Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And we're back with part two of
Speaker 1: our discussion of the fundamental attribution error, our tendency to
Speaker 1: overestimate disposition all causes of behavior like innate character traits
Speaker 1: and attitudes you have and underestimate the role of situational
Speaker 1: influences on how people act. Yeah, And we kicked off
Speaker 1: the first episode by talking about the classic sci fi
Speaker 1: horror film Alien and uh, you know, figuring out the
Speaker 1: characters and the motivations and the actions of of Ripley
Speaker 1: and Dallas in the early goings of that film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically in the scene where Dallas gets back with you know,
Speaker 1: John Hurd has a an alien face hugger stuck to
Speaker 1: his face and he says, let us in the ship,
Speaker 1: and Ripley says, no, I can't do that. Unfortunately, she
Speaker 1: gets ignored overridden. They come inside anyway, and we discussed
Speaker 1: what caused them to make the decisions they make. Now,
Speaker 1: that was in the context of uh, emphasizing the distinction
Speaker 1: between situational explanations and dispositional explanations. You could say Ripley
Speaker 1: was trying to obey quart quarantine orders because she's orderly
Speaker 1: and logical and calm under pressure. Or you could say
Speaker 1: that she was doing it because maybe the cabin was
Speaker 1: cold and she was uncomfortable, or because she was nervous
Speaker 1: because of the strange situation they were in. And of course,
Speaker 1: in a way, both those things can be true, like
Speaker 1: people's actions are always an outgrowth of both who they
Speaker 1: are as a person and what they bring to the table,
Speaker 1: but also of the situation they're in and the unique
Speaker 1: circumstances they face. And the the issue with fundamental attribution
Speaker 1: error is just that we tend to overestimate the role
Speaker 1: of the former and underestimate the role of the ladder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to we want to explain everything, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: based on it, like a simplistic Dungeons and Dragons alignment
Speaker 1: table that always explains their behavior. I guess a lot
Speaker 1: of people aren't familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. Robert, can
Speaker 1: you briefly explain what alignments are in D and D? Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's almost impossible that you haven't seen this, and
Speaker 1: by you, I mean everybody listening memified yea, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: seen ammified. But there will be this this grid right
Speaker 1: of of what nine squares showing where you are on
Speaker 1: on a grid of of lawful neutral and um and
Speaker 1: chaotic tendencies as well as on good neutral evil tendencies.
Speaker 1: So these these grids are these are the two axes
Speaker 1: and the cross reference, right, So you can be chaotic
Speaker 1: good or chaotic neutral or chaotic evil. You can be
Speaker 1: lawful good, lawful evil, that kind of thing, right, And
Speaker 1: it's so you know, it's a it's it's a guide
Speaker 1: in Dungeons and Dragons to determine how players are going
Speaker 1: to role play their characters and how they're going to
Speaker 1: interact with monsters and non player characters, and how a
Speaker 1: dungeon master is going to incorporate those beings as well,
Speaker 1: uh and how and and and so forth. But I
Speaker 1: think that the memification of it really shows sort of
Speaker 1: the the simple nature of it at times, you know,
Speaker 1: where it's like, Okay, we're gonna I'm gonna take nine
Speaker 1: characters from this television series I like, or from politics
Speaker 1: or from what have you, and put them on that chart.
Speaker 1: Put them on that chart and just boil them down
Speaker 1: to um to to. This is one statement of their identity.
Speaker 1: But one of the funny things is, I think the
Speaker 1: more realistic and complex the characters and the story are,
Speaker 1: the harder it is to fit them into a grid
Speaker 1: evenly right, Because the more realistic people are, the more
Speaker 1: their their behavior varies, the less consistent they are in
Speaker 1: how their ethics are applied, because in fact, in reality,
Speaker 1: people's behavior is highly situational. You know, they act one
Speaker 1: they're lawful good in one scenario, and then depending on
Speaker 1: a few you know, the temperature of the room and
Speaker 1: who's there and what they're feeling in the moment, they
Speaker 1: are lawful evil or chaotic evil in a different scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you're playing ads and dragons. You're you're so
Speaker 1: concerned about the alignment of the minotaur, and we don't
Speaker 1: think about what the labyrinth is doing to the minotaur.
