May 2, 2019 • 34 mins
How do we consider and predict the actions and intentions of others? How much do we lean on an individual’s presumed internal disposition versus the particulars of their situation? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe consider the fundamental attribution error, which breaks down the errors and even dangers of causal cognition.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And we're back with part two of
our discussion of the fundamental attribution error, our tendency to
(00:23):
overestimate disposition all causes of behavior like innate character traits
and attitudes you have and underestimate the role of situational
influences on how people act. Yeah, And we kicked off
the first episode by talking about the classic sci fi
horror film Alien and uh, you know, figuring out the
characters and the motivations and the actions of of Ripley
(00:46):
and Dallas in the early goings of that film. Yeah,
specifically in the scene where Dallas gets back with you know,
John Hurd has a an alien face hugger stuck to
his face and he says, let us in the ship,
and Ripley says, no, I can't do that. Unfortunately, she
gets ignored overridden. They come inside anyway, and we discussed
(01:06):
what caused them to make the decisions they make. Now,
that was in the context of uh, emphasizing the distinction
between situational explanations and dispositional explanations. You could say Ripley
was trying to obey quart quarantine orders because she's orderly
and logical and calm under pressure. Or you could say
that she was doing it because maybe the cabin was
(01:28):
cold and she was uncomfortable, or because she was nervous
because of the strange situation they were in. And of course,
in a way, both those things can be true, like
people's actions are always an outgrowth of both who they
are as a person and what they bring to the table,
but also of the situation they're in and the unique
circumstances they face. And the the issue with fundamental attribution
(01:49):
error is just that we tend to overestimate the role
of the former and underestimate the role of the ladder. Yeah,
we want to we want to explain everything, uh, you know,
based on it, like a simplistic Dungeons and Dragons alignment
table that always explains their behavior. I guess a lot
of people aren't familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. Robert, can
you briefly explain what alignments are in D and D? Okay,
(02:10):
so it's almost impossible that you haven't seen this, and
by you, I mean everybody listening memified yea, yeah, you've
seen ammified. But there will be this this grid right
of of what nine squares showing where you are on
on a grid of of lawful neutral and um and
(02:32):
chaotic tendencies as well as on good neutral evil tendencies.
So these these grids are these are the two axes
and the cross reference, right, So you can be chaotic
good or chaotic neutral or chaotic evil. You can be
lawful good, lawful evil, that kind of thing, right, And
it's so you know, it's a it's it's a guide
in Dungeons and Dragons to determine how players are going
(02:55):
to role play their characters and how they're going to
interact with monsters and non player characters, and how a
dungeon master is going to incorporate those beings as well,
uh and how and and and so forth. But I
think that the memification of it really shows sort of
the the simple nature of it at times, you know,
(03:17):
where it's like, Okay, we're gonna I'm gonna take nine
characters from this television series I like, or from politics
or from what have you, and put them on that chart.
Put them on that chart and just boil them down
to um to to. This is one statement of their identity.
But one of the funny things is, I think the
more realistic and complex the characters and the story are,
(03:39):
the harder it is to fit them into a grid
evenly right, Because the more realistic people are, the more
their their behavior varies, the less consistent they are in
how their ethics are applied, because in fact, in reality,
people's behavior is highly situational. You know, they act one
they're lawful good in one scenario, and then depending on
(03:59):
a few you know, the temperature of the room and
who's there and what they're feeling in the moment, they
are lawful evil or chaotic evil in a different scenario. Yeah,
you know, you're playing ads and dragons. You're you're so
concerned about the alignment of the minotaur, and we don't
think about what the labyrinth is doing to the minotaur.
So now, I think it's funny that you bring up
(04:19):
alignments with respect to alien and aliens, because I think
people don't often do this. But I've thought about it before,
and I have a hypothesis. It is that Ellen Ripley
changes alignment between alien and Aliens. Yeah. In Alien, she
I would say is lawful, neutral. She's not especially selfless
(04:40):
or helpful to other people, but she does obey the
rules and do what she's supposed to do. In Aliens,
a very different ethic emerges in Aliens. She's more rebellious
and rule breaking, but in the spirit of being good
and helpful to others. I'd say in Aliens she is
chaotic good. Okay, yeah, that would make sense. I mean,
(05:03):
she's more the she's she's a bail Will figure in
Aliens quite literally, like she she goes back in you know,
she dives down and does battle with the monster's mother.
But I love this transition. I mean some people might say, well,
that's inconsistent. You know, she acts one way in the
first movie and she's kind of a different character in
the second movie. That's what people are like. The circumstances
(05:25):
in their lives change, and it changes the way you
behave This is, in fact, the difference between Alien and
Aliens is a great illustration of the failure of F A.
E type thinking when you start trying to box people
in based on limited data points about their behavior in
the past. Absolutely, now, I guess we'll leave we'll leave
the listeners to decide what her alignment would be then
(05:47):
an alien three and in alien resurrection, alien resurrectional what
what is the alignment of a pile of horse maneuver? Oh?
I think they're beautiful things about alien resurrection. We can
fight about this someday. All right. Well, uh, well, let's
let's move on from from the the alien universe now
and jump back into our discussion of f A So
(06:11):
we've been talking about the fundamental attribution error, the tendency
we have to more often than not explain other people's
behavior through through disposition, all explanations things about them as
a person, and to underestimate the role of situational constraints
and external factors dictating their behavior. Now, one thing I
(06:32):
was wondering when I was reading about this is how
much could this vary between different different types of cultures
and backgrounds? And how much is this just a fundamental
part of every human brain? And it looks like there
is some role that culture plays in how strong the
f A E is? Right? Yeah, and and specifically, um,
what differences you're going to see between West and East,
(06:55):
between American culture and uh and and say Chinese culture
or Korean culture, Japanese culture, etcetera. Um, yeah, a little
American exceptionalism if you want to call it that in
regards to our tendency to engage f A. Let me
guess we're doing worse. Um yeah, We're We're worse. That's
that's the bed, the basic uh take home. But but
(07:17):
we're gonna get into the details here. This is uh.
This comes from a really cool paper um titled cultural,
cultural and Causal Cognition from Current Directions and Psychological Science
from the year two thousand and This is from Nisbet
and Northern Zion, who had mentioned earlier. So basically here
here's the idea. So for a while, social psychologist assumed
(07:38):
that the way we make causal judgments is universal, that is,
the same across all cultures. And this, of course is
always one of the potential problems for a given study
or a hypothesis, especially as it relates to uh uh
the inner workings of the mind? Right does does this
h view? Does it speak to all populations or is
it based on a narrow select action that doesn't account
(08:01):
for differences in culture, culture, socio economic level, gender, etcetera.
