psyche tip of the day

People do dumb things. I do, you do, everyone does. When stuff like that happens, we often wonder, well, why did that just happen? Why did that person have to lash out at me like that? Why he ignore me? Why was she so nice to me? Why did he not show up on time? Why is she always behaving like that?

Social psychology’s fundamental attribution error theory to the rescue!

It is far too easy to explain another’s behaviour by attributing it to their personality. In other words, it’s too easy to say that the reason why “he did that” is because “he’s just a cold person”. Naturally, as humans we want to do the easiest thing before the hardest thing, and so we gravitate towards easy thoughts that just come naturally. Unbeknownst to most, a great deal of human behaviour can actually be attributed to external factors. In other words, maybe that guy “did that” because of the fact that he just lost his job, for example, and that has been troubling him all day and he’s under tremendous pressure from his family to find another job. As another example, perhaps the waitress was rude not because that’s the way her personality usually is, but because her boss made her work overtime and hasn’t given her a break yet.The point is that whenever you try to explain another’s “mysterious” behaviour by blaming his or her “odd” personality, don’t forget that there may be a lot of other things, unknown to you, that are going on in that person’s life. And now you know all about the fundamental attribution error! Now go and impress your friends.

(So you might be wondering, why the psychology talk? Well, hey, I need to use my degree somehow!)