Speaker 1: So now, I think it's funny that you bring up
Speaker 1: alignments with respect to alien and aliens, because I think
Speaker 1: people don't often do this. But I've thought about it before,
Speaker 1: and I have a hypothesis. It is that Ellen Ripley
Speaker 1: changes alignment between alien and Aliens. Yeah. In Alien, she
Speaker 1: I would say is lawful, neutral. She's not especially selfless
Speaker 1: or helpful to other people, but she does obey the
Speaker 1: rules and do what she's supposed to do. In Aliens,
Speaker 1: a very different ethic emerges in Aliens. She's more rebellious
Speaker 1: and rule breaking, but in the spirit of being good
Speaker 1: and helpful to others. I'd say in Aliens she is
Speaker 1: chaotic good. Okay, yeah, that would make sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's more the she's she's a bail Will figure in
Speaker 1: Aliens quite literally, like she she goes back in you know,
Speaker 1: she dives down and does battle with the monster's mother.
Speaker 1: But I love this transition. I mean some people might say, well,
Speaker 1: that's inconsistent. You know, she acts one way in the
Speaker 1: first movie and she's kind of a different character in
Speaker 1: the second movie. That's what people are like. The circumstances
Speaker 1: in their lives change, and it changes the way you
Speaker 1: behave This is, in fact, the difference between Alien and
Speaker 1: Aliens is a great illustration of the failure of F A.
Speaker 1: E type thinking when you start trying to box people
Speaker 1: in based on limited data points about their behavior in
Speaker 1: the past. Absolutely, now, I guess we'll leave we'll leave
Speaker 1: the listeners to decide what her alignment would be then
Speaker 1: an alien three and in alien resurrection, alien resurrectional what
Speaker 1: what is the alignment of a pile of horse maneuver? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think they're beautiful things about alien resurrection. We can
Speaker 1: fight about this someday. All right. Well, uh, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's move on from from the the alien universe now
Speaker 1: and jump back into our discussion of f A So
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the fundamental attribution error, the tendency
Speaker 1: we have to more often than not explain other people's
Speaker 1: behavior through through disposition, all explanations things about them as
Speaker 1: a person, and to underestimate the role of situational constraints
Speaker 1: and external factors dictating their behavior. Now, one thing I
Speaker 1: was wondering when I was reading about this is how
Speaker 1: much could this vary between different different types of cultures
Speaker 1: and backgrounds? And how much is this just a fundamental
Speaker 1: part of every human brain? And it looks like there
Speaker 1: is some role that culture plays in how strong the
Speaker 1: f A E is? Right? Yeah, and and specifically, um,
Speaker 1: what differences you're going to see between West and East,
Speaker 1: between American culture and uh and and say Chinese culture
Speaker 1: or Korean culture, Japanese culture, etcetera. Um, yeah, a little
Speaker 1: American exceptionalism if you want to call it that in
Speaker 1: regards to our tendency to engage f A. Let me
Speaker 1: guess we're doing worse. Um yeah, We're We're worse. That's
Speaker 1: that's the bed, the basic uh take home. But but
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into the details here. This is uh.
Speaker 1: This comes from a really cool paper um titled cultural,
Speaker 1: cultural and Causal Cognition from Current Directions and Psychological Science
Speaker 1: from the year two thousand and This is from Nisbet
Speaker 1: and Northern Zion, who had mentioned earlier. So basically here
Speaker 1: here's the idea. So for a while, social psychologist assumed
Speaker 1: that the way we make causal judgments is universal, that is,
Speaker 1: the same across all cultures. And this, of course is
Speaker 1: always one of the potential problems for a given study
Speaker 1: or a hypothesis, especially as it relates to uh uh
Speaker 1: the inner workings of the mind? Right does does this
Speaker 1: h view? Does it speak to all populations or is
Speaker 1: it based on a narrow select action that doesn't account
Speaker 1: for differences in culture, culture, socio economic level, gender, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I mean, the classic example of this is when you
Speaker 1: have a small study that is using only college students
Speaker 1: East Coast college students in the United States and extrapolating
Speaker 1: from that to something about the way brains work in
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens exactly, you know, maybe not everybody's brain is
Speaker 1: the same as what's prevalent among that group, right, So uh,
Speaker 1: basically this paper speaks to that, like looks at the
Speaker 1: cultural differences in f A to first to see if
Speaker 1: there there is you know, there there are differences, and
Speaker 1: then also to talk about why that could be and
Speaker 1: so um norn Zion and nes Bit. They point out
Speaker 1: that subsequent studies do seem to reveal that f A
Speaker 1: is harder to demonstrate in Asian populations. This was like
Speaker 1: multiple studies, multiple studies, so just to taste here of them.
