Attribution error
July 6, 2021 9:19 AM Subscribe
Robert Wright, Ode to a world-saving idea: attribution error. "If I had to pick only one scientific finding about how the human mind works and promulgate it in hopes of saving the world, I’d probably go with attribution error."
what do you make of this? not sure i grok
So, though I’d like to say something inspirational at this point, I won’t get Churchillian (“We must fight them on the beaches” and so on). I’d rather just quote William James and say that what’s needed here is careful comprehension accompanied by “the moral equivalent of war.”posted by j_curiouser at 11:01 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
As far as I can tell, political conservatism bears a significant resemblance to fundamental attribution error writ large into social philosophy.
This observation itself flirts with potential attribution errors, and there is plenty of introspection on this front for people of other political persuasions to do as well. But when you see universalized benefits and protections more often on one side of a scale versus more particularized privileges related to ostensible meritocracy and just world / tough luck talk on the other, there is at least some basis for suspecting attribution errors or their underlying drivers in play.
posted by weston at 11:17 AM on July 6, 2021 [8 favorites]
This observation itself flirts with potential attribution errors, and there is plenty of introspection on this front for people of other political persuasions to do as well. But when you see universalized benefits and protections more often on one side of a scale versus more particularized privileges related to ostensible meritocracy and just world / tough luck talk on the other, there is at least some basis for suspecting attribution errors or their underlying drivers in play.
posted by weston at 11:17 AM on July 6, 2021 [8 favorites]
This is fascinating. I like to think of myself as someone who willfully practices cognitive empathy, though I suppose I can’t know where my own blind spots are. But what is one to do when the only motivation I can imagine for a particular person or group is malice or callousness, and when I read their reasoning behind their beliefs, they are unabashedly admitting it is malice and callousness? Clearly, being aware of attribution error would help save the world, but we also can’t veer into Popper’s paradox of tolerance.
posted by ejs at 11:37 AM on July 6, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by ejs at 11:37 AM on July 6, 2021 [17 favorites]
I've been thinking a lot about these issues lately, and I want to contribute more to this discussion later when I'm not at work. But for now, I think there are some parallels between this article and this previously, about the idea that some kinds of crimes are committed by monsters, rather than people that have been influenced/enabled through society and culture that perpetuates all kinds of harm.
It's not about forgiving/validating, it's about understanding and trying to find ways to change the dynamics that exist.
posted by Gorgik at 12:23 PM on July 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
It's not about forgiving/validating, it's about understanding and trying to find ways to change the dynamics that exist.
posted by Gorgik at 12:23 PM on July 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
Food for thought.
posted by numberstation at 12:40 PM on July 6, 2021
posted by numberstation at 12:40 PM on July 6, 2021
Wright is an exceptionally lucid and thoughtful writer on Big Ideas having to do with psychology and morals. I strongly recommend his books The Moral Animal and Nonzero; the blog related to the latter is the apparent source for this essay.
posted by Dr. Wu at 1:46 PM on July 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Dr. Wu at 1:46 PM on July 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
Any Metafilter reader interested in ideas related to attribution error would do well to look at the Metatalk July 2 “helicopter/closet” post.
posted by PaulVario at 1:52 PM on July 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by PaulVario at 1:52 PM on July 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
Huh. It's explained that it's been renamed "attribution error" because there are exceptions and that it's "not as fundamental as we thought."
However, I thought it was not Fundamental (Attribution Error) but rather (Fundamental Attribution) Error. As in, the error is in attributing behavior to an incorrect fundament (circumstance, character, etc.).
posted by explosion at 2:13 PM on July 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
However, I thought it was not Fundamental (Attribution Error) but rather (Fundamental Attribution) Error. As in, the error is in attributing behavior to an incorrect fundament (circumstance, character, etc.).
posted by explosion at 2:13 PM on July 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm really confused to find out that "attribution error" means something totally different from what I thought and comes from the 1970s. I thought it was one of those ancient logical fallacies that you could apply to an argument in general. Like "You are making an attribution error - you have misidentified the cause of the problem - the cause of the problem is something other than what you are saying it is". Does that have a name if it's not attribution error?
The concept that the essay is discussing -
"When we’re explaining the behavior of other people, we tend to put too much emphasis on “disposition”—on their character, their personality, their essential nature. And we tend to put too little emphasis on “situation”—on the circumstances they find themselves in. The Times gives an illustration:"
is indeed wildly familiar. It makes me think of something I've been noticing which is that it seems like for everything, absolutely every facet of human behavior, the only way we know how to get people to do something differently from how they're doing it is to torture them into compliance, which they deserve because they are bad people, which we know because good people want to behave so much that that the good behavior fairy blesses them, and if the good behavior fairy hasn't blessed them, then they didn't want it enough, and if they didn't want it enough, they must simply be a bad person, therefore the only thing to do is torture them until the good behavior starts coming out. It's freaking god damned everywhere and it's so injust it just makes me explode with frustration. Uh oh, better get the good behavior fairy in here stat!!
