People Assume It’s You, Not The Situation

The 'fundamental attribution error' is a psychology term used to describe how we often make mistakes in interpreting why people have done something.

'People have a tendency to give personality based explanations for other peoples behavior more weight than situational factors. ....(But) people tend to explain their OWN behavior to situational factors more than personality factors.'

An example of this is, if I see you shout at your 4 year old in the shopping centre I am likely to conclude that you are mean, angry and impatient but if I shout at my four year old I know that it is because I am sleep-deprived, running late and at the end of my tether because he keeps wandering off and then hiding from me.




Susan Weinschenk says that knowing about the fundamental attribution error doesn't seem to stop us from continuing to make it. Which is sort of reassuring to me because I repeatedly notice myself doing it!  She suggests we:

'try and build in ways to cross-check your own biases. If your work requires you to make a lot of decisions about why people are doing what they are doing, you might want to stop before acting on your decisions and ask yourself, “Am I making a Fundamental Attribution Error?”

My approach is to build some flexibility into my interpretation of the event by brainstorming as many different explanations as I can for why the person might act that way.