Fundamental attribution error Is a cognitive bias that we encounter every day, and that is being researched more often than others. But let's start with a little story.
I have a business meeting at 16:00. By five minutes I was already there. But my friend was not there. He did not appear even after five minutes. And after 10 too. Finally, when the clock was 15 minutes past four, he appeared on the horizon. “However, what an irresponsible person,” I thought, “you cannot cook porridge with such. It seems like a trifle, but such non-punctuality says a lot. "
Two days later, we made an appointment again to discuss some issues. And as luck would have it, I got into a traffic jam. No, not that an accident, or anything else extreme, is a common evening traffic jam in a big city. In general, I was late almost 20 minutes. Seeing my friend, I began to explain to him that the culprit was the busy roads, they say, I myself am not the kind to be late.
And then suddenly I realized that something was wrong in my reasoning. After all, two days ago, I completely and completely blamed my irresponsible friend for being late, but when I was late myself, it never occurred to me to think so of myself.
What's the matter? Why did my brain evaluate differently the identical situation that happened to me and to him?
It turns out there is a fundamental attribution error. And despite the complex name, this concept describes a fairly simple phenomenon that we face every day.
Description
Fundamental attribution error Is a concept in psychology that denotes a characteristic attribution error, that is, a person's tendency to explain the actions and behavior of other people by their personal characteristics, and their own behavior by external circumstances.
In other words, it is our tendency to judge other people differently from ourselves.
For example, when our friend gets a high position, we think that this is a favorable coincidence of circumstances, or he was just lucky - he was in the right place at the right time. When we ourselves are promoted, we are firmly convinced that this is the result of long, hard and painstaking work, but not by chance.
Simply put, the fundamental attribution error is expressed by the following line of reasoning: “I’m angry because this is the way things are, and my neighbor is angry because he’s an evil person.”
Let's take another example. When our classmate passed the exam brilliantly, we explain this by the fact that "he did not sleep all night and crammed the material" or "he was just lucky with the exam card." If we ourselves passed the exam perfectly well, then we are sure that this happened due to a good knowledge of the subject, and in general - high mental abilities.
The reasons
Why do we tend to evaluate ourselves and other people so differently? There can be several reasons for a fundamental attribution error.
- First, we a priori perceive ourselves positively, and we consider our behavior to be deliberately normal. Anything that differs from it, we evaluate as not normal.
- Secondly, we ignore the peculiarities of the so-called role position of a person. That is, we do not take into account its position in a specific period of time.
- Also, an objective lack of information plays a big role here. When a failure occurs in the life of another, we see only external factors on the basis of which we draw conclusions. But we do not see everything that happens in a person's life.
- And finally, by attributing success to our splendor, we subconsciously stimulate self-confidence, which makes us feel noticeably better. After all, double standards are the easiest way to raise self-esteem: to present yourself in a favorable light and judge yourself by good deeds, and see the intentions of others through a negative prism, and judge them by bad deeds. (Read about how to become self-confident here.)
How to deal with the fundamental attribution error
Interestingly, in experiments to reduce the fundamental attribution error, when monetary incentives were used and participants were warned that they would be held accountable for their ratings, there was a significant improvement in attribution accuracy. From this it follows that this cognitive distortion can and should be combated.
But here a logical question arises: if it is impossible to completely get rid of this, how, at least, to minimize the occurrence of the fundamental error of attribution?
Understand the role of randomness
You've probably heard the phrase: "Accident is a special case of regularity." This is a philosophical question, because the laws of the universal scale are incomprehensible to us. That is why we explain many things by chance. Why did you find yourself exactly here, right now and exactly in the position in which you are? And why are you on the IFO channel now and watching this particular video?
Few people think that the very probability of our birth is an incredible mystery. After all, for this, so many factors had to coincide that the chances of winning this space lottery are simply unimaginable. And the most amazing thing is that we have nothing to do with this!
Realizing all this and realizing that a huge number of things are beyond our control (what we call randomness), we should more easily perceive ourselves and be more indulgent towards others. After all, if the role of randomness is relevant to you, then it is just as relevant to other people.
Develop empathy
Empathy is conscious empathy for another person. It is a critical step in overcoming the fundamental attribution error. Try to put yourself in the other person's place, show empathy, look at the situation through the eyes of someone you are about to condemn.
You may need very little effort to understand much more clearly why everything turned out the way it did and not otherwise.
Read more about this in the article "Hanlon's Razor, or Why You Need to Think Better of People."
Research shows that we most often fall into the trap of fundamental attribution error when we are quick to judge what happened.
It should also be noted that if you regularly practice empathy, it will become like a habit, and it will not require much effort.
So empathy negates the impact of the fundamental attribution error. The researchers believe that this practice generally makes a person kinder.
For example, if you were cut off on the road, try to imagine that the person had some kind of trouble, and he was in a terrible hurry, and did not do it in order to show his “coolness” or just annoy you.
We cannot know all the circumstances of this act, so why not try to find a reasonable explanation for the other person's actions? Moreover, you probably remember many cases when you yourself cut others.
But for some reason we are more often guided by the principle: "If I am a pedestrian, all drivers are scoundrels, but if I am a driver, all pedestrians are rubbish."
It's also worth noting that this cognitive bias is more likely to harm us than it helps. After all, we can get into big trouble because of our emotions provoked by this error. Therefore, it is better to prevent negative consequences than to deal with them later.
If you are interested in this topic, I recommend paying attention to the most common cognitive biases.
Also, for a deeper understanding of the fundamental attribution error, take a look at the story of Stephen Covey, author of one of the most popular personal development books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
