make attributions to understand the world around them in order to seek reasons for an individual's particular behavior. When people make attributions they are able to make judgments as to what was the cause or causes of a certain behavior. Attribution theory is the study of what systems and models people implement to make attributions about the behavior of others. It attempts to explain how we use information about the social environment to understand others' behavior. One common bias people exhibit in attribution is called the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to attribute others' actions or behaviors to internal traits as opposed to external circumstances. An example of how this may manifest in the real world as pointed out in research by Furnham and Gunter is how one's view of the justness of poverty may be affected by one's financial status: one who has not experienced poverty may see it as being more or less deserved than might someone who has been impoverished at some point. In this way, fundamental attribution error can be a barrier to empathizing with others, as one does not consider all the circumstances involved in the actions of others. Two-step process of Attributions Unlike conventional attribution theories, the two-step process of attribution suggests that people analyze others' behaviors first by automatically making an internal attribution and only then considering possible external attributions that may affect the initial inference. Heider's most valuable contribution to the topic of attribution is the dichotomy: When attempting to decide why individuals behave a certain way, we can make either an internal or external attribution. Internal attribution, (also called dispositional attribution or personal attribution), is the assumption that an individual is acting a certain way due to something about that individual, such as personality, character, or attitude. External attribution, also called situational attribution, is the inference that an individual is acting a certain way due to the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most individuals would respond in the same way in that similar situation. Essentially, people first assume that a person's behavior is due to his or her personality, and then attempt to modify this attribution by also factoring in the person's situation. Jones's correspondent inference theory According to Edward Jones and Keith Davis's correspondent inference theory, people learn about other individuals from behavior that is chosen freely, that