I mean, the classic example of this is when you
have a small study that is using only college students
East Coast college students in the United States and extrapolating
from that to something about the way brains work in
Homo sapiens exactly, you know, maybe not everybody's brain is
(08:23):
the same as what's prevalent among that group, right, So uh,
basically this paper speaks to that, like looks at the
cultural differences in f A to first to see if
there there is you know, there there are differences, and
then also to talk about why that could be and
so um norn Zion and nes Bit. They point out
(08:43):
that subsequent studies do seem to reveal that f A
is harder to demonstrate in Asian populations. This was like
multiple studies, multiple studies, so just to taste here of them.
Study from Miller showed that Hindu Indians lean toward a
situational explanation for ordinary life event. A nineteen ninety four
study from Morris and Ping found that Chinese newspapers and
(09:06):
Chinese students living in America were more likely to explain
murders by both Chinese and American perpetrators in situational and
societal terms, while American newspapers and American students tended to
focus on the perpetrators presumed at dispositions, their internal trades
and then uh N. Repetition of the Jones and Harris
(09:28):
experiment from sixty seven on Korean subjects found the Koreans
in the study tended to believe that the individual held
the views expressed in their essay, but flipped when they
were required to write an essay themselves and did so,
you know, more readily than than the Americans. Also in
Morris and Ping, they showed a cartoon of a fish
(09:50):
too American and Chinese test subjects, and the Chinese subjects
attributed its behavior to external and group factors, while Americans
favored internal factors. Um Another study found the same thing
with quote schematically drawn ambiguous physical events such as a
round object dropping through a surface and returning to the surface. Okay,
(10:12):
so in that last example, I think that's that's really
essential here, is because we're not even talking about human
behavior or uh, you know, the an anthropomorphized behavior of
a cartoon fish, but we're talking about the physical world itself.
We're talking about the role uh that environment has on objects.
Americans focused on the properties of the ball, while the
(10:34):
Chinese test subjects focused on the holistic reality in which
the ball existed. Oh well, that almost makes me think
of Aristotle. Like, you know, when Aristotle was trying to
explain physics, he would constantly make appeals to like the
nature of a thing determines how it moves and what
happens to it like that, Uh, you know, like a
(10:54):
rock falls because it has the characteristic of gravity. Yeah,
and that that is a huge part of what we're
going to talk about here and part of the reasoning
that they suspect. So the authors point out that it's
not a case of Asian populations not using f A,
so they do use it to some extent. What's the
exception then, Well, it's basically, if there's not enough evidence
(11:16):
to support a societal or situational explanation, then they'll fall
back on f A reasoning as well. Okay, I mean basically,
you know, it comes down to how are you going
to make judgments about about the world around you, you know,
when and where what are you going to give more
weight to. And they're saying they're going to give more
weight to situational um and environmental societal but they're also
(11:36):
going to fall back on nature as well well, so
they'll use situational reasoning when they have some kind of
foothold there, when there's some piece of information they can
draw from, right, So that that makes it look kind
of like it's like the F A E might be
sort of like a baseline human tendency, but that you
can be culturally conditioned to remember more off and to
(12:00):
take into account circumstantial information when you have access to it.
I don't know, you know, I'm not sure they didn't
really talk so much about what could be the baseline,
Like so much of this paper focuses on this is
what we see in the Western model, and this is
in the Eastern. And ultimately they make an argument for
aspects of those cultures, especially the the the key influential cultures,
namely Greek culture in the Western, Chinese culture in the East,
(12:24):
but they don't really get into it, like what would
would a non Chinese, non Western civilization, like you get
into the whole discussion of where a culture and civilization,
how it arises and how do you how would you
even strip away the tendency to lean one way or
the other. Yeah, well, I was just referring to the
fact that that you mentioned about even the Eastern test
(12:46):
subjects falling back on F A E when they didn't
have any kind of circumstances that they knew about to
appeal to. Right, it would seem to be that both
are natural tools and the toolbox. But then culture uh
would have UH an influence on which one is the
more dominant measurement system. Okay, So, but basically the authors
(13:07):
are talking about cultural differences in causal cognition here, and
they state that one of the key factors really comes
down to the differences in intellectual histories in East Asia
and in Europe from about the sixth century BC onward.
In this the authors argue, we have to consider the
differences in the key foundational intellectual cultures at play here,
(13:29):
Greek culture and Chinese culture. So these are you know
that basically like these are just very foundational um cultural
systems that end up influencing everything else. Yeah, produced early
intellectual texts that have been ceaselessly referred back to within
the region. Right, So you mentioned Aristotle earlier, and they
(13:49):
point out that the Greeks focused on analytics, categorizing objects
based on their attributes, and this was used to explain behavior. Yeah,
I mean again, this Aristotle's constantly trying to appeal to
the nature of a thing to explain why the thing
did what it did. And then meanwhile, the Chinese focused
on a holistic view that focused more on the field
(14:11):
in which the object existed and interacted. That's interesting, now,
why would this be the case. Well, the authors speculate
that China's holistic leanings might stem from an earlier shift
to intensive farming, leading to a more cooperative, collectivist culture. Meanwhile,
Greek geography prohibits extensive farming operations. Instead, there was a
(14:33):
focus on domesticated animals, on fishing, and on trade, and
this led to a highly individualistic culture. I don't know
if I'm ready to jump on board with that as
the reading of these causes in history, but I don't
know if I'd ever heard it put that way. That
is an interesting take, uh. And of course, if if
these factors are in place, we have to consider to
consider just how much of those Keystone cultures and the
(14:55):
cultures that grew out of them are based in this
line of thinking. Um, I mentioned I was going to
bring this around to dungeons and dragons earlier, so I
knew you would In reading this paper and just discussing
f A in general, um, I think back to the
monster manuals of Dungeons and Dragons. Um. You know, these
are the books that are full of page after page
(15:17):
of monster uh and stats about their abilities and some
information on their you know, their background, how they work,
and how you how you basically have the players in
a game fight it. They're just wickedly Aristotelian. Yeah, and
you know they basically function like beast theories from the
classic tradition, uh, from the classic Western tradition. Here is
a list of things, and here are their attributes. Uh.
(15:39):
But while a good monster manual, you know, we'll discuss
a little bit about the creatures nature, natural habitat and
how it functions within that habitat. I think it's safe
to say that there is a strong f A leaning
here absolutely, because the they have alignments. The alignment is
the key, Like, yeah, there's you know, there's some stats
that tell you exactly what it can do, but it's
that alignment that institute that's where my eyes often go,
(16:02):
like sometimes, you know, that's the first thing I look at, like,
what is the essential nature of this monster? Is it chaotic? Good?
Is it chaotic evil? Is it neutral? Is it lawful good? Um?
