Can We Stop Thinking Others are to Blame?

We’ve all seen it before.

It’s early in the morning, and you’re in your car commuting to work. You had a good night’s sleep. You feel calm and relaxed, perhaps you listen to music or the latest episode of your favorite podcast. The day has barely begun, and you haven’t had any aggravations yet. Or only really minor ones, doesn’t matter. Feeling recuperated and energized, you plan ahead on how you’re going to tackle the challenges of the day.

Driving almost leisurely, but not really slowly (perhaps even a bit past the speed limit), you take a peek at the rearview mirror and suddenly notice that the car behind you is dangerously close. Your initial calm has now been replaced by startle.

Yes. It’s official. The jerk is tailgating you. He honks his horn twice, maybe even flashes his headlights a few times, as he rushes you to change lanes and give way to his majesty.

You immediately feel outraged. You go berserk. How can a human being do this? Has he no decency? Among the usual murderous thoughts, you secretly wish your car were fitted with a missile launcher. You hit your horn really long and hard, swear like mad, maybe even roll down the window and yell out loud.

Welcome to the dominions of the uncanny Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). The FAE is a well researched cognitive bias whereby we tend to attribute our own mistakes to circumstance, but the mistakes of others to character flaws. Hence the name, attribution error. It runs rampant and is very easy to fall prey to, hence fundamental.

The FAE is essentially a sampling error. We know everything about ourselves: our history, our thoughts, our feelings, our problems, our aspirations, our families, our social context. In a nutshell, the whole of our circumstances. Whereas regarding others, we are severely crippled in that we only get to see their outward behaviors. And this is why we think others are to blame.

Research suggests that the correlation between behavior and circumstance is four times stronger than the correlation between behavior and character.

This is not to say that character does not play a role. It does. Character matters. But again, circumstance is a 4x stronger predictor of behavior.

Backing up to that guy who was tailgating you. Maybe he was late for an important meeting with his vice-president. Maybe he was late to work the third day in a row, and only yesterday his boss reprimanded him about it. Now we’re painting a very different picture, wouldn’t you agree?

So, what are we to do about the Fundamental Attribution Error? Does it have a cure?

Unfortunately, no. It’s one of those biases that are deeply ingrained within our minds. But it can be reduced to acceptable levels. Possible remedies:

• Be mindful of the existence of the error. When judging someone’s behavior, silently remind yourself that it may not be caused by character. He may be a normal human being under abnormal circumstances;
• When in doubt, give people the benefit of the doubt;
• See if you can observe that person under different, better circumstances. That way you may be able to tell character from circumstance;
• See if the behavior is consistent, or if it changes overtime.

Rationality can be a source of inner peace.

Parting thoughts:

At the heart of the FAE lies an implied comparison: we’re comparing someone’s behavior to what we think we’d do, but under our own particular circumstances. Not really a fair comparison, is it? We are essentially comparing our insides to people’s outsides. Scientifically speaking, not a solid or valid comparison. Comparing ourselves to others is very difficult to pull off coherently.

When doing comparisons, it is much, much easier to do it right if we compare our present selves to our former selves.

What do you think about the FAE? Can you contribute an example? Leave a comment.