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From my experience many conflicts and misunderstandings that I experienced (in the past - I am over it now) had to do with a very common error in judgment that I have heard called a “Fundamental Attribution Error.”

In other words an error in judgement. Does (or did) that happen to you too?

For example when you see someone doing something that really annoys you, to what do you attribute the cause of their action? Is it the character of this person, or the nature of his individual personal situation?

From what I have experienced and observed, most of us jump to conclusions about the person rather than the external factors that might contribute to their behavior.

When  you see a homeless person (we assume they are homeless anyway) on the subway panhandling for money, what are you likely to think - the first thing that pops into your mind? “What’s up with this loser? Why don’t they just get a job like the rest of us? Don’t they have any self-respect at all?”

Before I was sufficiently evolved as a human being that’s what I thought. I never asked questions like these, “What is it about our society that gives rise to such things? What has happened in this unfortunate person’s life to have led to this necessity?”

This is a difference in attribution that sociologists call “Fundamental Attribution Error.”

It appears that people (other than us) tend to have a default assumption that what a person does is based more on what “kind” of person he is, rather than the social, biological, or environmental forces at work on that person. This default assumption leads to people sometimes making erroneous explanations for behavior.

Some think this is because of perspective. When we observe other people, the person is the primary reference point. When we observe ourselves, we are more aware of the forces acting upon us. So, attributions for others’ behavior are more likely to focus on the person we see, not the situational forces we can’t see that are acting upon them.

How can we reduce the error’s effects?

That is my question for you. No doubt there are a number of “debiasing” techniques that have been found effective in reducing the effect of the fundamental attribution error. What are they? Have you any experience with them?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Conflict Coaching, Facilitation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.