3 ms·

Fundamental attribution error

30 points by j_baker 17y ago

Dilpil 17y ago
One interesting point a proffessor of mine once made on the topic: The phrase "If I were them, I would.." is meaningless. If you were them, if you had an identical upbringing and identical genetic material, you would behave exactly as they do.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  Not so fast. Some theories posit that the key to resolving the dichotomy of the "mind-body problem" is through the operation of quantum uncertainty in the mind. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solutions_to_the_mind-body_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solu...
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    that doesn't help with predicting what you would do, though, does it? (also, i'm not sure how qm resolves the mind-body problem, and the article you linked to doesn't explain, as far as i can see - qm does suggest that there may be something special about the mind, since it may be what makes observers special, but qm is still "physics", so it doesn't explain a non-physical mind (it may help resolve the question of free will because it could introduce indeterminism, but the problem of free-will is not the mind-body problem) (on the other hand i'm not clear why you introduced the mind-body problem at all, as it's not really the issue here...)).
- ugh 17y ago
  I think your professor misinterpreted the phrase, I always assumed its usage meaning something like this: If you blasted that stupid forward to pieces and teleported me on the soccer field ten seconds ago I would have passed to a different player.
  - jrp 17y ago
    Yes. It may be funny to observe that a phrase literally means the opposite, or is meaningless, etc., but generally there is a real meaning which everyone understands.
    - ugh 17y ago
      There is a point, though, to the professor’s criticism, and it’s a subtle one. The teleported soccer fan probably wouldn’t be able to pass the ball to any player at all. No problem, he says, I will just imagine myself in the same physical condition as the scolded player. But would that be enough? If you want to be good at playing soccer you need to know about tactics and strategy, you need the experience of hundreds of games. Can the soccer fan just imagine himself having all that and still be sure whether he would have passed to a different player? Probably not. Why would all those changes to his brain keep the part intact with which he just decided which would have been the best pass? I might be committing a fundamental attribution error by concentrating too much on the brain side of things, though. Situation can be the other and maybe even more straightforward reason why the teleported soccer fan would probably fare not much better than the player. The fan has a bird eye’s view, multiple camera angles and instant replay, the player doesn’t. The fan is sitting in the pub, the player is running around. And so on. You might want to be careful when using this phrase, then. Maybe yell something like: “The optimal pass which maximally increases the chance of scoring a goal would have been to pass to that other player, you idiot!”
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
again: the skeptics bible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
- j_baker 17y ago
  You missed one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases
  - nazgulnarsil 17y ago
    oooh, that's a great one. does the hindsight bias article link to it? it should.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  I hope it's not too much of a plug, but: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences And in this particular case: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hz/correspondence_bias/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/hz/correspondence_bias/
Alex3917 17y ago
Corporations and the government take advantage of this all the time by claiming that anything that goes wrong is the result of "a few bad apples," when in reality the causes of the problems are mostly systemic. Of all the cognitive biases that are used to maintain the status quo and allow those with power to exploit those without, this is probably the most effective.
dalton 17y ago
I took a class taught by Lee Ross. The main real-world topic used in that class to illustrate a lot of this stuff was "peace in the middle east." For example, no matter what was printed in the NY Times it was perceived as obviously skewed as being either wildly pro-israel or wildly pro-palestinian... depending on the affiliations of the people reading it. Literally the same article. The idea that everyone deeply believes that media (or other people/organizations etc) are deeply skewed/biased, yet the nature of the perceived bias varies in _opposite_ ways depending on their personal beliefs, is kind of depressing. The meta-theme I sort of got from that class was that social psychologists like Dr. Ross genuinely got into the field wanting to change the world and help people to end wars etc. through applied social science. However, the more research they did, and the more they really understood the deep, deep psychological factors driving things like conflict in the middle east, the more they realized that this is a lot harder than they could have ever imagined. (fwiw, that is purely my personal take on the class, but there was definitely a tone underlying the whole thing.)
- lmkg 17y ago
  The part about everyone reading bias into a statement immediately reminded me of the recent thread on language advocacy, discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1105087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1105087 . Being objective is hard!
pfedor 17y ago
I believe the opposite error is also often made. I suspect many a time governments or large corporations act in ways which people interpret in situational terms, as a reflection of some underlying plans and strategic goals, while in reality it's just a decision made by some person at power based on their individual beliefs and personality traits.
est 17y ago
note: this is culture-specific phenomenon http://journal.psych.ac.cn/jinzhan/qikan/Cpaper/zhaiyao.asp?bsid=11426 http://journal.psych.ac.cn/jinzhan/qikan/Cpaper/zhaiyao.asp?...