Speaker 1: Study from Miller showed that Hindu Indians lean toward a
Speaker 1: situational explanation for ordinary life event. A nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: study from Morris and Ping found that Chinese newspapers and
Speaker 1: Chinese students living in America were more likely to explain
Speaker 1: murders by both Chinese and American perpetrators in situational and
Speaker 1: societal terms, while American newspapers and American students tended to
Speaker 1: focus on the perpetrators presumed at dispositions, their internal trades
Speaker 1: and then uh N. Repetition of the Jones and Harris
Speaker 1: experiment from sixty seven on Korean subjects found the Koreans
Speaker 1: in the study tended to believe that the individual held
Speaker 1: the views expressed in their essay, but flipped when they
Speaker 1: were required to write an essay themselves and did so,
Speaker 1: you know, more readily than than the Americans. Also in
Speaker 1: Morris and Ping, they showed a cartoon of a fish
Speaker 1: too American and Chinese test subjects, and the Chinese subjects
Speaker 1: attributed its behavior to external and group factors, while Americans
Speaker 1: favored internal factors. Um Another study found the same thing
Speaker 1: with quote schematically drawn ambiguous physical events such as a
Speaker 1: round object dropping through a surface and returning to the surface. Okay,
Speaker 1: so in that last example, I think that's that's really
Speaker 1: essential here, is because we're not even talking about human
Speaker 1: behavior or uh, you know, the an anthropomorphized behavior of
Speaker 1: a cartoon fish, but we're talking about the physical world itself.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the role uh that environment has on objects.
Speaker 1: Americans focused on the properties of the ball, while the
Speaker 1: Chinese test subjects focused on the holistic reality in which
Speaker 1: the ball existed. Oh well, that almost makes me think
Speaker 1: of Aristotle. Like, you know, when Aristotle was trying to
Speaker 1: explain physics, he would constantly make appeals to like the
Speaker 1: nature of a thing determines how it moves and what
Speaker 1: happens to it like that, Uh, you know, like a
Speaker 1: rock falls because it has the characteristic of gravity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that is a huge part of what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about here and part of the reasoning
Speaker 1: that they suspect. So the authors point out that it's
Speaker 1: not a case of Asian populations not using f A,
Speaker 1: so they do use it to some extent. What's the
Speaker 1: exception then, Well, it's basically, if there's not enough evidence
Speaker 1: to support a societal or situational explanation, then they'll fall
Speaker 1: back on f A reasoning as well. Okay, I mean basically,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes down to how are you going
Speaker 1: to make judgments about about the world around you, you know,
Speaker 1: when and where what are you going to give more
Speaker 1: weight to. And they're saying they're going to give more
Speaker 1: weight to situational um and environmental societal but they're also
Speaker 1: going to fall back on nature as well well, so
Speaker 1: they'll use situational reasoning when they have some kind of
Speaker 1: foothold there, when there's some piece of information they can
Speaker 1: draw from, right, So that that makes it look kind
Speaker 1: of like it's like the F A E might be
Speaker 1: sort of like a baseline human tendency, but that you
Speaker 1: can be culturally conditioned to remember more off and to
Speaker 1: take into account circumstantial information when you have access to it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I'm not sure they didn't
Speaker 1: really talk so much about what could be the baseline,
Speaker 1: Like so much of this paper focuses on this is
Speaker 1: what we see in the Western model, and this is
Speaker 1: in the Eastern. And ultimately they make an argument for
Speaker 1: aspects of those cultures, especially the the the key influential cultures,
Speaker 1: namely Greek culture in the Western, Chinese culture in the East,
Speaker 1: but they don't really get into it, like what would
Speaker 1: would a non Chinese, non Western civilization, like you get
Speaker 1: into the whole discussion of where a culture and civilization,
Speaker 1: how it arises and how do you how would you
Speaker 1: even strip away the tendency to lean one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, well, I was just referring to the
Speaker 1: fact that that you mentioned about even the Eastern test
Speaker 1: subjects falling back on F A E when they didn't
Speaker 1: have any kind of circumstances that they knew about to
Speaker 1: appeal to. Right, it would seem to be that both
Speaker 1: are natural tools and the toolbox. But then culture uh
Speaker 1: would have UH an influence on which one is the
Speaker 1: more dominant measurement system. Okay, So, but basically the authors
Speaker 1: are talking about cultural differences in causal cognition here, and
Speaker 1: they state that one of the key factors really comes
Speaker 1: down to the differences in intellectual histories in East Asia
Speaker 1: and in Europe from about the sixth century BC onward.