And and that will determine almost everything you need to
know about how it is probably going to interact with
the character. Yeah, they have a uniform characteristic way in
(16:22):
which they behave. And you know the fact is in reality,
Uh well, I guess in reality there aren't d n
D monsters, but if there were, they would be animals, right,
And animals do tend to react to situations then highly
ways that are highly dependent on what the situation is
that are not always predictable from just fundamental knowledge about
(16:43):
the innate character of that individual animal. Well, I mean
there are animals in the Monster Manual. They're in the back,
you know, but there, and they tend to be like
true neutral, right, which you know, again it comes down
to situation, like a a a cornered, starving animal is
going to behave differently than a than a fully fed
animal out in the open. You know, that's just part
(17:07):
of it. Well, I mean then again, on the other hand,
I mean, obviously none of what we're talking about today
denies that people have certain tendencies. There are people do
have tendencies. What I think this should down to is
that maybe monsters and characters in D and D, if
they have alignments, their alignments should be I don't know,
should apply sixty percent of the time or something, rather
(17:28):
than thinking, if you do one thing that violates your alignment,
now you've got to do an alignment check because people
just aren't like that. People sort of act out of
character based on circumstances all the time. I've seen some
material like trying to apply this kind of nuance to say, say,
creatures like the drought, uh, the the evil subterranean elves
(17:50):
of dungeons and dragons. And part of that is, I think,
you know, because there's been there, there's a lot of
increased action around the drought and creating drought characters that
were maybe not evil or not completely evil and a
little more uh complex. But I've seen some people like
discussing like what percentage of the drought population um are
evil and then which percentage happens to be good? And
(18:11):
I don't know, I guess it gets kind of messy
when you have a system that is ultimately based in
giving anybody out there like numerical stats and a definitive alignment. Well, yeah,
I mean, I guess part of the problem with D
and D is similar to the problem you're encountering in fiction, Whereas,
like you know, in fiction, a character needs to have
characteristic behavior so that you understand the role they play
(18:34):
in the story. You know, for them to just kind
of act randomly is not very efficient in terms of storytelling,
and it doesn't feel very satisfying to the audience. I'm
sure the same is true in the game. All right,
And you know, ultimately, as we've discussed on the show recently, uh,
narrative is a lie and uh and so is gaming
to a certain extent. So, but that anyway, you have
to go back to our narrative episodes for more nuance
(18:55):
on what we're talking about there. All right, time for
a quick break, but we will be right back, and
we're back in discussing this division though between East and West,
between Greek culture and Chinese culture. The author's point to
the differing strengths and weaknesses of Greek and Chinese science
and mathematics as potential evidence here. So I'm going to
(19:15):
read just a segment from their paper. Quote. Greek science
looked for universal rules to explain events and was concerned
with categorizing objects with respect to their essences Chinese science,
some people would say it was a technology only, though
a technology vastly superior to that if the Greeks was
more pragmatic and concrete and was not concerned with foundations
(19:37):
or universal laws. The difference between the Greek and Chinese
orientations is well captured by Aristotle's physics, which explain the
behavior of an object without reference to the field in
which it occurs. Thus, a stone sinks into water because
it has the property of gravity, and a piece of
wood floats because it has the property of levity. In contrast,
the principle that events always occur in some context or
(20:00):
field of forces was understood early on in China. That's interesting.
I've never heard it put that way, but uh, that
does kind of make sense based on what I know
that where more Western natural philosophers would have seen, you know,
things and bodies that the Eastern thinkers saw a world. Yeah.
So the idea here is that much of this division
(20:22):
and thinking remains despite the enhanced interconnectedness of the modern world.
And uh, the cool thing is that we can actually
test for this to a certain extent, or at least
we can test for what's known as field dependence via
a simple rod and frame test. So I can't remember
if we've actually discussed a rod and frame test on
the show before. I'm not sure. Tell me about it, okay.
(20:43):
So basically, the situation as you look through a long
box like frame at a rod. I found an image
of one of these and I put it in in
our notes, Joe. But it's essentially like looking looking into
a box like they're looking into the top of a
box and at the bottom there's a rod, and this
particular example, the rod appears to be glowing like it's
a light stick. And in this experiment, you can independently
(21:08):
rotate the rod or the frame, often via opposing joysticks
on a gaming remote, and the test subject makes adjustments
and then declares when the rod is finally vertical. So
you can adjust the the the object or subject, and
you can also adjust the field or the box in
order to get the proper alignment. And then whoever's uh
(21:30):
you know, giving the test, they can see you know
where you're making the most adjustments. Uh So, the extent
to which the orientation of the frame influences judgments of
the verticality of the rod, that is going to tell
us um, you know what your field dependence is and um.
East Asian participants, mostly Chinese, have been shown to be
(21:53):
more field dependent than Americans in experiments by g Ping
and Nesbitting. Yeah. Uh. Study from Matsuda and has Bit
highlighted these differences between American and Japanese individuals via exposure
to underwater scenes with focal fish. So that's you know,
the idea that you know there are certain fish that
(22:13):
would capture your attention. The fish in this case are
the rod and the the The underwater environment is the
box the frame. But the general ideas that subjects from
Asian cultures are more likely to see things in terms
of the environment, to take total environmental information into account. Yeah,
(22:35):
and uh. I found this really interesting having recently enjoyed
a lot of snorkeling on a on a trip one
of my family to Belieze, and uh, you know, these
beautiful coral reef environments, rich environment, a lot going on.
We'd be out there for an hour or two at
a time, and I'd have to remind myselves at times
at times to take it all in holistically, because I'd
(22:57):
have a tendency to focus in on key focal fish
or the search for larger specimens. Right, I'd be looking
around like, oh, I want I really want to see
a big ray. I want to see another one of
those nurse sharks. I want to see the remarkable larger specimens.
And then I would have to stop and realize but
but no, wait, I need to take it all in,
like it's the coral reef. Is this uh, this this
(23:18):
this rich environment, you know, it's kind of like I
guess an example of this, too might be if you
were at an art museum. You're looking at a mural,
say like an enormous you know, enormous wall piece of
big trip dick or something, and you might be tempted to,
you know, go from this detail to this detail and
take each one in the symbolism of each little detail,
and and then you have to remind yourself to back
(23:39):
up a little bit and take in the whole painting,
because it's also speaking on that level as well. Yeah,
but it can be very hard to turn the spotlight off,
especially once you've you've either if you have a preference
for one style of thinking over the other, or you
are actively engaging in one or the other. Um just
a couple of further notes from the authors on this
(24:01):
this piece on Eastern Western differences. They said that language
of the test did not impact the results, so that
would seem to prevent a purely linguistic argument for for
f A. Uh, though of course I would imagine languages
would also be affected by two and a half millennia
under a specific educational culture. Yeah, I would think so. Uh.
They point out that most individuals compared in these studies
(24:23):
had otherwise similar demographics. So yeah, for instance, the these
the tests that had say an American student in a
Chinese student or in America, they would supposedly have very
similar demographics otherwise, and then differences in cognitive abilities were
also accounted for. Well, this makes me wonder if in general,
(24:45):
bad first impressions are less of a problem in China.
I don't know, that would be. That would be an interesting,
um subject to to look up. It becomes difficult, though,
I imagine, because in a lot of this you're when
you're talking about you know, cultural tendency, these there are
there a whole lot of factors that are in play,
right right, um, that may or may not be um,
(25:07):
you know, explained by focusing on f A. I don't know, Well, Yeah.