Another thing this makes me think about is how when I was little/also when I was an adult I struggled alot with my hair, because it's naturally big, wild red neanderthal hair that WILL NOT be told what to do. But I perceived that the only people who let their hair be BIG were people who wanted everyone to know that they have a BIG PERSONALITY. I had never seen or heard of anyone who had BIG HAIR who didn't also make that a HUGE PART OF WHO THEY WERE AND HOW THEY TALKED AND DRESSED AND BEHAVED AND THEY TALKED REAL LOUD AND SUCKED ALL THE AIR OUT OF THE ROOM. But that wasn't me at all, and more importantly I didn't want people to assume I was one of those people. The only thing I could do was force my hair to be flat, which also made it look bad, so I got lots of criticism from my family for having bad hair! Simply love being a human being, it's a magical time.
posted by bleep at 2:54 PM on July 6, 2021 [16 favorites]
The concept that the essay is discussing -
"When we’re explaining the behavior of other people, we tend to put too much emphasis on “disposition”—on their character, their personality, their essential nature. And we tend to put too little emphasis on “situation”—on the circumstances they find themselves in. The Times gives an illustration:"
is indeed wildly familiar. It makes me think of something I've been noticing which is that it seems like for everything, absolutely every facet of human behavior, the only way we know how to get people to do something differently from how they're doing it is to torture them into compliance, which they deserve because they are bad people, which we know because good people want to behave so much that that the good behavior fairy blesses them, and if the good behavior fairy hasn't blessed them, then they didn't want it enough, and if they didn't want it enough, they must simply be a bad person, therefore the only thing to do is torture them until the good behavior starts coming out. It's freaking god damned everywhere and it's so injust it just makes me explode with frustration. Uh oh, better get the good behavior fairy in here stat!!
Another thing this makes me think about is how when I was little/also when I was an adult I struggled alot with my hair, because it's naturally big, wild red neanderthal hair that WILL NOT be told what to do. But I perceived that the only people who let their hair be BIG were people who wanted everyone to know that they have a BIG PERSONALITY. I had never seen or heard of anyone who had BIG HAIR who didn't also make that a HUGE PART OF WHO THEY WERE AND HOW THEY TALKED AND DRESSED AND BEHAVED AND THEY TALKED REAL LOUD AND SUCKED ALL THE AIR OUT OF THE ROOM. But that wasn't me at all, and more importantly I didn't want people to assume I was one of those people. The only thing I could do was force my hair to be flat, which also made it look bad, so I got lots of criticism from my family for having bad hair! Simply love being a human being, it's a magical time.
posted by bleep at 2:54 PM on July 6, 2021 [16 favorites]
At some point in my college years (now a few decades past) I remember hearing a version of this that has stuck with me to this day:
"We judge other people on their actions, but ourselves on our intentions."
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@weston: "As far as I can tell, political conservatism bears a significant resemblance to fundamental attribution error writ large into social philosophy."
The article actually mentions the problem of zero-sum thinking as an impediment to solving non-zero-sum problems (of which type a great many problems qualify). The fact that political conservatism is strongly tied to a bias in favor of zero-sum thought patterns itself is enough to explain the resemblance.
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@ejs: "...but we also can’t veer into Popper’s paradox of tolerance."
This seems like an appropriate place to mention this:
"Tolerance is not a moral precept" -Yonatan Zunger, 2017/01
posted by mystyk at 3:44 PM on July 6, 2021 [7 favorites]
"We judge other people on their actions, but ourselves on our intentions."
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Regular readers of this newsletter can probably guess what I’m referring to: cognitive empathy. And regular readers know that by “cognitive empathy” I don’t mean “feeling their pain.” That’s emotional empathy. I just mean seeing how things look from another person’s point of view: perspective taking.One area I've been fascinated with over the years, due to my work and advocacy in various secular community spaces, is the idea that people have a limited capacity to feel emotionally tied to others, and can thus "run out" of empathy if they try too hard. The idea is that you can expand your ability to care - and to act on that care in meaningful ways - if you don't feel the need to be emotionally invested on every topic you care about. This is important because, according to the common definitions of "empathy," it's inherently emotional. "Emotional empathy" is just empathy, and "cognitive empathy" has its own term too: compassion.
