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Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

nonzero.substack.com

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Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#21

Post by xsmasher »

dane-pgp wrote: post #12

> 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…

I'm pretty sure the combination of those two is 90% of the "cyclists don't obey the law" meme. When a cyclist breaks the law they make the whole out-group look bad, but a driver who breaks the law is just "one bad driver."

The other 10% is confirmation bias.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#22

Post by s1artibartfast »

narrator wrote: post #14

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…

>It only matters because if it's the circumstances, the person may improve. If it's because they are flawed, they won't improve.

It is even worse, they might not even need to be improve/reform. They could be an outstanding person in extreme or unusual circumstances.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#23

Post by wombatmobile »

63 wrote: post #5

The fundamental attribution error is the number 1 most important lesson I learned from Psych classes growing up. Being aware of it is the easiest way to be less of an asshole to people around you. I really can't overstate the importance.

Yeah, that's a useful remediation.

An even easier way to not act like an asshole is to be raised by parents who teach you to be thoughtful and polite by default.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#24

Post by wombatmobile »

The "fundamental attribution error" is an example of projection, a psychological phenomenon generated by a neural substrate, that humans do a lot.

Indeed, what is remarkable about human "consciousness" is firstly that so many humans spend so much of their time projecting reality instead of sensing and decoding it, and secondly, that they are unaware they do this.

We see things not as they are, but as our model predicts.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#25

Post by gfodor »

Literally next to my laptop right now is the book "Super Thinking" at a few pages past where this concept is introduced, which I just finished reading. (I had heard it before but never really had the definition burned in.)

Now I open HN and there it is on the front page.

Baader–Meinhof to the extreme.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#26

Post by j4yav »

wombatmobile wrote: post #23
63 wrote: post #5

The fundamental attribution error is the number 1 most important lesson I learned from Psych classes growing up. Being aware of it is the easiest way to be less of an asshole to people around you. I really can't overstate the importance.

Yeah, that's a useful remediation. An even easier way to not act like an asshole is to be raised by parents who teach you to be thoughtful and polite by default.

This puts the locus of control outside yourself, though.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#27

Post by mistermann »

dane-pgp wrote: post #12

> 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…

> 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...

I used to think that it might be worth a try for forum administrators to define this behavior as unacceptable just like any other unacceptable behavior (racism, snarkiness, flamebait, etc) that occurs on forums, as noted in the HN Guidelines [1], but then @dang informed me that improvements to human behavior in the future are impossible because people will continue to behave the way they do indefinitely, regardless of rules.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#28

Post by wongarsu »

xsmasher wrote: post #21
dane-pgp wrote: post #12

> 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…

I'm pretty sure the combination of those two is 90% of the "cyclists don't obey the law" meme. When a cyclist breaks the law they make the whole out-group look bad, but a driver who breaks the law is just "one bad driver." The other 10% is confirmation bias.

From my time as a cyclist I can tell you that all car drivers constantly disobey the law.

In truth all groups of road users consistently disobey traffic laws, the laws worth breaking just differ from vehicle to vehicle. It's easiest to condemn those that break laws that you aren't breaking, even if you yourself are no less innocent.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#29

Post by darawk »

I feel like referring to this as 'error' is a mistake. It's not an error, it's a bias. As stated in the article, it can cut both ways, depending on your valence towards the person you're evaluating.

Sometimes an action is a consequence of a person's character, sometimes its situational, and sometimes it's a mixture of both. What we should do is recognize the bias, and try to weaken its grip a bit. We live in a comparatively low threat environment relative to what that prior is tuned for, and so it's reasonable to tone it down.

But that isn't the same as treating character attribution as uniformly wrong, or uniformly right.

Re: Lee Ross and the “Fundamental Attribution Error”

#30

Post by wombatmobile »

j4yav wrote: post #26
wombatmobile wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's a useful remediation. An even easier way to not act like an asshole is to be raised by parents who teach you to be thoughtful and polite by default.

This puts the locus of control outside yourself, though.

Some of the locus of control is outside of ourself in origin. Those voices in our head keep chattering for the rest of our lives.

We can choose how we respond to them to a degree, but we can't turn them off.

To what degree can we choose? That's an interesting question, since the machine that's doing the choosing is comprised of 50% of one parent's DNA, and 50% of the other's.

But we feel like we make choices all the time, don't we?

Certainly, we consult ourselves, and ask ourselves what we want to do. Sometimes the answer comes to us, and that's what we choose.

But where does that answer that comes to us come from? And how does it get into our consciousness?

Do you want chocolate, or vanilla?

Did an answer come to you then?

Where did it come from? And why was it what it was, and not something else?

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