Speaker 1: In this the authors argue, we have to consider the
Speaker 1: differences in the key foundational intellectual cultures at play here,
Speaker 1: Greek culture and Chinese culture. So these are you know
Speaker 1: that basically like these are just very foundational um cultural
Speaker 1: systems that end up influencing everything else. Yeah, produced early
Speaker 1: intellectual texts that have been ceaselessly referred back to within
Speaker 1: the region. Right, So you mentioned Aristotle earlier, and they
Speaker 1: point out that the Greeks focused on analytics, categorizing objects
Speaker 1: based on their attributes, and this was used to explain behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again, this Aristotle's constantly trying to appeal to
Speaker 1: the nature of a thing to explain why the thing
Speaker 1: did what it did. And then meanwhile, the Chinese focused
Speaker 1: on a holistic view that focused more on the field
Speaker 1: in which the object existed and interacted. That's interesting, now,
Speaker 1: why would this be the case. Well, the authors speculate
Speaker 1: that China's holistic leanings might stem from an earlier shift
Speaker 1: to intensive farming, leading to a more cooperative, collectivist culture. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Greek geography prohibits extensive farming operations. Instead, there was a
Speaker 1: focus on domesticated animals, on fishing, and on trade, and
Speaker 1: this led to a highly individualistic culture. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm ready to jump on board with that as
Speaker 1: the reading of these causes in history, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'd ever heard it put that way. That
Speaker 1: is an interesting take, uh. And of course, if if
Speaker 1: these factors are in place, we have to consider to
Speaker 1: consider just how much of those Keystone cultures and the
Speaker 1: cultures that grew out of them are based in this
Speaker 1: line of thinking. Um, I mentioned I was going to
Speaker 1: bring this around to dungeons and dragons earlier, so I
Speaker 1: knew you would In reading this paper and just discussing
Speaker 1: f A in general, um, I think back to the
Speaker 1: monster manuals of Dungeons and Dragons. Um. You know, these
Speaker 1: are the books that are full of page after page
Speaker 1: of monster uh and stats about their abilities and some
Speaker 1: information on their you know, their background, how they work,
Speaker 1: and how you how you basically have the players in
Speaker 1: a game fight it. They're just wickedly Aristotelian. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know they basically function like beast theories from the
Speaker 1: classic tradition, uh, from the classic Western tradition. Here is
Speaker 1: a list of things, and here are their attributes. Uh.
Speaker 1: But while a good monster manual, you know, we'll discuss
Speaker 1: a little bit about the creatures nature, natural habitat and
Speaker 1: how it functions within that habitat. I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to say that there is a strong f A leaning
Speaker 1: here absolutely, because the they have alignments. The alignment is
Speaker 1: the key, Like, yeah, there's you know, there's some stats
Speaker 1: that tell you exactly what it can do, but it's
Speaker 1: that alignment that institute that's where my eyes often go,
Speaker 1: like sometimes, you know, that's the first thing I look at, like,
Speaker 1: what is the essential nature of this monster? Is it chaotic? Good?
Speaker 1: Is it chaotic evil? Is it neutral? Is it lawful good? Um?