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@weston: "As far as I can tell, political conservatism bears a significant resemblance to fundamental attribution error writ large into social philosophy."
The article actually mentions the problem of zero-sum thinking as an impediment to solving non-zero-sum problems (of which type a great many problems qualify). The fact that political conservatism is strongly tied to a bias in favor of zero-sum thought patterns itself is enough to explain the resemblance.
----------
@ejs: "...but we also can’t veer into Popper’s paradox of tolerance."
This seems like an appropriate place to mention this:
"Tolerance is not a moral precept" -Yonatan Zunger, 2017/01
posted by mystyk at 3:44 PM on July 6, 2021 [7 favorites]
As far as I can tell, political conservatism bears a significant resemblance to fundamental attribution error writ large into social philosophy.
Indeed, I feel the whole debate about Critical Race Theory is fundamentally an argument about attribution error:
CRT: "Can we please examine how situations (institutions, laws, norms etc) are often biased against us and in favour of you?"
Opponents: "No. If you have bad outcomes it's because (as part of my out-group) you're probably just lazy or criminally inclined. Whereas me and my in-group, if we have success then it's because we're energetic, go-getting bootstrappers. Unless we do something criminal, in which case it was a shitty situation that forced us into it"
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:50 PM on July 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
Indeed, I feel the whole debate about Critical Race Theory is fundamentally an argument about attribution error:
CRT: "Can we please examine how situations (institutions, laws, norms etc) are often biased against us and in favour of you?"
Opponents: "No. If you have bad outcomes it's because (as part of my out-group) you're probably just lazy or criminally inclined. Whereas me and my in-group, if we have success then it's because we're energetic, go-getting bootstrappers. Unless we do something criminal, in which case it was a shitty situation that forced us into it"
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:50 PM on July 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
The original formulation of it can be rendered in ways that make it seem borderline obvious, and Traub may not be aware that it evolved into something subtler. (He’s a newspaper reporter who has to write about all kinds of stuff every week, not a psych grad student.)
This is a recurring problem in reporting. I'd like to call it Attribution Error, but that name seems to be taken.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:58 PM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I've spent a lot of my (non-professional) adult life volunteering to support victims of gender-based violence (sexual assault, domestic violence). About 7 years ago I started working with a program for men, many of whom had committed crimes rooted in gender-based violence. And some who had been convicted of rape, and some DV.
Part of the goal of this program is to hold space for the men who come through, and meet them with compassion, as a model for what healthy relationships can be like. Holding this space is challenging, because there's a lot of classism, racism, misogyny, etc. To be sure, the facilitators confront this, but by inviting alternate views, explaining experienced harm, and relying on alternate ideas from others in the group. And also acknowleding the pain and trauma that many of them have experienced during their lives.
For me, however, holding this space and listening to these guys has changed me and a lot of my attitudes towards abusers and rapists. I had a monolithic view previously, not that most were monsters, but that they were "bad" people, and deserved much harsher punishment. And also that there was nothing that I'd get out of being in relationship to them. I still think for some of them that there should be more consequences similar to punishment, but I've learned to relate to them as people, even people that I might like, albeit that have done bad, really bad, things.
This was driven home recently a few years ago when someone that I worked with for about 10 years, someone that I was friends with, did a series of very bad things. Adjacent to the work I do, but not exactly the same. I'd lost touch with him, and then randomly read a news story that he had been convicted of a series of crimes, and sentenced to prison. I reached out to him, and we ended up getting together before he had to report to prison. The content of our conversation isn't important, but I told him about the work I'd been doing, and said that if I could hold space for complete strangers, I could get together with him. Most of the people I work with (my professional job, where he and I met) had heard about what he'd done, and written him off (one guy said "who knew he was such a monster"). Some of them who knew me understood why I wanted to meet with him, while admitting that they had no interest in doing so themselves.
I guess my point, in relation to the posted article and the related one I mentioned, is my coworker is still a human being, and while I understand why others might not want to interact with him, isolation/shunning/etc isn't going to make anything better. If he's going to rehabilitate and have a life and exist in society, he has to have relationships with people who can listen to him, work with him, etc. Otherwise, he should either just be locked up indefinitely, or put to death. And neither of those would accomplish anything about the circumstances that led him down the path (that he willfully chose, to be clear) that he took.
And I think the same is true for the guys in my group as well, especially the really young ones, who still have the majority of their lives ahead of them. If they don't get to interact with people who can meet them where they are, and try to provide role models/encouragement/counseling/treatment/compassion, then what hope do we have as a society that we can address this particular set of ills? the criminal justice system, and punative measures in general, aren't going to effect lasting change by themselves.