Then again, some of the variations that we see based
on the cultures might be different depending on what types
of information or tests you're talking about. Like I could wonder,
I wonder if maybe some cultural groups would be more
likely to ignore the f a tendency on like judging
(25:30):
attitudes held you know, like in the essay reading or
something like that, but might still display it in terms
of judging how friendly somebody is, you know what I mean. Alright,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Thank you. All Right, we're back. Let's jump back in.
So we've discussed the you know, the difficulty from moving
out of one mindset into the other. Uh So, I
(25:51):
think a lot of people are probably wondering, like, what
can I what can I do? What are some steps
I can take? Especially since it's quite clear that the
fundamental attribution error is harmful and causes us to make
poor judgments that do not accurately predict people's behavior. So
they're like, factually not very helpful, and then also can
be like socially harmful, can lead us to prejudice and stereotyping.
(26:13):
And yeah, so it's not just a situation of like
you know, it's it's it's awful, but it works. No,
it does, it's it's it's it's both awful and doesn't
really work all that well. So we should we should,
you know, find ways to lean into the other ways
of figuring out, so what's going on? Yeah, And so,
as we've discussed the prevalence of f A E doesn't PEA.
It doesn't mean people never take situational factors into consideration.
(26:36):
They obviously do. It's just that on average, we consider
situation far less than we should, and we chalk things
up to disposition far more than we should. And so
are there ways to defeat this bias in ourselves and
in others, to take situation into account more comprehensively and
to become more rational. One fix is not perfect, but
(26:57):
it's very simple. It's just that FA I mentioned this earlier.
It happens easily and automatically, and it can actually, I think,
be fairly readily overcome with cognitive effort. Some biases are
just easier than others to think yourself out of, and
to a certain extent, this actually appears to be one
of them. I was reading about one study about this
(27:18):
in a textbook called Applied Social psychology Understanding and Addressing
social and practical problems by Schneider at all, and it
was discussing research that showed that, in some cases, if
you prime people to think about situational explanations, they're more
likely to consider them. Okay, that's fairly straightforward, right. If
you have students watch a silent film of a woman
(27:39):
having a conversation displaying nervous behaviors like biting her nails
or twirling her hair or something. Uh, they found that
if you prime subjects by telling them that she's discussing
a sensitive or anxious topic um versus telling the people
watching the video that she's discussing a relaxing topic, the
students who saw her acting anxious while discussing a relaxing
(28:02):
topic were more likely to attribute anxiety to her as
a character trait, whereas the ones who thought she was
discussing an anxious topic were more likely to take the
situation into consideration. So that's fairly straightforward. But it does
actually seem to help just make people aware of the
situation directly ask them to consider it. Yeah, that's that's interesting,
(28:23):
Like discussing anxiety here, because I feel like this is
an example of where, like anybody who deals with anxiety,
you probably don't think of it as like part of you, right,
I mean, we very often think of it as this
thing that I deal with as opposed to this thing
that is a part of my identity. You know. Um.
I feel like it's easy to fall into these traps
(28:46):
when considering other people. But like the same person who
was like, oh, that person she's anxious, or that she
is an anxious person, they would not view themselves in
the same light dealing with say anxiety. Of course not
end if you just tell them like, she's dealing with
an anxious or an anxiety causing situation. That mirror priming
(29:07):
gets people to take that into account and be like, oh, okay,
well the way she's acting is probably reasonable then you know,
um now obviously, so it works in that scenario. But
obviously this doesn't always eliminate f A when you ask
people to consider the situation because think of the earlier studies, right,
like the essays they would tell people so and so
(29:28):
has been assigned to this position to advocate, and it's
still and still even though they were asked to consider
the situation, they didn't consider it as much as they
should have. They think, you know, even though Jeffrey's acting
this way because he's been assigned to it's actually also
reflective of how he really is as a person. But
this one study, I guess at least, does seem to
(29:48):
indicate that sometimes priming people to consider situational factors can
make a difference. And again, I think this is because
it seems we make dispositional attributions. We commit the fa
quickly and automatically. It's something we do with no effort
at all. You just automatically jump there and and assign
people character traits based on very limited data. And I
(30:11):
think it's just more likely to take some deliberate cognitive
effort at correction to take situational factors into consideration. Thus,
if you want to reduce your commission of the f A,
try to find out more about the situations of the
people you're judging and think deliberately about situational factors and
encourage others to do the same. It appears, at least
(30:33):
in some cases, it makes a difference. Also, consider what
we talked about earlier. Remember that people were less likely
to make the FAE when they had multiple interactions with
the same person and saw how they behave differently under
different situational constraints. So you know more about people, get
to know people better. You're probably going to come to
see how they are influenced by situational factors and judge
(30:55):
them less on the basis of the single data points. Yeah. Again,
and this is all I think extremely crucial, and I
think it you know, it backs up a lot of
the advice that we're given about taking people's like full
uh you know, their history and their situation into account
when when judging them. Um. But because you know, ultimately,
(31:15):
anybody you encounter in life, they have not been assigned uh,
their personal essay by you know, somebody carrying out a
scientific test. They've been assigned their personal essay by fate,
by circumstances, by luck, by luck by, by all these
these factors in our lives. You know, then they're but
(31:35):
for fortune go you or I and um. We have
to force ourselves to open our eyes to that reality,
just as we would all want other people to be
open to that reality in ourselves. Yes, that that's absolutely right.
And one last thing I would say about recommendations for
dealing with this is remember that there's some indication that
(31:58):
may be manipulating perspective helps people with with getting rid
of the f A tendency. If you if you literally
try to look through somebody else's eyes, I mean, I
guess you could try to do this just with your imagination,
then suddenly you are less likely to ignore situational circumstances
that may be causing people to act in a way
they wouldn't normally act. Yeah, ultimately, this is what letter
(32:20):
Face was trying to do. He was just trying to
see through other people's eyes, through other people's faces. I
don't know this kind of stretch, but just to bring
it back around to films, I can't top that. I
guess we have to end there all right. But obviously
this is something we would love to hear from everyone
about because everybody has, uh has some experience with FA. Yeah,
(32:43):
you've been judged unfairly on this basis you've done this
to other people. It happens every day, right and uh
And likewise, UH, I would love to hear from listeners
who can provide some of their own insight on the
whole Western Eastern divide, Uh, you know, cultural differences there.