Speaker 1: And and that will determine almost everything you need to
Speaker 1: know about how it is probably going to interact with
Speaker 1: the character. Yeah, they have a uniform characteristic way in
Speaker 1: which they behave. And you know the fact is in reality,
Speaker 1: Uh well, I guess in reality there aren't d n
Speaker 1: D monsters, but if there were, they would be animals, right,
Speaker 1: And animals do tend to react to situations then highly
Speaker 1: ways that are highly dependent on what the situation is
Speaker 1: that are not always predictable from just fundamental knowledge about
Speaker 1: the innate character of that individual animal. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: there are animals in the Monster Manual. They're in the back,
Speaker 1: you know, but there, and they tend to be like
Speaker 1: true neutral, right, which you know, again it comes down
Speaker 1: to situation, like a a a cornered, starving animal is
Speaker 1: going to behave differently than a than a fully fed
Speaker 1: animal out in the open. You know, that's just part
Speaker 1: of it. Well, I mean then again, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously none of what we're talking about today
Speaker 1: denies that people have certain tendencies. There are people do
Speaker 1: have tendencies. What I think this should down to is
Speaker 1: that maybe monsters and characters in D and D, if
Speaker 1: they have alignments, their alignments should be I don't know,
Speaker 1: should apply sixty percent of the time or something, rather
Speaker 1: than thinking, if you do one thing that violates your alignment,
Speaker 1: now you've got to do an alignment check because people
Speaker 1: just aren't like that. People sort of act out of
Speaker 1: character based on circumstances all the time. I've seen some
Speaker 1: material like trying to apply this kind of nuance to say, say,
Speaker 1: creatures like the drought, uh, the the evil subterranean elves
Speaker 1: of dungeons and dragons. And part of that is, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's been there, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: increased action around the drought and creating drought characters that
Speaker 1: were maybe not evil or not completely evil and a
Speaker 1: little more uh complex. But I've seen some people like
Speaker 1: discussing like what percentage of the drought population um are
Speaker 1: evil and then which percentage happens to be good? And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess it gets kind of messy
Speaker 1: when you have a system that is ultimately based in
Speaker 1: giving anybody out there like numerical stats and a definitive alignment. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess part of the problem with D
Speaker 1: and D is similar to the problem you're encountering in fiction, Whereas,
Speaker 1: like you know, in fiction, a character needs to have
Speaker 1: characteristic behavior so that you understand the role they play
Speaker 1: in the story. You know, for them to just kind
Speaker 1: of act randomly is not very efficient in terms of storytelling,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't feel very satisfying to the audience. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the same is true in the game. All right,
Speaker 1: And you know, ultimately, as we've discussed on the show recently, uh,
Speaker 1: narrative is a lie and uh and so is gaming
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. So, but that anyway, you have
Speaker 1: to go back to our narrative episodes for more nuance
Speaker 1: on what we're talking about there. All right, time for
Speaker 1: a quick break, but we will be right back, and
Speaker 1: we're back in discussing this division though between East and West,
Speaker 1: between Greek culture and Chinese culture. The author's point to
Speaker 1: the differing strengths and weaknesses of Greek and Chinese science
Speaker 1: and mathematics as potential evidence here. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: read just a segment from their paper. Quote. Greek science
Speaker 1: looked for universal rules to explain events and was concerned
Speaker 1: with categorizing objects with respect to their essences Chinese science,
Speaker 1: some people would say it was a technology only, though
Speaker 1: a technology vastly superior to that if the Greeks was
Speaker 1: more pragmatic and concrete and was not concerned with foundations
Speaker 1: or universal laws. The difference between the Greek and Chinese
Speaker 1: orientations is well captured by Aristotle's physics, which explain the
Speaker 1: behavior of an object without reference to the field in
Speaker 1: which it occurs. Thus, a stone sinks into water because
Speaker 1: it has the property of gravity, and a piece of
Speaker 1: wood floats because it has the property of levity. In contrast,
Speaker 1: the principle that events always occur in some context or
Speaker 1: field of forces was understood early on in China. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I've never heard it put that way, but uh, that
Speaker 1: does kind of make sense based on what I know
Speaker 1: that where more Western natural philosophers would have seen, you know,
Speaker 1: things and bodies that the Eastern thinkers saw a world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that much of this division
Speaker 1: and thinking remains despite the enhanced interconnectedness of the modern world.
Speaker 1: And uh, the cool thing is that we can actually
Speaker 1: test for this to a certain extent, or at least
Speaker 1: we can test for what's known as field dependence via
Speaker 1: a simple rod and frame test. So I can't remember
Speaker 1: if we've actually discussed a rod and frame test on
Speaker 1: the show before. I'm not sure. Tell me about it, okay.
