James usually does very well on tests, but he was up all night before his psychology midterm cleaning his flooded basement, and he therefore failed his exam. He tried to explain his situation to his teacher, but she thought that James's performance was caused by a tendency to avoid studying and she did not want to hear his excuse. The teacher incorrectly made a(n) _____ attribution about James's test performance.

A dispositional attribution (also called internal attribution) refers to we fact that we infer that an event or a person's behavior has to do with personal factors such as traits, abilities, or feelings, thus in a dispositional attribution we think that the performance had to do with people abilities and not with environmental situations.

In this example, James usually does very well on tests but he was up all night before his midterm cleaning his apartment and failed his test. However, the teacher attributed James's performance on personal factors (a tendency to avoid studying), instead of external environmental situations (the flood of the apartment).

Thus, the teacher made an incorrect dispositional attribution (or internal attribution) about James' test performance.