Ross's fundamental attribution error, which is people's general tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations and underemphasize situational ones." (wikipedia.org)

In other words, "if the situation is bad and if others do it, it's their fault; if I do it, it's not my fault, it's because of the situation I'm in."

And "if the situation is good and if others do it, it's the situation, not their ability; if I do it, it's because of ME and not the situation."

The former:

• "I inherited the problem." (President Obama, on numerous occations when things are bad)

The latter:

• "I caused the Dow to rise 41%." (Robert Khuzami, Director, Division of Enforcement, SEC, 8/5/09, from a post at Zerohedge.com. Yes, yes, he was joking of course, right?)
  
  "Before I joined the Division in March, the Dow was struggling around 6500 points. Now the Dow is over 9200. So am I really responsible for a 41% increase in the Dow? I am".
  
  
• "I saved the economy from catastrophe."(President Obama, 8/7/09)
  
  "While we have rescued our economy from catastrophe, we have also begun to build a new foundation for growth".

And an old favorite of the latter:

• "I created the Internet." (Then-Vice PresidentAl Gore, 3/9/1999, on CNN Interview)
  
  "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

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