Speaker 1: So basically, the situation as you look through a long
Speaker 1: box like frame at a rod. I found an image
Speaker 1: of one of these and I put it in in
Speaker 1: our notes, Joe. But it's essentially like looking looking into
Speaker 1: a box like they're looking into the top of a
Speaker 1: box and at the bottom there's a rod, and this
Speaker 1: particular example, the rod appears to be glowing like it's
Speaker 1: a light stick. And in this experiment, you can independently
Speaker 1: rotate the rod or the frame, often via opposing joysticks
Speaker 1: on a gaming remote, and the test subject makes adjustments
Speaker 1: and then declares when the rod is finally vertical. So
Speaker 1: you can adjust the the the object or subject, and
Speaker 1: you can also adjust the field or the box in
Speaker 1: order to get the proper alignment. And then whoever's uh
Speaker 1: you know, giving the test, they can see you know
Speaker 1: where you're making the most adjustments. Uh So, the extent
Speaker 1: to which the orientation of the frame influences judgments of
Speaker 1: the verticality of the rod, that is going to tell
Speaker 1: us um, you know what your field dependence is and um.
Speaker 1: East Asian participants, mostly Chinese, have been shown to be
Speaker 1: more field dependent than Americans in experiments by g Ping
Speaker 1: and Nesbitting. Yeah. Uh. Study from Matsuda and has Bit
Speaker 1: highlighted these differences between American and Japanese individuals via exposure
Speaker 1: to underwater scenes with focal fish. So that's you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that you know there are certain fish that
Speaker 1: would capture your attention. The fish in this case are
Speaker 1: the rod and the the The underwater environment is the
Speaker 1: box the frame. But the general ideas that subjects from
Speaker 1: Asian cultures are more likely to see things in terms
Speaker 1: of the environment, to take total environmental information into account. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. I found this really interesting having recently enjoyed
Speaker 1: a lot of snorkeling on a on a trip one
Speaker 1: of my family to Belieze, and uh, you know, these
Speaker 1: beautiful coral reef environments, rich environment, a lot going on.
Speaker 1: We'd be out there for an hour or two at
Speaker 1: a time, and I'd have to remind myselves at times
Speaker 1: at times to take it all in holistically, because I'd
Speaker 1: have a tendency to focus in on key focal fish
Speaker 1: or the search for larger specimens. Right, I'd be looking
Speaker 1: around like, oh, I want I really want to see
Speaker 1: a big ray. I want to see another one of
Speaker 1: those nurse sharks. I want to see the remarkable larger specimens.
Speaker 1: And then I would have to stop and realize but
Speaker 1: but no, wait, I need to take it all in,
Speaker 1: like it's the coral reef. Is this uh, this this
Speaker 1: this rich environment, you know, it's kind of like I
Speaker 1: guess an example of this, too might be if you
Speaker 1: were at an art museum. You're looking at a mural,
Speaker 1: say like an enormous you know, enormous wall piece of
Speaker 1: big trip dick or something, and you might be tempted to,
Speaker 1: you know, go from this detail to this detail and
Speaker 1: take each one in the symbolism of each little detail,
Speaker 1: and and then you have to remind yourself to back
Speaker 1: up a little bit and take in the whole painting,
Speaker 1: because it's also speaking on that level as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it can be very hard to turn the spotlight off,
Speaker 1: especially once you've you've either if you have a preference
Speaker 1: for one style of thinking over the other, or you
Speaker 1: are actively engaging in one or the other. Um just
Speaker 1: a couple of further notes from the authors on this
Speaker 1: this piece on Eastern Western differences. They said that language
Speaker 1: of the test did not impact the results, so that
Speaker 1: would seem to prevent a purely linguistic argument for for
Speaker 1: f A. Uh, though of course I would imagine languages
Speaker 1: would also be affected by two and a half millennia
Speaker 1: under a specific educational culture. Yeah, I would think so. Uh.
Speaker 1: They point out that most individuals compared in these studies
Speaker 1: had otherwise similar demographics. So yeah, for instance, the these
Speaker 1: the tests that had say an American student in a
Speaker 1: Chinese student or in America, they would supposedly have very
Speaker 1: similar demographics otherwise, and then differences in cognitive abilities were
Speaker 1: also accounted for. Well, this makes me wonder if in general,
Speaker 1: bad first impressions are less of a problem in China.
