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Here's a question that I've been wondering about for a while: What happens if your fundamental attributions grow up from proximate personal narratives into a social philosophy? Perhaps one where you understand yourself as some worthy ingroup whose shortcomings are primarily functions of imposed circumstance, with the shortcomings of outsiders primarily being functions of their character failings? (Yes, you can see th…
Attribution Error gets doubly dangerous when combined with another cognitive bias, the Out-group Homogeneity Effect[0], which leads to the Group Attribution Error.[1]
This latter error leads people into thinking the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole, so "When someone in my tribe does something bad, they're not really in my tribe (No True Scotsman / it's a false flag)" whereas "When someone in the other tribe does something bad, that proves that everyone in that tribe deserves to be punished".
I think the author is not exaggerating by suggesting that solving Attribution Error could dramatically change the outcome of human civilisation, but just identifying it as a problem isn't even half the battle. Perhaps the best we can do for now is develop some sort of polite shorthand for saying "You might be Attribution Erroring", which can be used for calling out bad news reporting, bad social media posts, and unhelpful framing of issues when people are having conversations. Then we need to train our brains to always be looking out for this problem, like a bad "code smell" when doing a code review.
It only matters because if it's the circumstances, the person may improve. If it's because they are flawed, they won't improve. So everyone thinks they'll improve and everyone else will continue in accordance with their character.
What's interesting about evidence law is that you can't mention prior bad acts to a jury to say someone did something criminal in the past and acted in conformance with their character in the current instance. For example, it's not permitted to say the defendant in a criminal trial robbed banks in the past so he was the bank robber in the current criminal trial.
I think the "fundamental" reports to the "attribution", rather than to the "attribution error": behavior is erroneously explained by fundamental attributions to the person, i.e. "he's a jerk". In this sense there is no debate of having a "fundamental" attribution error.
But I'm probably wrong.
Idaho man slices kiwis for his 200th Guinness World Records title https://www.interestingnews.club/2021/07/idaho-man-slices-ki...
Is it the circumstances or the person's character? Does it even matter? It only matters because if it's the circumstances, the person may improve. If it's because they are flawed, they won't improve. So everyone thinks they'll improve and everyone else will continue in accordance with their character. What's interesting about evidence law is that you can't mention prior bad acts to a jury to say someone did something…
If someone does something bad, that's a very small part of humanity.
If you could do that one time in one thousand, that person is you.
It leads to design. Who hasn't vandalised something. If hundreds of people walk past something drunk every night build in redundancies, it doesn't mean people are bad, if a small part of humanity in a small part of their lives can screw it up then it's a design issue.
Personally I hate nothing more than ambiguous places to line up, it creates issues that don't exist.
https://www.amazon.com/Person-Situation-Perspectives-Social-...
> Sure, the people in your tribe may do bad things, but only in response to extraordinary circumstances. Attribution Error gets doubly dangerous when combined with another cognitive bias, the Out-group Homogeneity Effect[0], which leads to the Group Attribution Error.[1] This latter error leads people into thinking the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole, so "When some…
FWIW, we tried this against (what is now know as) political correctness, and now I'm starting to see people actively defend political-correctness-as-such. Not saying it can't work, but it might be important to make sure it's a impolite shorthand. Other than that, though, this sounds like a good idea.