Ultimate Attribution Error
A group-level attribution error where one explains an outgroups' negative behavior as flaws in their personality, and positive behavior as a result of chance or circumstance, where conversely they explain an *ingroups'* negative behavior as a result of chance or circumstance, and positive behavior as strengths in their personality.
Origin
Social psychologist Thomas Pettigrew introduced the concept in a 1979 paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, extending Gordon Allport's earlier analysis of prejudice in The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Pettigrew showed that the fundamental attribution error operates at a group level: observers systematically attributed outgroup failures to character flaws and outgroup successes to situational luck — the mirror image of how they evaluated their ingroup.