Speaker 1: I don't know, that would be. That would be an interesting,
Speaker 1: um subject to to look up. It becomes difficult, though,
Speaker 1: I imagine, because in a lot of this you're when
Speaker 1: you're talking about you know, cultural tendency, these there are
Speaker 1: there a whole lot of factors that are in play,
Speaker 1: right right, um, that may or may not be um,
Speaker 1: you know, explained by focusing on f A. I don't know, Well, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then again, some of the variations that we see based
Speaker 1: on the cultures might be different depending on what types
Speaker 1: of information or tests you're talking about. Like I could wonder,
Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe some cultural groups would be more
Speaker 1: likely to ignore the f a tendency on like judging
Speaker 1: attitudes held you know, like in the essay reading or
Speaker 1: something like that, but might still display it in terms
Speaker 1: of judging how friendly somebody is, you know what I mean. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank you. All Right, we're back. Let's jump back in.
Speaker 1: So we've discussed the you know, the difficulty from moving
Speaker 1: out of one mindset into the other. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are probably wondering, like, what
Speaker 1: can I what can I do? What are some steps
Speaker 1: I can take? Especially since it's quite clear that the
Speaker 1: fundamental attribution error is harmful and causes us to make
Speaker 1: poor judgments that do not accurately predict people's behavior. So
Speaker 1: they're like, factually not very helpful, and then also can
Speaker 1: be like socially harmful, can lead us to prejudice and stereotyping.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's not just a situation of like
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's awful, but it works. No,
Speaker 1: it does, it's it's it's it's both awful and doesn't
Speaker 1: really work all that well. So we should we should,
Speaker 1: you know, find ways to lean into the other ways
Speaker 1: of figuring out, so what's going on? Yeah, And so,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed the prevalence of f A E doesn't PEA.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean people never take situational factors into consideration.
Speaker 1: They obviously do. It's just that on average, we consider
Speaker 1: situation far less than we should, and we chalk things
Speaker 1: up to disposition far more than we should. And so
Speaker 1: are there ways to defeat this bias in ourselves and
Speaker 1: in others, to take situation into account more comprehensively and
Speaker 1: to become more rational. One fix is not perfect, but
Speaker 1: it's very simple. It's just that FA I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 1: It happens easily and automatically, and it can actually, I think,
Speaker 1: be fairly readily overcome with cognitive effort. Some biases are
Speaker 1: just easier than others to think yourself out of, and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, this actually appears to be one
Speaker 1: of them. I was reading about one study about this
Speaker 1: in a textbook called Applied Social psychology Understanding and Addressing
Speaker 1: social and practical problems by Schneider at all, and it
Speaker 1: was discussing research that showed that, in some cases, if
Speaker 1: you prime people to think about situational explanations, they're more
Speaker 1: likely to consider them. Okay, that's fairly straightforward, right. If
Speaker 1: you have students watch a silent film of a woman
Speaker 1: having a conversation displaying nervous behaviors like biting her nails
Speaker 1: or twirling her hair or something. Uh, they found that
Speaker 1: if you prime subjects by telling them that she's discussing
Speaker 1: a sensitive or anxious topic um versus telling the people
Speaker 1: watching the video that she's discussing a relaxing topic, the
Speaker 1: students who saw her acting anxious while discussing a relaxing
Speaker 1: topic were more likely to attribute anxiety to her as
Speaker 1: a character trait, whereas the ones who thought she was
Speaker 1: discussing an anxious topic were more likely to take the
Speaker 1: situation into consideration. So that's fairly straightforward. But it does
Speaker 1: actually seem to help just make people aware of the
Speaker 1: situation directly ask them to consider it. Yeah, that's that's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like discussing anxiety here, because I feel like this is
Speaker 1: an example of where, like anybody who deals with anxiety,
Speaker 1: you probably don't think of it as like part of you, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we very often think of it as this
Speaker 1: thing that I deal with as opposed to this thing
Speaker 1: that is a part of my identity. You know. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's easy to fall into these traps
Speaker 1: when considering other people. But like the same person who
Speaker 1: was like, oh, that person she's anxious, or that she
Speaker 1: is an anxious person, they would not view themselves in
Speaker 1: the same light dealing with say anxiety. Of course not
Speaker 1: end if you just tell them like, she's dealing with
Speaker 1: an anxious or an anxiety causing situation. That mirror priming
Speaker 1: gets people to take that into account and be like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: well the way she's acting is probably reasonable then you know,
Speaker 1: um now obviously, so it works in that scenario. But