30 points by j_baker 17y ago

One interesting point a proffessor of mine once made on the topic: The phrase "If I were them, I would.." is meaningless. If you were them, if you had an identical upbringing and identical genetic material, you would behave exactly as they do.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
Not so fast. Some theories posit that the key to resolving the dichotomy of the "mind-body problem" is through the operation of quantum uncertainty in the mind. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solutions_to_the_mind-body_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solu...
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  that doesn't help with predicting what you would do, though, does it? (also, i'm not sure how qm resolves the mind-body problem, and the article you linked to doesn't explain, as far as i can see - qm does suggest that there may be something special about the mind, since it may be what makes observers special, but qm is still "physics", so it doesn't explain a non-physical mind (it may help resolve the question of free will because it could introduce indeterminism, but the problem of free-will is not the mind-body problem) (on the other hand i'm not clear why you introduced the mind-body problem at all, as it's not really the issue here...)).
ugh 17y ago
I think your professor misinterpreted the phrase, I always assumed its usage meaning something like this: If you blasted that stupid forward to pieces and teleported me on the soccer field ten seconds ago I would have passed to a different player.
- jrp 17y ago
  Yes. It may be funny to observe that a phrase literally means the opposite, or is meaningless, etc., but generally there is a real meaning which everyone understands.
  - ugh 17y ago
    There is a point, though, to the professor’s criticism, and it’s a subtle one. The teleported soccer fan probably wouldn’t be able to pass the ball to any player at all. No problem, he says, I will just imagine myself in the same physical condition as the scolded player. But would that be enough? If you want to be good at playing soccer you need to know about tactics and strategy, you need the experience of hundreds of games. Can the soccer fan just imagine himself having all that and still be sure whether he would have passed to a different player? Probably not. Why would all those changes to his brain keep the part intact with which he just decided which would have been the best pass? I might be committing a fundamental attribution error by concentrating too much on the brain side of things, though. Situation can be the other and maybe even more straightforward reason why the teleported soccer fan would probably fare not much better than the player. The fan has a bird eye’s view, multiple camera angles and instant replay, the player doesn’t. The fan is sitting in the pub, the player is running around. And so on. You might want to be careful when using this phrase, then. Maybe yell something like: “The optimal pass which maximally increases the chance of scoring a goal would have been to pass to that other player, you idiot!”

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

again: the skeptics bible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

j_baker 17y ago
You missed one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  oooh, that's a great one. does the hindsight bias article link to it? it should.
Eliezer 17y ago
I hope it's not too much of a plug, but: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences And in this particular case: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hz/correspondence_bias/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/hz/correspondence_bias/

Alex3917 17y ago

Corporations and the government take advantage of this all the time by claiming that anything that goes wrong is the result of "a few bad apples," when in reality the causes of the problems are mostly systemic. Of all the cognitive biases that are used to maintain the status quo and allow those with power to exploit those without, this is probably the most effective.

dalton 17y ago

I took a class taught by Lee Ross. The main real-world topic used in that class to illustrate a lot of this stuff was "peace in the middle east." For example, no matter what was printed in the NY Times it was perceived as obviously skewed as being either wildly pro-israel or wildly pro-palestinian... depending on the affiliations of the people reading it. Literally the same article. The idea that everyone deeply believes that media (or other people/organizations etc) are deeply skewed/biased, yet the nature of the perceived bias varies in _opposite_ ways depending on their personal beliefs, is kind of depressing. The meta-theme I sort of got from that class was that social psychologists like Dr. Ross genuinely got into the field wanting to change the world and help people to end wars etc. through applied social science. However, the more research they did, and the more they really understood the deep, deep psychological factors driving things like conflict in the middle east, the more they realized that this is a lot harder than they could have ever imagined. (fwiw, that is purely my personal take on the class, but there was definitely a tone underlying the whole thing.)

lmkg 17y ago
The part about everyone reading bias into a statement immediately reminded me of the recent thread on language advocacy, discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1105087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1105087 . Being objective is hard!

pfedor 17y ago

I believe the opposite error is also often made. I suspect many a time governments or large corporations act in ways which people interpret in situational terms, as a reflection of some underlying plans and strategic goals, while in reality it's just a decision made by some person at power based on their individual beliefs and personality traits.

est 17y ago

note: this is culture-specific phenomenon http://journal.psych.ac.cn/jinzhan/qikan/Cpaper/zhaiyao.asp?bsid=11426 http://journal.psych.ac.cn/jinzhan/qikan/Cpaper/zhaiyao.asp?...