underattribute

Verb

1. To attribute insufficiently or inadequately.
   • Our tendency to overattribute behavior to dispositions and underattribute it to circumstances is known as the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). - 2000, Morton Deutsch, Peter T. Coleman, The Handbook of...
   • Because of this, particualr discernment is needed to determine whether the diagnosis is a useful narrative for understanding a person's experience, with care to neither over- nor underattribute symptoms to that...
   • Most of us tend to overattribute our successes to ourselves rather than to circumstances, and conversely to underattribute our failures to ourselves. - 2015, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive...

   Antonyms: overattribute

   1. To underestimate the role of some specified factors in causing (a particular outcome, action, or state of affairs).

   2. To tend to mistakenly believe that (a certain quality) is not present when, in fact, it is.

      • The hypothesis of interest was stated by Siegel as follows: "Women who have personal difficulty in handling aggressive impulses are more extreme than others in their judgments of hostility in film characters— some...
      • Tasks that include non-living natural kinds (e.g., clouds and rivers) generally elicit more animalistic errors (e.g., Carey, 1985; Laurendeau & Pinard, 1962; Smeets, 1973; see Nass, 1956, for discussion of content...
      • To underattribute minds —to disregard or discount or deny the experience, the suffering and joy, the thwarted ambitions and frustrated desires of a mind-having person or animal—would be a terrible sin. - 2013, Daniel C....

      Antonyms: overattribute

   3. To misattribute a work of art by asserting that the artist is a less renowned one than it actually is.

      • In the event of a sleeper consignment, the auctioneer is often not fraudulently misrepresenting the property, as he generally has no intention to erroneously underattribute and undersell the lot. - 2016, Anne Laure...
      • Claims by sellers of underattributed artworks - 2022, Martin Wilson, Art Law and the Business of Art, page 367:

      Antonyms: overattribute