And then also, hey, we talked about a few different
fictions here. We talked about the alien, we talked about
(33:05):
Harry Potter, we talked about dungeons and dragons, and ever
so briefly, leather face. So we would we'd love to
hear from you the listeners, your your interpretations of those
properties based on f A as well. In the meantime,
if you want to listen to more episodes of Stuff
to Blow your Mind, head on over to Stuff to
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(33:26):
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(33:47):
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Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And we're back with part two of
our discussion of the fundamental attribution error, our tendency to
(00:23):
overestimate disposition all causes of behavior like innate character traits
and attitudes you have and underestimate the role of situational
influences on how people act. Yeah, And we kicked off
the first episode by talking about the classic sci fi
horror film Alien and uh, you know, figuring out the
characters and the motivations and the actions of of Ripley
(00:46):
and Dallas in the early goings of that film. Yeah,
specifically in the scene where Dallas gets back with you know,
John Hurd has a an alien face hugger stuck to
his face and he says, let us in the ship,
and Ripley says, no, I can't do that. Unfortunately, she
gets ignored overridden. They come inside anyway, and we discussed
(01:06):
what caused them to make the decisions they make. Now,
that was in the context of uh, emphasizing the distinction
between situational explanations and dispositional explanations. You could say Ripley
was trying to obey quart quarantine orders because she's orderly
and logical and calm under pressure. Or you could say
that she was doing it because maybe the cabin was
(01:28):
cold and she was uncomfortable, or because she was nervous
because of the strange situation they were in. And of course,
in a way, both those things can be true, like
people's actions are always an outgrowth of both who they
are as a person and what they bring to the table,
but also of the situation they're in and the unique
circumstances they face. And the the issue with fundamental attribution
(01:49):
error is just that we tend to overestimate the role
of the former and underestimate the role of the ladder. Yeah,
we want to we want to explain everything, uh, you know,
based on it, like a simplistic Dungeons and Dragons alignment
table that always explains their behavior. I guess a lot
of people aren't familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. Robert, can
you briefly explain what alignments are in D and D? Okay,
(02:10):
so it's almost impossible that you haven't seen this, and
by you, I mean everybody listening memified yea, yeah, you've
seen ammified. But there will be this this grid right
of of what nine squares showing where you are on
on a grid of of lawful neutral and um and
(02:32):
chaotic tendencies as well as on good neutral evil tendencies.
So these these grids are these are the two axes
and the cross reference, right, So you can be chaotic
good or chaotic neutral or chaotic evil. You can be
lawful good, lawful evil, that kind of thing, right, And
it's so you know, it's a it's it's a guide
in Dungeons and Dragons to determine how players are going
(02:55):
to role play their characters and how they're going to
interact with monsters and non player characters, and how a
dungeon master is going to incorporate those beings as well,
uh and how and and and so forth. But I
think that the memification of it really shows sort of
the the simple nature of it at times, you know,
(03:17):
where it's like, Okay, we're gonna I'm gonna take nine
characters from this television series I like, or from politics
or from what have you, and put them on that chart.
Put them on that chart and just boil them down
to um to to. This is one statement of their identity.
But one of the funny things is, I think the
more realistic and complex the characters and the story are,
(03:39):
the harder it is to fit them into a grid
evenly right, Because the more realistic people are, the more
their their behavior varies, the less consistent they are in
how their ethics are applied, because in fact, in reality,
people's behavior is highly situational. You know, they act one
they're lawful good in one scenario, and then depending on
(03:59):
a few you know, the temperature of the room and
who's there and what they're feeling in the moment, they
are lawful evil or chaotic evil in a different scenario. Yeah,
you know, you're playing ads and dragons. You're you're so
concerned about the alignment of the minotaur, and we don't
think about what the labyrinth is doing to the minotaur.
So now, I think it's funny that you bring up
(04:19):
alignments with respect to alien and aliens, because I think
people don't often do this. But I've thought about it before,
and I have a hypothesis. It is that Ellen Ripley
changes alignment between alien and Aliens. Yeah. In Alien, she
I would say is lawful, neutral. She's not especially selfless
(04:40):
or helpful to other people, but she does obey the
rules and do what she's supposed to do. In Aliens,
a very different ethic emerges in Aliens. She's more rebellious
and rule breaking, but in the spirit of being good
and helpful to others. I'd say in Aliens she is
chaotic good. Okay, yeah, that would make sense. I mean,
(05:03):
she's more the she's she's a bail Will figure in
Aliens quite literally, like she she goes back in you know,
she dives down and does battle with the monster's mother.
But I love this transition. I mean some people might say, well,
that's inconsistent. You know, she acts one way in the
first movie and she's kind of a different character in
the second movie. That's what people are like. The circumstances
(05:25):
in their lives change, and it changes the way you
behave This is, in fact, the difference between Alien and
Aliens is a great illustration of the failure of F A.
E type thinking when you start trying to box people
in based on limited data points about their behavior in
the past. Absolutely, now, I guess we'll leave we'll leave
the listeners to decide what her alignment would be then
(05:47):
an alien three and in alien resurrection, alien resurrectional what
what is the alignment of a pile of horse maneuver? Oh?
I think they're beautiful things about alien resurrection. We can
fight about this someday. All right. Well, uh, well, let's
let's move on from from the the alien universe now
and jump back into our discussion of f A So
(06:11):
we've been talking about the fundamental attribution error, the tendency
we have to more often than not explain other people's
behavior through through disposition, all explanations things about them as
a person, and to underestimate the role of situational constraints
and external factors dictating their behavior. Now, one thing I
(06:32):
was wondering when I was reading about this is how
much could this vary between different different types of cultures
and backgrounds? And how much is this just a fundamental
part of every human brain? And it looks like there
is some role that culture plays in how strong the
f A E is? Right? Yeah, and and specifically, um,
what differences you're going to see between West and East,
(06:55):
between American culture and uh and and say Chinese culture
or Korean culture, Japanese culture, etcetera. Um, yeah, a little
American exceptionalism if you want to call it that in
regards to our tendency to engage f A. Let me
guess we're doing worse. Um yeah, We're We're worse. That's
that's the bed, the basic uh take home. But but
(07:17):
we're gonna get into the details here. This is uh.
This comes from a really cool paper um titled cultural,
cultural and Causal Cognition from Current Directions and Psychological Science
from the year two thousand and This is from Nisbet
and Northern Zion, who had mentioned earlier. So basically here
here's the idea. So for a while, social psychologist assumed
(07:38):
that the way we make causal judgments is universal, that is,
the same across all cultures. And this, of course is
always one of the potential problems for a given study
or a hypothesis, especially as it relates to uh uh
the inner workings of the mind? Right does does this
h view? Does it speak to all populations or is
it based on a narrow select action that doesn't account
(08:01):
for differences in culture, culture, socio economic level, gender, etcetera.
I mean, the classic example of this is when you
have a small study that is using only college students
East Coast college students in the United States and extrapolating
from that to something about the way brains work in
Homo sapiens exactly, you know, maybe not everybody's brain is
(08:23):
the same as what's prevalent among that group, right, So uh,
basically this paper speaks to that, like looks at the
cultural differences in f A to first to see if
there there is you know, there there are differences, and
then also to talk about why that could be and
so um norn Zion and nes Bit. They point out
(08:43):
that subsequent studies do seem to reveal that f A
is harder to demonstrate in Asian populations. This was like
multiple studies, multiple studies, so just to taste here of them.
