A little essay I wrote for my Psych class last quarter, about change blindness, peoples tendency to see other people (and themselves) in groups, a brief analysis of how I perceive these things with my friends, and a slightly political observation of the attribution error. I found the subjects to…
fundamental attribution error: tendency to over-emphasise dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors when making attributions about the cause of another person’s behaviour
- dispositional factors include personality traits, like motivation or willingness to work
- situational…
When did this game of life become so unfair that we blame individuals rather than the circumstances that prevent them from achievement? This is known as the fundamental attribution error in human reason. When other people screw up it’s because they are stupid or losers but when I screw up it’s because of my circumstances. The self illusion makes the fundamental attribution error an easy fallacy to accept.
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| — | Bruce Hood, The Self Illusion (via joeltheintrepid) |
(From Wikipedia):
In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors.
Basically, we tend to blame a person’s character for their behavior instead of the circumstance. Realizing this and adjusting judgements does a whole lot towards saving the world.
In fact, many tips are based off of this notion.