Speaker 1: obviously this doesn't always eliminate f A when you ask
Speaker 1: people to consider the situation because think of the earlier studies, right,
Speaker 1: like the essays they would tell people so and so
Speaker 1: has been assigned to this position to advocate, and it's
Speaker 1: still and still even though they were asked to consider
Speaker 1: the situation, they didn't consider it as much as they
Speaker 1: should have. They think, you know, even though Jeffrey's acting
Speaker 1: this way because he's been assigned to it's actually also
Speaker 1: reflective of how he really is as a person. But
Speaker 1: this one study, I guess at least, does seem to
Speaker 1: indicate that sometimes priming people to consider situational factors can
Speaker 1: make a difference. And again, I think this is because
Speaker 1: it seems we make dispositional attributions. We commit the fa
Speaker 1: quickly and automatically. It's something we do with no effort
Speaker 1: at all. You just automatically jump there and and assign
Speaker 1: people character traits based on very limited data. And I
Speaker 1: think it's just more likely to take some deliberate cognitive
Speaker 1: effort at correction to take situational factors into consideration. Thus,
Speaker 1: if you want to reduce your commission of the f A,
Speaker 1: try to find out more about the situations of the
Speaker 1: people you're judging and think deliberately about situational factors and
Speaker 1: encourage others to do the same. It appears, at least
Speaker 1: in some cases, it makes a difference. Also, consider what
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. Remember that people were less likely
Speaker 1: to make the FAE when they had multiple interactions with
Speaker 1: the same person and saw how they behave differently under
Speaker 1: different situational constraints. So you know more about people, get
Speaker 1: to know people better. You're probably going to come to
Speaker 1: see how they are influenced by situational factors and judge
Speaker 1: them less on the basis of the single data points. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: and this is all I think extremely crucial, and I
Speaker 1: think it you know, it backs up a lot of
Speaker 1: the advice that we're given about taking people's like full
Speaker 1: uh you know, their history and their situation into account
Speaker 1: when when judging them. Um. But because you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: anybody you encounter in life, they have not been assigned uh,
Speaker 1: their personal essay by you know, somebody carrying out a
Speaker 1: scientific test. They've been assigned their personal essay by fate,
Speaker 1: by circumstances, by luck, by luck by, by all these
Speaker 1: these factors in our lives. You know, then they're but
Speaker 1: for fortune go you or I and um. We have
Speaker 1: to force ourselves to open our eyes to that reality,
Speaker 1: just as we would all want other people to be
Speaker 1: open to that reality in ourselves. Yes, that that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And one last thing I would say about recommendations for
Speaker 1: dealing with this is remember that there's some indication that
Speaker 1: may be manipulating perspective helps people with with getting rid
Speaker 1: of the f A tendency. If you if you literally
Speaker 1: try to look through somebody else's eyes, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could try to do this just with your imagination,
Speaker 1: then suddenly you are less likely to ignore situational circumstances
Speaker 1: that may be causing people to act in a way
Speaker 1: they wouldn't normally act. Yeah, ultimately, this is what letter
Speaker 1: Face was trying to do. He was just trying to
Speaker 1: see through other people's eyes, through other people's faces. I
Speaker 1: don't know this kind of stretch, but just to bring
Speaker 1: it back around to films, I can't top that. I
Speaker 1: guess we have to end there all right. But obviously
Speaker 1: this is something we would love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: about because everybody has, uh has some experience with FA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've been judged unfairly on this basis you've done this
Speaker 1: to other people. It happens every day, right and uh
Speaker 1: And likewise, UH, I would love to hear from listeners
Speaker 1: who can provide some of their own insight on the
Speaker 1: whole Western Eastern divide, Uh, you know, cultural differences there.
Speaker 1: And then also, hey, we talked about a few different
Speaker 1: fictions here. We talked about the alien, we talked about
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, we talked about dungeons and dragons, and ever
Speaker 1: so briefly, leather face. So we would we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you the listeners, your your interpretations of those
Speaker 1: properties based on f A as well. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to more episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, head on over to Stuff to
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Speaker 1: It's a tremendous, tremendous aid. Likewise, we mentioned Invention earlier
Speaker 1: in the recent episodes on photography. If you want to
Speaker 1: check out Invention, UH do that. Invention pod dot com
Speaker 1: is the website for that show, and you can subscribe,
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Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and Tari Harrison. If you would like to get
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