Study from Miller showed that Hindu Indians lean toward a
situational explanation for ordinary life event. A nineteen ninety four
study from Morris and Ping found that Chinese newspapers and
(09:06):
Chinese students living in America were more likely to explain
murders by both Chinese and American perpetrators in situational and
societal terms, while American newspapers and American students tended to
focus on the perpetrators presumed at dispositions, their internal trades
and then uh N. Repetition of the Jones and Harris
(09:28):
experiment from sixty seven on Korean subjects found the Koreans
in the study tended to believe that the individual held
the views expressed in their essay, but flipped when they
were required to write an essay themselves and did so,
you know, more readily than than the Americans. Also in
Morris and Ping, they showed a cartoon of a fish
(09:50):
too American and Chinese test subjects, and the Chinese subjects
attributed its behavior to external and group factors, while Americans
favored internal factors. Um Another study found the same thing
with quote schematically drawn ambiguous physical events such as a
round object dropping through a surface and returning to the surface. Okay,
(10:12):
so in that last example, I think that's that's really
essential here, is because we're not even talking about human
behavior or uh, you know, the an anthropomorphized behavior of
a cartoon fish, but we're talking about the physical world itself.
We're talking about the role uh that environment has on objects.
Americans focused on the properties of the ball, while the
(10:34):
Chinese test subjects focused on the holistic reality in which
the ball existed. Oh well, that almost makes me think
of Aristotle. Like, you know, when Aristotle was trying to
explain physics, he would constantly make appeals to like the
nature of a thing determines how it moves and what
happens to it like that, Uh, you know, like a
(10:54):
rock falls because it has the characteristic of gravity. Yeah,
and that that is a huge part of what we're
going to talk about here and part of the reasoning
that they suspect. So the authors point out that it's
not a case of Asian populations not using f A,
so they do use it to some extent. What's the
exception then, Well, it's basically, if there's not enough evidence
(11:16):
to support a societal or situational explanation, then they'll fall
back on f A reasoning as well. Okay, I mean basically,
you know, it comes down to how are you going
to make judgments about about the world around you, you know,
when and where what are you going to give more
weight to. And they're saying they're going to give more
weight to situational um and environmental societal but they're also
(11:36):
going to fall back on nature as well well, so
they'll use situational reasoning when they have some kind of
foothold there, when there's some piece of information they can
draw from, right, So that that makes it look kind
of like it's like the F A E might be
sort of like a baseline human tendency, but that you
can be culturally conditioned to remember more off and to
(12:00):
take into account circumstantial information when you have access to it.
I don't know, you know, I'm not sure they didn't
really talk so much about what could be the baseline,
Like so much of this paper focuses on this is
what we see in the Western model, and this is
in the Eastern. And ultimately they make an argument for
aspects of those cultures, especially the the the key influential cultures,
namely Greek culture in the Western, Chinese culture in the East,
(12:24):
but they don't really get into it, like what would
would a non Chinese, non Western civilization, like you get
into the whole discussion of where a culture and civilization,
how it arises and how do you how would you
even strip away the tendency to lean one way or
the other. Yeah, well, I was just referring to the
fact that that you mentioned about even the Eastern test
(12:46):
subjects falling back on F A E when they didn't
have any kind of circumstances that they knew about to
appeal to. Right, it would seem to be that both
are natural tools and the toolbox. But then culture uh
would have UH an influence on which one is the
more dominant measurement system. Okay, So, but basically the authors
(13:07):
are talking about cultural differences in causal cognition here, and
they state that one of the key factors really comes
down to the differences in intellectual histories in East Asia
and in Europe from about the sixth century BC onward.
In this the authors argue, we have to consider the
differences in the key foundational intellectual cultures at play here,
(13:29):
Greek culture and Chinese culture. So these are you know
that basically like these are just very foundational um cultural
systems that end up influencing everything else. Yeah, produced early
intellectual texts that have been ceaselessly referred back to within
the region. Right, So you mentioned Aristotle earlier, and they
(13:49):
point out that the Greeks focused on analytics, categorizing objects
based on their attributes, and this was used to explain behavior. Yeah,
I mean again, this Aristotle's constantly trying to appeal to
the nature of a thing to explain why the thing
did what it did. And then meanwhile, the Chinese focused
on a holistic view that focused more on the field
(14:11):
in which the object existed and interacted. That's interesting, now,
why would this be the case. Well, the authors speculate
that China's holistic leanings might stem from an earlier shift
to intensive farming, leading to a more cooperative, collectivist culture. Meanwhile,
Greek geography prohibits extensive farming operations. Instead, there was a
(14:33):
focus on domesticated animals, on fishing, and on trade, and
this led to a highly individualistic culture. I don't know
if I'm ready to jump on board with that as
the reading of these causes in history, but I don't
know if I'd ever heard it put that way. That
is an interesting take, uh. And of course, if if
these factors are in place, we have to consider to
consider just how much of those Keystone cultures and the
(14:55):
cultures that grew out of them are based in this
line of thinking. Um, I mentioned I was going to
bring this around to dungeons and dragons earlier, so I
knew you would In reading this paper and just discussing
f A in general, um, I think back to the
monster manuals of Dungeons and Dragons. Um. You know, these
are the books that are full of page after page
(15:17):
of monster uh and stats about their abilities and some
information on their you know, their background, how they work,
and how you how you basically have the players in
a game fight it. They're just wickedly Aristotelian. Yeah, and
you know they basically function like beast theories from the
classic tradition, uh, from the classic Western tradition. Here is
a list of things, and here are their attributes. Uh.
(15:39):
But while a good monster manual, you know, we'll discuss
a little bit about the creatures nature, natural habitat and
how it functions within that habitat. I think it's safe
to say that there is a strong f A leaning
here absolutely, because the they have alignments. The alignment is
the key, Like, yeah, there's you know, there's some stats
that tell you exactly what it can do, but it's
that alignment that institute that's where my eyes often go,
(16:02):
like sometimes, you know, that's the first thing I look at, like,
what is the essential nature of this monster? Is it chaotic? Good?
Is it chaotic evil? Is it neutral? Is it lawful good? Um?
