Hostile Attribution Bias

What is Hostile Attribution Bias?

Hostile attribution bias, also called hostile attributional bias, is the tendency to read harmful or aggressive intent into another person's actions when the intent is ambiguous. Someone bumps into you on a crowded street, and you assume they did it deliberately. The bias lies in inferring hostility beyond what the evidence supports, not in recognizing a clear threat.

Kenneth Dodge's review of the research describes experiments in which aggressive boys interpreted ambiguous peer provocations more hostilely and anticipated more retaliation than comparison children. How they understood the event was connected to how they expected to respond.

Why hostile attribution bias matters

A hostile interpretation can turn an uncertain event into a conflict. If you treat the person who bumped into you as an attacker, your response may provoke the anger you initially assumed was there.

One useful check is to separate what happened from what you inferred. “They bumped into me” is an observation; “they wanted to hurt me” is an explanation that needs evidence. Consider other explanations without dismissing actual signs of danger. Awareness alone does not make every judgment accurate.

Intentionality bias concerns interpreting actions as intentional, even when hostile intent is not the specific issue.