I'm not saying that I think everyone should put themselves in this role (and certainly not people who are marginalized, or oppressed, or victims of violence), because it's difficult, and draining, and traumatic. But I think that the idea of cognitive empathy, or thinking beyond the idea that someone is a monster, or evil, or whatever, is really important if we're going to have a functioning society that can become more just and equitable for everyone.
And just to be crystal fucking clear, I'm still doing the other work, with victims, because they made no choice to be victimized, and deserve much more love and care and support and a path forward in order to heal.
posted by Gorgik at 9:31 PM on July 6, 2021 [19 favorites]
Part of the goal of this program is to hold space for the men who come through, and meet them with compassion, as a model for what healthy relationships can be like. Holding this space is challenging, because there's a lot of classism, racism, misogyny, etc. To be sure, the facilitators confront this, but by inviting alternate views, explaining experienced harm, and relying on alternate ideas from others in the group. And also acknowleding the pain and trauma that many of them have experienced during their lives.
For me, however, holding this space and listening to these guys has changed me and a lot of my attitudes towards abusers and rapists. I had a monolithic view previously, not that most were monsters, but that they were "bad" people, and deserved much harsher punishment. And also that there was nothing that I'd get out of being in relationship to them. I still think for some of them that there should be more consequences similar to punishment, but I've learned to relate to them as people, even people that I might like, albeit that have done bad, really bad, things.
This was driven home recently a few years ago when someone that I worked with for about 10 years, someone that I was friends with, did a series of very bad things. Adjacent to the work I do, but not exactly the same. I'd lost touch with him, and then randomly read a news story that he had been convicted of a series of crimes, and sentenced to prison. I reached out to him, and we ended up getting together before he had to report to prison. The content of our conversation isn't important, but I told him about the work I'd been doing, and said that if I could hold space for complete strangers, I could get together with him. Most of the people I work with (my professional job, where he and I met) had heard about what he'd done, and written him off (one guy said "who knew he was such a monster"). Some of them who knew me understood why I wanted to meet with him, while admitting that they had no interest in doing so themselves.
I guess my point, in relation to the posted article and the related one I mentioned, is my coworker is still a human being, and while I understand why others might not want to interact with him, isolation/shunning/etc isn't going to make anything better. If he's going to rehabilitate and have a life and exist in society, he has to have relationships with people who can listen to him, work with him, etc. Otherwise, he should either just be locked up indefinitely, or put to death. And neither of those would accomplish anything about the circumstances that led him down the path (that he willfully chose, to be clear) that he took.
And I think the same is true for the guys in my group as well, especially the really young ones, who still have the majority of their lives ahead of them. If they don't get to interact with people who can meet them where they are, and try to provide role models/encouragement/counseling/treatment/compassion, then what hope do we have as a society that we can address this particular set of ills? the criminal justice system, and punative measures in general, aren't going to effect lasting change by themselves.
I'm not saying that I think everyone should put themselves in this role (and certainly not people who are marginalized, or oppressed, or victims of violence), because it's difficult, and draining, and traumatic. But I think that the idea of cognitive empathy, or thinking beyond the idea that someone is a monster, or evil, or whatever, is really important if we're going to have a functioning society that can become more just and equitable for everyone.
And just to be crystal fucking clear, I'm still doing the other work, with victims, because they made no choice to be victimized, and deserve much more love and care and support and a path forward in order to heal.
posted by Gorgik at 9:31 PM on July 6, 2021 [19 favorites]
Yes, Gorgik, I think that ideally, shunning abusers doesn't require thinking they are inherently evil people, but prioritizing the safety and healing of victims over the rehabilitation of abusers: doing whatever is necessary to prevent them from abusing anyone and insisting that nobody is obligated to risk abuse in order to help rehabilitate them. And not expecting victims of abuse to make those sorts of fine distinctions or requiring them to be "fair" to abusers in order to escape abuse.
I think trying to avoid attribution error in those situations would only be dangerous if we confuse questioning the reasons a person harmed someone with doubting whether harm was actually done. (Or if we were to prioritize victims avoiding attribution error over their safety from abuse.)
posted by straight at 11:17 PM on July 6, 2021
I think trying to avoid attribution error in those situations would only be dangerous if we confuse questioning the reasons a person harmed someone with doubting whether harm was actually done. (Or if we were to prioritize victims avoiding attribution error over their safety from abuse.)
posted by straight at 11:17 PM on July 6, 2021
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