Fundamental Attribution Error

I'm awesome, you are a jerk.

In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE) refers to an individual's tendency to attribute another's actions to their character or personality, while attributing their behavior to external situational factors outside of their control. In other words, you tend to cut yourself a break while holding others 100 percent accountable for their actions.

In simple terms, when I do well on a test, that’s all me because I’m smart, handsome and women want me. If I don’t do well, it is because the test was biased, and my professor is an asshole who hates me. In other words, people who fall victim to this error often internalize success and externalize failure. When they win, it is purely due to them, when they lose, it is someone else’s fault.

Another common example is when someone cuts you off in traffic. Without thinking, you might begin to assign all sorts of nefarious and reckless motives to that person’s actions without knowing anything about them. You assign personality traits to the offender with very little information. Now, try to remember a situation when you cut someone off while driving. If I asked why you did that, you’d most likely have a reason. Perhaps you had an urgent meeting to attend or pick up your son who had injured himself at karate class. You believe what you did was justified.

One wonders how much of this plays into the way Democrats see conservatives.

It certainly seems that there are those who, without evidence, believe without reservation that they are right, and you are wrong simply due to who they are (good) and who you are (bad). Not only is that thinking pervasive, it is impossible to influence or change. It is as normal as breathing.

According to Harvard Business Review, “The fundamental attribution error is so prevalent because it's rooted in psychology, so completely overcoming it can be difficult. One tool that can be helpful in combating FAE is gratitude. When you become resentful at someone for a bad "quality" they demonstrate, try to make a list of five positive qualities the person also exhibits. This will help balance out your perspective and can help you view [the other person] as a whole person instead of through the lens of a single negative quality.

Emotional intelligence is another avenue to avoid FAE. It involves practicing self-awareness, empathy, self-regulation, and other methods of becoming more objective in the service of one's long-term interests and the interests of others, things that the folks on the left tend to find challenging. Practicing empathy, such as having discussions with people about their opinions on activities and life away from politics, is a good place to start.

Like most deeply rooted biases, FAE is impossible to overcome completely - but being able to acknowledge cognitive biases like FAE and make the conscious effort to limit their effects is an essential component of breaking down barriers between people.

Like many of our issues, acknowledging there is a problem is he first step to fixing it.

I think that was once possible when we all knew our neighbors and there was a shared sense of community, but today in the anonymity of a social media driven world, this avenue seems to be lost to us all…and nobody seem to be willing to admit there is an issue.

I should add that when assessments are based on observational fact, such as the information we are seeing out of the Twitter drops, that conservatives are constantly called racists, bigots and worse without evidence, and that when actions match words, to assign conclusions about the personality of a person or a movement is NOT a fundamental attribution error.