Question

Latisha’s history teacher asked her why so many German people complied with Hitler's orders to systematically slaughter millions of innocent Jews and others. Latisha suggested that the atrocities were committed because the Germans had become unusually cruel, sadistic people with abnormal twisted personalities. Use your knowledge of the fundamental attribution error to highlight the weaknesses of Latisha’s reasoning and then propose an alternative explanation.

Answer 1

The Fundamental attribution error states that people tend to asses other others in terms of their internal characteristics, which means that people attribute others behaviour to their internal disposition, such as their personality.

Here, in this example, Latisha is committing the fundamental attribution error by explaining the behaviour of Germans to their internal disposition. She attributes the internal factors of the German people such as being unusually cruel, sadistic and twisted personalities. She completely ignores the situational factors which may be responsible for their actions.

An alternate explanation of this could be to understand the German people's situation at that time and what effect the authority of Hitler played a role in the blind obedience of the orders.