This weekend, Oliver Burkeman's column in the Weekend Guardian 'This Column Will Change Your Life' covered an interesting concept, fundamental attribution error (FAE).
This means we fall into bias by overvaluing personality-based explanations - he was rude to me because he's a rude person - and undervaluing situational ones - he was rude because he's stressed about work. And we happily accept that our own personalities are a spectrum of emotions depending on the current (temporary) situation, but are unwilling or unable to attribute this to others. Apparently, FAE is less common in collectivist cultures ...
Interesting stuff. Perhaps more curious, how to address it in the hypocritical, hyper-critical snap judgements we casually make every day? Never judge a book by it's cover, I guess?