And and that will determine almost everything you need to
know about how it is probably going to interact with
the character. Yeah, they have a uniform characteristic way in
(16:22):
which they behave. And you know the fact is in reality,
Uh well, I guess in reality there aren't d n
D monsters, but if there were, they would be animals, right,
And animals do tend to react to situations then highly
ways that are highly dependent on what the situation is
that are not always predictable from just fundamental knowledge about
(16:43):
the innate character of that individual animal. Well, I mean
there are animals in the Monster Manual. They're in the back,
you know, but there, and they tend to be like
true neutral, right, which you know, again it comes down
to situation, like a a a cornered, starving animal is
going to behave differently than a than a fully fed
animal out in the open. You know, that's just part
(17:07):
of it. Well, I mean then again, on the other hand,
I mean, obviously none of what we're talking about today
denies that people have certain tendencies. There are people do
have tendencies. What I think this should down to is
that maybe monsters and characters in D and D, if
they have alignments, their alignments should be I don't know,
should apply sixty percent of the time or something, rather
(17:28):
than thinking, if you do one thing that violates your alignment,
now you've got to do an alignment check because people
just aren't like that. People sort of act out of
character based on circumstances all the time. I've seen some
material like trying to apply this kind of nuance to say, say,
creatures like the drought, uh, the the evil subterranean elves
(17:50):
of dungeons and dragons. And part of that is, I think,
you know, because there's been there, there's a lot of
increased action around the drought and creating drought characters that
were maybe not evil or not completely evil and a
little more uh complex. But I've seen some people like
discussing like what percentage of the drought population um are
evil and then which percentage happens to be good? And
(18:11):
I don't know, I guess it gets kind of messy
when you have a system that is ultimately based in
giving anybody out there like numerical stats and a definitive alignment. Well, yeah,
I mean, I guess part of the problem with D
and D is similar to the problem you're encountering in fiction, Whereas,
like you know, in fiction, a character needs to have
characteristic behavior so that you understand the role they play
(18:34):
in the story. You know, for them to just kind
of act randomly is not very efficient in terms of storytelling,
and it doesn't feel very satisfying to the audience. I'm
sure the same is true in the game. All right,
And you know, ultimately, as we've discussed on the show recently, uh,
narrative is a lie and uh and so is gaming
to a certain extent. So, but that anyway, you have
to go back to our narrative episodes for more nuance
(18:55):
on what we're talking about there. All right, time for
a quick break, but we will be right back, and
we're back in discussing this division though between East and West,
between Greek culture and Chinese culture. The author's point to
the differing strengths and weaknesses of Greek and Chinese science
and mathematics as potential evidence here. So I'm going to
(19:15):
read just a segment from their paper. Quote. Greek science
looked for universal rules to explain events and was concerned
with categorizing objects with respect to their essences Chinese science,
some people would say it was a technology only, though
a technology vastly superior to that if the Greeks was
more pragmatic and concrete and was not concerned with foundations
(19:37):
or universal laws. The difference between the Greek and Chinese
orientations is well captured by Aristotle's physics, which explain the
behavior of an object without reference to the field in
which it occurs. Thus, a stone sinks into water because
it has the property of gravity, and a piece of
wood floats because it has the property of levity. In contrast,
the principle that events always occur in some context or
(20:00):
field of forces was understood early on in China. That's interesting.
I've never heard it put that way, but uh, that
does kind of make sense based on what I know
that where more Western natural philosophers would have seen, you know,
things and bodies that the Eastern thinkers saw a world. Yeah.
So the idea here is that much of this division
(20:22):
and thinking remains despite the enhanced interconnectedness of the modern world.
And uh, the cool thing is that we can actually
test for this to a certain extent, or at least
we can test for what's known as field dependence via
a simple rod and frame test. So I can't remember
if we've actually discussed a rod and frame test on
the show before. I'm not sure. Tell me about it, okay.
(20:43):
So basically, the situation as you look through a long
box like frame at a rod. I found an image
of one of these and I put it in in
our notes, Joe. But it's essentially like looking looking into
a box like they're looking into the top of a
box and at the bottom there's a rod, and this
particular example, the rod appears to be glowing like it's
a light stick. And in this experiment, you can independently
(21:08):
rotate the rod or the frame, often via opposing joysticks
on a gaming remote, and the test subject makes adjustments
and then declares when the rod is finally vertical. So
you can adjust the the the object or subject, and
you can also adjust the field or the box in
order to get the proper alignment. And then whoever's uh
(21:30):
you know, giving the test, they can see you know
where you're making the most adjustments. Uh So, the extent
to which the orientation of the frame influences judgments of
the verticality of the rod, that is going to tell
us um, you know what your field dependence is and um.
East Asian participants, mostly Chinese, have been shown to be
(21:53):
more field dependent than Americans in experiments by g Ping
and Nesbitting. Yeah. Uh. Study from Matsuda and has Bit
highlighted these differences between American and Japanese individuals via exposure
to underwater scenes with focal fish. So that's you know,
the idea that you know there are certain fish that
(22:13):
would capture your attention. The fish in this case are
the rod and the the The underwater environment is the
box the frame. But the general ideas that subjects from
Asian cultures are more likely to see things in terms
of the environment, to take total environmental information into account. Yeah,
(22:35):
and uh. I found this really interesting having recently enjoyed
a lot of snorkeling on a on a trip one
of my family to Belieze, and uh, you know, these
beautiful coral reef environments, rich environment, a lot going on.
We'd be out there for an hour or two at
a time, and I'd have to remind myselves at times
at times to take it all in holistically, because I'd
(22:57):
have a tendency to focus in on key focal fish
or the search for larger specimens. Right, I'd be looking
around like, oh, I want I really want to see
a big ray. I want to see another one of
those nurse sharks. I want to see the remarkable larger specimens.
And then I would have to stop and realize but
but no, wait, I need to take it all in,
like it's the coral reef. Is this uh, this this
(23:18):
this rich environment, you know, it's kind of like I
guess an example of this, too might be if you
were at an art museum. You're looking at a mural,
say like an enormous you know, enormous wall piece of
big trip dick or something, and you might be tempted to,
you know, go from this detail to this detail and
take each one in the symbolism of each little detail,
and and then you have to remind yourself to back
(23:39):
up a little bit and take in the whole painting,
because it's also speaking on that level as well. Yeah,
but it can be very hard to turn the spotlight off,
especially once you've you've either if you have a preference
for one style of thinking over the other, or you
are actively engaging in one or the other. Um just
a couple of further notes from the authors on this
(24:01):
this piece on Eastern Western differences. They said that language
of the test did not impact the results, so that
would seem to prevent a purely linguistic argument for for
f A. Uh, though of course I would imagine languages
would also be affected by two and a half millennia
under a specific educational culture. Yeah, I would think so. Uh.
They point out that most individuals compared in these studies
(24:23):
had otherwise similar demographics. So yeah, for instance, the these
the tests that had say an American student in a
Chinese student or in America, they would supposedly have very
similar demographics otherwise, and then differences in cognitive abilities were
also accounted for. Well, this makes me wonder if in general,
(24:45):
bad first impressions are less of a problem in China.
I don't know, that would be. That would be an interesting,
um subject to to look up. It becomes difficult, though,
I imagine, because in a lot of this you're when
you're talking about you know, cultural tendency, these there are
there a whole lot of factors that are in play,
right right, um, that may or may not be um,
(25:07):
you know, explained by focusing on f A. I don't know, Well, Yeah.
Then again, some of the variations that we see based
on the cultures might be different depending on what types
of information or tests you're talking about. Like I could wonder,
I wonder if maybe some cultural groups would be more
likely to ignore the f a tendency on like judging
(25:30):
attitudes held you know, like in the essay reading or
something like that, but might still display it in terms
of judging how friendly somebody is, you know what I mean. Alright,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Thank you. All Right, we're back. Let's jump back in.
