Fundamental Attribution Error

When it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, we tend to make the mistake of overstimating the importance of fundamental character traits and understimating the importance of the situation and context. We try to reach for a 'dispositional' explanation for events, as oposed to a 'contextual' explanation. It helps on made us feel more confortable, because since the 'contextual' point of view makes the world a much more complex, much more entropic place, it also makes it much more understandable, and perhaps richer and interesting, once you learn the paradigm of the Fundamental Attibution Error.

Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It is not a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is most like a handle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circunstances and context.

The reason that most of us seem to have a constant character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment (or very bad at creating new environments, new limits to learn from). Actually, small changes in the context are very important in tipping epidemics (attitudes, sales, whatever that can tip and expand), even though that fact could seem to violate some of our most deeply hold assumptions about human nature.

The lesson from the Fundamental Attribution Error is that we can change the environment, influence it at our benefit. And make things tip into our favour.