The Fundamental Attribution Error : Blog by performance psychologist Mike Duckett

Performance psychologist, Mike Duckett talks about initial reactions and the Fundamental Attribution Error

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Imagine this; you’re driving to work and waiting at traffic lights. As the lights change the car behind pulls out and screeches around you and is off down the road. What do you think about that driver?

Then to make matters worse, as you’re driving along you notice out of the corner of your eye a teenager on a skateboard on the pavement just as he pushes an elderly lady out of the way. What do you think about this young man?

Then finally, as you arrive at work and walk into the kitchen you find your new head chef is late again for the second time in his first week with you but has sent a text to another member of staff simply to say he’ll be late. What do you make of these people?

Immediate thoughts

The chances are, if you are like the rest of us, your immediate thoughts are along the lines of, “that driver at the lights was a self-focused irresponsible jerk who doesn’t give a damn; that young man on the skateboard was obviously an aggressive callous youth and to top it off it seems our head chef is unreliable and lazy”!

This all may be true, maybe not but either way your assessment could lead to negative feelings, which by definition are unpleasant and could even prompt some response on your behalf that will damage your relationship with others.

Some years ago, in the late ‘60s, subjects in a psychology experiment were asked to read essays both for and against Fidel Castro, then they were asked what they thought about the authors who wrote in support of him.

When they were told the authors freely chose to take this position, of course, the readers rated them as having a favourable attitude towards the Cuban leader. However, even when they were told the authors had no choice and ‘for’ and ‘against’ was decided on the toss of a coin, readers STILL rated those who wrote in support as having more genuinely felt positive attitudes towards Castro than those who wrote against.

Fundamental Attribution Error

In other words, they found it difficult to accept or pay attention to the situation the writers faced and very easy to attribute sincere beliefs to them. This became known as the Fundamental Attribution Error; an idea we all would do well to think about before we act on our judgment of others’ behaviour.

It seems almost a default for us to see some behaviour and immediately believe the cause is something to do with the other person’s fundamental personality traits; “he’s self-focused & irresponsible” or “he’s an aggressive callous youth” or in the case of your head chef, that ”he’s unreliable and lazy”.

If we now think about all the external situational factors that the people above may be facing, what will be your thoughts about them when you find out that:

a) the driver had a passenger who had severed a finger in an accident and they had the finger in an ice bag, racing to get to the hospital before it thawed?

b) A skateboarder that had seen a flower pot falling from a balcony above the old lady?

c) Your head chef’s wife has been taken ill and is in hospital, so he’s been left trying to organise childcare and it’s the carer who isn’t turning up reliably that has made him late?

There have been many experiments since the Castro one, mostly verifying this bias we all seem to have, which is an almost automatic response to other people’s behaviour. (Interestingly, we don’t seem to have the same automatic bias when it comes to thinking about our own behaviour – then we automatically look for all the external factors that led us to behave this way).

Only human after all

So, if it’s an automatic human bias, and you’re only human, what can you do? Well, just by being aware of this you can stop yourself reacting to your first thoughts and just ask some questions about the other person’s circumstances.

This might just save a working relationship because after all, most people you’ve employed don’t turn up for work with the specific intention of behaving badly; so the key question is, “what made you do.......?”

Mike Duckett has a degree in psychology and is a member of the Occupational Psychology division, the Sports Psychology division & the Coaching Psychology Special Group of the British Psychological Society. He holds a diploma in Hypnotherapy & Cognitive therapy and is a certified NLP coach.

With over 20 years experience he was one of the pioneers of applying performance psychology to coach people in the hospitality industry to get the best from themselves, in areas such as creativity; leadership; optimism etc.

As a certified NLP Coach and ANLP Accredited Master Practitioner, Mike has clients ranging from world-renowned chefs, restaurateurs & sommeliers to up and coming staff in both the kitchen and front of house. You can see more of Mike's blogs atcoachforsuccess.wordpress.com