So we've discussed the you know, the difficulty from moving
out of one mindset into the other. Uh So, I
(25:51):
think a lot of people are probably wondering, like, what
can I what can I do? What are some steps
I can take? Especially since it's quite clear that the
fundamental attribution error is harmful and causes us to make
poor judgments that do not accurately predict people's behavior. So
they're like, factually not very helpful, and then also can
be like socially harmful, can lead us to prejudice and stereotyping.
(26:13):
And yeah, so it's not just a situation of like
you know, it's it's it's awful, but it works. No,
it does, it's it's it's it's both awful and doesn't
really work all that well. So we should we should,
you know, find ways to lean into the other ways
of figuring out, so what's going on? Yeah, And so,
as we've discussed the prevalence of f A E doesn't PEA.
It doesn't mean people never take situational factors into consideration.
(26:36):
They obviously do. It's just that on average, we consider
situation far less than we should, and we chalk things
up to disposition far more than we should. And so
are there ways to defeat this bias in ourselves and
in others, to take situation into account more comprehensively and
to become more rational. One fix is not perfect, but
(26:57):
it's very simple. It's just that FA I mentioned this earlier.
It happens easily and automatically, and it can actually, I think,
be fairly readily overcome with cognitive effort. Some biases are
just easier than others to think yourself out of, and
to a certain extent, this actually appears to be one
of them. I was reading about one study about this
(27:18):
in a textbook called Applied Social psychology Understanding and Addressing
social and practical problems by Schneider at all, and it
was discussing research that showed that, in some cases, if
you prime people to think about situational explanations, they're more
likely to consider them. Okay, that's fairly straightforward, right. If
you have students watch a silent film of a woman
(27:39):
having a conversation displaying nervous behaviors like biting her nails
or twirling her hair or something. Uh, they found that
if you prime subjects by telling them that she's discussing
a sensitive or anxious topic um versus telling the people
watching the video that she's discussing a relaxing topic, the
students who saw her acting anxious while discussing a relaxing
(28:02):
topic were more likely to attribute anxiety to her as
a character trait, whereas the ones who thought she was
discussing an anxious topic were more likely to take the
situation into consideration. So that's fairly straightforward. But it does
actually seem to help just make people aware of the
situation directly ask them to consider it. Yeah, that's that's interesting,
(28:23):
Like discussing anxiety here, because I feel like this is
an example of where, like anybody who deals with anxiety,
you probably don't think of it as like part of you, right,
I mean, we very often think of it as this
thing that I deal with as opposed to this thing
that is a part of my identity. You know. Um.
I feel like it's easy to fall into these traps
(28:46):
when considering other people. But like the same person who
was like, oh, that person she's anxious, or that she
is an anxious person, they would not view themselves in
the same light dealing with say anxiety. Of course not
end if you just tell them like, she's dealing with
an anxious or an anxiety causing situation. That mirror priming
(29:07):
gets people to take that into account and be like, oh, okay,
well the way she's acting is probably reasonable then you know,
um now obviously, so it works in that scenario. But
obviously this doesn't always eliminate f A when you ask
people to consider the situation because think of the earlier studies, right,
like the essays they would tell people so and so
(29:28):
has been assigned to this position to advocate, and it's
still and still even though they were asked to consider
the situation, they didn't consider it as much as they
should have. They think, you know, even though Jeffrey's acting
this way because he's been assigned to it's actually also
reflective of how he really is as a person. But
this one study, I guess at least, does seem to
(29:48):
indicate that sometimes priming people to consider situational factors can
make a difference. And again, I think this is because
it seems we make dispositional attributions. We commit the fa
quickly and automatically. It's something we do with no effort
at all. You just automatically jump there and and assign
people character traits based on very limited data. And I
(30:11):
think it's just more likely to take some deliberate cognitive
effort at correction to take situational factors into consideration. Thus,
if you want to reduce your commission of the f A,
try to find out more about the situations of the
people you're judging and think deliberately about situational factors and
encourage others to do the same. It appears, at least
(30:33):
in some cases, it makes a difference. Also, consider what
we talked about earlier. Remember that people were less likely
to make the FAE when they had multiple interactions with
the same person and saw how they behave differently under
different situational constraints. So you know more about people, get
to know people better. You're probably going to come to
see how they are influenced by situational factors and judge
(30:55):
them less on the basis of the single data points. Yeah. Again,
and this is all I think extremely crucial, and I
think it you know, it backs up a lot of
the advice that we're given about taking people's like full
uh you know, their history and their situation into account
when when judging them. Um. But because you know, ultimately,
(31:15):
anybody you encounter in life, they have not been assigned uh,
their personal essay by you know, somebody carrying out a
scientific test. They've been assigned their personal essay by fate,
by circumstances, by luck, by luck by, by all these
these factors in our lives. You know, then they're but
(31:35):
for fortune go you or I and um. We have
to force ourselves to open our eyes to that reality,
just as we would all want other people to be
open to that reality in ourselves. Yes, that that's absolutely right.
And one last thing I would say about recommendations for
dealing with this is remember that there's some indication that
(31:58):
may be manipulating perspective helps people with with getting rid
of the f A tendency. If you if you literally
try to look through somebody else's eyes, I mean, I
guess you could try to do this just with your imagination,
then suddenly you are less likely to ignore situational circumstances
that may be causing people to act in a way
they wouldn't normally act. Yeah, ultimately, this is what letter
(32:20):
Face was trying to do. He was just trying to
see through other people's eyes, through other people's faces. I
don't know this kind of stretch, but just to bring
it back around to films, I can't top that. I
guess we have to end there all right. But obviously
this is something we would love to hear from everyone
about because everybody has, uh has some experience with FA. Yeah,
(32:43):
you've been judged unfairly on this basis you've done this
to other people. It happens every day, right and uh
And likewise, UH, I would love to hear from listeners
who can provide some of their own insight on the
whole Western Eastern divide, Uh, you know, cultural differences there.
And then also, hey, we talked about a few different
fictions here. We talked about the alien, we talked about
(33:05):
Harry Potter, we talked about dungeons and dragons, and ever
so briefly, leather face. So we would we'd love to
hear from you the listeners, your your interpretations of those
properties based on f A as well. In the meantime,
if you want to listen to more episodes of Stuff
to Blow your Mind, head on over to Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where
you will find it all. And if you want to
(33:26):
support the show, really the best thing you can do is,
you know, spread the word, but also rate and review
us wherever you have the power to do so. Wherever
you get this podcast, it really helps us out. Uh.
It's a tremendous, tremendous aid. Likewise, we mentioned Invention earlier
in the recent episodes on photography. If you want to
check out Invention, UH do that. Invention pod dot com
(33:47):
is the website for that show, and you can subscribe,
rate and interview us wherever you get your get your podcasts.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex
Williams and Tari Harrison. If you would like to get
in touch with us torectly to let us know feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hello. You can
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(34:09):
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