The One You Feed - Mini Episode: The Fundamental Attribution Error

Episode Date: March 7, 2015

We hold ourselves and others to different standards. The Fundamental Attribution Error can wreak havoc in our lives and relationships. Visit our website...  Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorStrand of OaksMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey everybody it's Eric from the one you feed with this week's mini episode before we start I'm going to announce one more time that there are just a couple spots left in the one-on-one coaching work that I'm doing. If you're interested, send me an email. We're really, really working with folks on creating habits which ultimately

kind of create the quality of our life or our destiny. So if you're looking for help to do more of the things that are important to you or to do less of the things that are important to you, or to do less of the things that you think are destructive in your life, let me know. Send me an email to eric at oneufeed.net. On this week's mini-episode, what I want to talk about are cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are a psychological term for ways in which our brain tends to go wrong and come to the wrong solution very often. And I'm going to talk about three of them today and how they really play off of each other. The first one, and this is probably my favorite cognitive bias, if you can have a favorite one, is called the fundamental attribution error. And really what the fundamental attribution error is, it says that when we observe the behavior

of someone else, we attribute what they do to their own internal causes or their inherent personality. Whereas with ourselves, we take a lot of the circumstances into consideration. So an example would be, if I didn't go to the gym yesterday, I will consider all the things that happened. I had a really busy day. One of the boys needed picked up from school unexpectedly. I had a really busy day. One of the boys needed picked up from school unexpectedly. And so I'll consider all those circumstances. If you didn't go to the gym today, I will tend to think it's because you're lazy or you're unmotivated.

And if we think about this, we apply this in our life all the time. We are very good at giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt in a lot of cases, but not other people. And you can see where this gets us into trouble in our relationships with other people. The other thing that this can do is it can also be a way for us to explain away a lot of our behavior. And like most things in life, I think probably the real answer is somewhere between those two things. There's an internal cause, there's internal conditions, and then there's the external conditions. And so how do we work with those

two things? But if we're swinging too far to either side, letting ourselves off the hook because of all the circumstances or blaming others because they're just inherently that way, we can end up in a tricky spot. The second part, that second cognitive bias, it's not really a cognitive bias, but it's a way of thinking about these things. It's called the covariant model. And basically what it says is when we're looking at people's behavior, there's three things that we're looking at to try and arrive at what's happening. One is, those three things are consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. So I'll use an example of Bob is the boss and he gets angry and he yells at Sally. So one of the things when we're looking at this situation from the outside, we're going to think about is, well, does everybody else yell at Sally?

I mean, if everybody's always angry with Sally, well, then maybe we're going to give Bob a little bit more credit. Also, we're going to think about how does Bob react to people who aren't Sally? How does Bob treat Sue and Jane and Tom? what how's bob treat you know sue and jane and tom and then finally we'll be we'll be looking at the consistency for you know is bob always kind of yelling at everybody and depending on where those things are that will lean us towards yep it's a circumstantial thing it's this thing that's outside bob or it's fundamental to bob it's internal it's who he is so if he's he only loses his temper with sally once in a while and and we all agree Sally can be a pain in the ass, then we're going to tend to think that that's an external cause.

On the other hand, if he's doing it with everybody, we're going to tend to think it's an internal cause. Now, this is all well and good if we take the time to get there with this. But as we talked about, the fundamental attribution error is going to have us tend to immediately assume it's something internal to them and let that go. And the other challenge is, as humans, there's another cognitive bias that's called automatic believing. And that's exactly what it sounds like. We tend to be wired to believe what we hear right away. And then most of us will then think a little bit more. That thinking part comes in on top of it and starts to question is that true is that not true but in times where we're tired or we're stressed that automatic believing jumps right in and we we go to the first conclusion we've talked about decision fatigue it's a similar idea we our brain is trying to minimize the amount of energy it spends and so

it will go right to that and so if we we're not, if we're not careful, we make that fundamental attribution error. But that the that covariant model looking at the consensus, the distinctiveness and the consistency gives us a way to judge not only our own actions, but those of others and try and understand where where's the behavior coming from. This can be a great way to deal with people who are who are challenging in your life, if you can start to look through those things and find out what it is, because it's very easy to be, she's just always a pain in, I'm going to say pain in the ass a bunch of this episode, she's always a pain in the ass, or he's always in a bad mood. And we can use the covariant model to go, well, is that true? Is he in a bad mood around everyone or only certain people? You know, how are other people in a bad mood in the same situation, etc, etc. So those are just a couple different ways to look at how we're viewing

the world and begin to question some of our automatic thoughts about how we view what we do and what others do. So hopefully that is helpful. Again, if you're interested in working with me one on one, send me an email eric at one you feed.net. We'll have another episode out Tuesday and talk with you soon. Thanks. Bye. you